LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 441, 12 November 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

DEED FOR DEED.

(From London Society.)

Continued

' 1 thought this sufficiently absurd. For a man in his position not to make straight away to the port to which he was originally bound was against all precedent in such emergencies; yet, after what my wife told me, was there not an explanation for his excuse. ? And, although 1 had never chanced upon him in company with the object that was undoubtedly inducing him to linger in these parts, I did see him, three or four even ings ago, waiting very suspiciously at the stile on the cliff path, where my wife had met him more than once walking with the girl Nancy Behring. • That same night, too, after having exchanged a word or two with him, I strolled a long distance up the valley inland, and the moon was shining nearly as bright as day by the time T was returning along the high road from Taxminster. About a mile out of Malt Regis I overtook two figures walking under the shadow of one of the tall hedges, so conspicuous a feature of these Devonshire lanes. Quite suddenly they emerged into the light at my approach: one was Nancy, the other not the American, but his preserver, Joseph Masters.

"A fast and loose game it is that this young person is playing,' thought I; " biit I suppose so remarkable a beauty as hers demands some latitude : she will not waste all its sweetness in one quarter.' A very pretty girl, certainly : tall, shapely, her small head poised exquisitely on her shoulders, and with a carriage like a duchess —like a Spanish duchess, shall I say ?—for she has the complexion which Shakespeare calls ' the sable livery of the burnished sun. Dark hair in treat profusion, eyes darker still, with a epth and yet a coquettishness in them, unmistakable in its import. Her mouth, too, for ever disclosing brilliant teeth, indicates, by its curve of proud satisfaction as one looks admiringly at her, that such glances are as necessary to her existence as the air she breathes, Seldom to be met with as such rare qualities are amidst a purely agricultural and fishing population, they perhaps strike one the more on that account, and exercise an equal effect generally on the neighbouring swains. Not wonderful, then, that the heads of Joseph Masters and the American were turned. The wonder was that the heads of all the male population had not been well-nigh twisted off, or, at any rate, that one had not been thrust into the noose irrevocably. How such a girl remained unmarried was astonishing. Joe seemed, however, to mean business now, and I felt glad that so fine and brave a fellow should, at least as far as looks went, find so oomely a mate. Yet, as to her disposition and character —well, there might be doubts on that head. • When I reached the turning into the cliff path, which made a short cut down to the village, I paused, looked back, and saw the two following on in the moonlight. Having gained the stile, actually at the edge of the cliff, where two hours before I had left Logez, I paused again, and rested on it. Somewhat to my disturbance, in a minute I discovered him lying down on the grass within a few feet of me, evidently still waiting. • Very awkward, indeed, this, I thought, ' if they come along here together, instead of going by the road.' But there at the turning, after a little parley, fortunately they parted, Masters keeping to the road, and the girl coming along the path to the stile. I moved aside to let her get over it, and as I watched her tripping lightly down the cliff side, Lopez rose and hastily followed her. I, too, descended the same way to the inn, but without seeing them again that night; for it was late, and the whole village was well-nigh abed. «Fifteen days later, the first of October, indeed, and the old bad weather has returned. lam glad that another week brings my holiday to an end—the last, too, I ever mean to spend in this fashion. I wanted quiet, certainly; but I did not mean to be forced by sheer ennui into this sort of penmanship. 'Joseph Masters is out at sea trawling, with his three partners in the boat, and it has come oh to olow furiously and suddenly. Many other boats are out, and as the day closes, there is some anxiety for their safety. ' Little groups of the women, the old men, and children begin to cluster at every vantage point of outlook. Master Lopez is still at Malt Regis, and I find him, in company with 1 two old fishermen and a little girl, sheltering from the wind in the cleft on the top of the cliffs, called ' Monkey's Grip,' the identical spot whence I had beheld his rescue six weeks back.

* Scene, weather, light very much as they were then, and save that the days are shorter by an hour and a half, it might be the same evening. I join the little party : they are watching the boats, which one by one are rounding the western headland and that fatal reef, and are getting beached, after the usual rope, horse, and windlass method of the place. ' ' There bean't no more to coom now, 'cept my nephew, Joe Masters,' said the old man,, wh,°> held the little girl by the hand. ' I'd like to see him, I reckon, pretty soon now, else he wun't save the daylight; and the Lord knows what will become of him such a night as this if he don't!' ' ' Are you sure that he's the only one due at this moment V asked the American, with a peculiar expression in his voice and eye ; 'are you sure, positive, that he has not come m?''

' ' Why, bless my heart alive ! d'ye think I've lived here, man and boy, seventy years, and don't know the cut of every boat as well at sea as on the beach ! I tell 'ee he have not come.'

• * Humph !' said Lopez with a shrug, and with the same queer expression; ' then I guess he'll find it awkward, p'raps, when he doesf.' * 'Ay, man 1 that he will,' interposed the other fisherman, in a lower tone, and plucking at the sleeve of the last speaker; ' but ? r ou han't no call to talk of it in that way. t's a matter o' life and death with they poor chaps. Don't ye see,' he went on, jerking his thumb towards the old man and the child, who had moved a pace or two forward as they gazed eagerly seawards—' don't ye see little Bess is fit to cry her Jeyes out because she can't see her uncle's boat ? He's been better nor a father to her since she lost her'n, off them reefs : and the old man—old Tom we call him—is fit to pipe his eye, too, at the thoughts of what may come.' '' Wal, I'm sorry for their feelings,' was the American's answer; ' but facts are facts, and I was only speaking to them. The facts are just what I say: Joseph Masters will find it awkward if he does not round that point before dark.' '' My friend,' said I, breaking in here, 'you ao seem to talk too lightly of this matter. You seem to forget that if it had not been for Joe Masters you would not be standing here at this moment.' ' Luis Lopez turned his dark handsome face upon me with such a look as I don't wish often to evoke from any man, as he replied:— ' • No, sir, I do not forget that fact, whatever 'I may seem to do. No, sir, that is another fact I am prepared to speak to ; and it may be lucky for some people that I am so prepared : I wish I was not—that's the difficulty. I wish I could wipe it out.' And in a minute or two he walked slowly away from us along the cliff. ' ' Such is jealousy,' thought I, ' raising a wild fury in that man's breast against his Preserver. I suppose none but the very ighest natures can override such impulses.' ' I lingered with the two old men about the spot for another half-hour, until nearly all the light had faded out of the wild sky. No other boat had hove in sight. 'We returned in silence to the village street, where it debouched upon the beach. A heavy grief was over us—upon me as well as those more nearly concerned. ' I had re-entered our quarters, was Chatting with my wtfe on the sadness of the

circumstance, and giving vent to no very friendly thoughts about the American, when a commotion and shout in the street, below our window, made me go out again. 1 There was a rush of every one towards the beach, and to that part of it where I had seen the whole population gathered on my first arrival at Malt Regis—the land end of the reef of rocks, whence the people had been watching the ' man upon the mast.' The cry now went up that they had made out Joe Masters' boat, but that, deceived in distance by the approach of darkness, he had not given himself sea-room enough, and was in imminent peril of striking on the rocks. I could barely discern through the dim twilight anything but weltering waves and surf at the furthermost point. But the trained eyes saw more, and I knew by the gasps and mutterings, and, finally, by the awe stricken shouts of the men and the wailing screams of the women, the progress of events and their termination. The worst had come; the boat had been seen to dash herself upon the jagged ridge, to lift herself once or twice farther on to it, and, then heel over and disappear. ' ' A long, light rope, light and stout !' shouted a voice which 1 recognised, rising above the din of crowd, and wind, and sea. ' I know the way —no man better —and I'll go ; he did it for me, and I'll be even with him, deed for deed. Yes, sir; I'll wipe it out now,' said the American, turning fiercely upon me as he pushed past in the crowd, the crowd half urging him on, half dissuading ; some entreating for the contemplated deed, and some against it. ' He went, and he achieved his purpose : picked Joe Masters out of the boiling surf upon the end of the reef where, clinging to the mast and remnants of the boat as it had temporarily jammed under the lee of the outermost pinnacles of rock,the young fisherman was dimly discerned lying in precisely similar peril to that from which he had himself rescued the man who, by a strange coincidence, was now to rescue him. Almost identically, step by step, was the feat accomplished, the same danger incurred, the same doubts, hopes, and fears expressing themselves amidst the on-lookers, the same shelterings under the pinnacles, the same runs from one to' the other, as the swirling of the boiling waves to and fro gave opportunities ; and, finally, the same shouts of gratulation when the two men, with merely their relative positions changed, stood safe upon the beach again. * Who can ever doubt,' thought I, after this, * that history repeats herself V and when, in the course cf the next half-hour, I was talking of the American to my wife, it was with very different feelings to those I had lately expressed. Still I felt that a climax had yet to be reached : this double service of one towards the other, which ought to hold two men, if anything would, in an indestructible bond of friendship,, would go for nothing all the while the question of the woman was at issue between them. Therefore, to my thinking, Lopez had hot saved his rival to befriend him. I thought I saw in the deed merely a sort of swaggering pride, a desire to wipe out the obligation and to pay back life with life, and then dispute to the death for the possession of the girl. 'An interval of a few days set matters. outwardly in their humdrum state again at Malt Regis. The recent events were much talked of, of course, and much grief prevailed for the two poor fellows who were out with Joe and were lost. My wife and I had by this time so mixed ourselves up with the interests of these honest fisher-folk that I oftentimes knew more of their affairs than met the eye. And thus it fell out that I came to be in a position to do some service to the two men whose deeds had formed the ' Romance of our Holiday.' ' ' You see, mate, I shouldn't like the whole of our village for to know as we two was angered with one another ; it wouldn't seem natural-like for two men as have done by each other what we have to be having high words ; and if you want to parley any more about this here question, why you'd best come up to Monkey's Grip this evening about six o'clock. I shall be coming back from Durdale Bay along the tops when I've seen to my lobster-pots ; and nobody won't know nothing about what we say up there.' ' ' Good .' was the reply. ' Done with you ! But I guess you don't mistake me. What I've done I've done for the sake o' fair play, nothing' else. We can consider ourselves equals now, which being so, it's for the best man to win. The difficulty could be soon wiped out if we was in my country ; a brace of six-shoot ' ' * Don't threaten, mate, I bean't used to that; and whether we are in one country or t'other, I reckon, if ye mean for to settle it so, we should be as ready here at there, tho', maybe, we are more used to fists than knives, and that like. You've done fair by me all through, and I bean't going to doubt ye now. So, up yonder, this evening, I'll stand face to face with ye, no fear ! But don't say no more about it now; they'll be ovehearing of us.' (To he continued.)