THE little Cornish port of Pencastle was bright in the early April, when the sun had seemingly come to stay after a long and bitter winter. Boldly and blackly the rock stood out against a background of shaded blue, where the sky fading into mist met the far horizon. The sea was of true Cornish hue—sapphire, save where it became deep emerald green in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the seal caves opened their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched and brown. The spikes of furze bushes were ashy gray, but the golden yellow of their flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in lines as the rock cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till finally it died away altogether where the sea winds swept round the jutting cliffs and cut short the vegetation as though with an ever-working aerial shears. The whole hillside, with its body of brown and flashes of yellow, was like a colossal yellow-hammer.

The little harbor opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westward in a serpentine course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence it flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old cut out its way amongst the hills. This stream was deep at first, with here and there, where it widened, patches of broken rock exposed at low water, full of holes where crabs and lobsters were to be found at the ebb of the tide. From among the rocks rose sturdy posts, used for warping in the little coasting-vessels which frequented the port. Higher up, the stream still flowed deeply, for the tide ran far inland, but always calmly, for all the force of the wildest storm was broken below.

Some quarter-mile inland the stream was deep at high water, but at low tide there were at each side patches of the same broken rock as lower down, through the chinks of which the sweet water of the natural stream trickled and murmured after the tide had ebbed away. Here, too, rose mooring-posts for the fishermen's boats. At either side of the river was a row of cottages down almost on the level of high tide. They were pretty cottages, strongly and snugly built, with trim narrow gardens in front, full of old-fashioned plants, flowering currants, colored primroses, wallflowers, and stonecrops. Over the fronts of many of them climbed clematis and wisteria. The window-sides and door-posts of all were as white as snow, and the little pathway to each was paved with light-colored stones. At some of the doors were tiny porches, whilst at others were rustic seats cut from tree trunks or from old barrels; in nearly every case the window-ledges were filled with boxes or pots of flowers or foliage plants.

Two men lived in cottages exactly opposite each other across the stream. Two men, both young, both good-looking, both prosperous, and who had been companions and rivals from their boyhood. Abel Behenna was dark with the gipsy darkness which the Phenician mining wanderers left in their track; Eric Sanson—which the local antiquarian said was a corruption of Sagamanson—was fair, with the ruddy hue which marked the path of the wild Norseman. These two seemed to have singled out each other from the very beginning to work and strive together, to fight for each other and to stand back to back in all endeavors. They had now put the coping-stone on their Temple of Unity by falling in love with the same girl.






"Go up the hillside for a while; I want to talk to these two. They're both red-hot for ye, and now's the time to get things fixed!"


"I tell ye, girl, that my mind is made up! Both these men want ye, and only one can have ye, but before ye choose it'll be so arranged that ye'll have all that both have got! Don't argy, child! Go up the hillside, and when ye come back I'll have it fixed—I see a way quite easy!"




Their bashful silence gave consent to the barefaced proposition. She went on:

"Neither of ye has much!"

Again they tacitly acquiesced in the soft impeachment.




She eyed the men keenly, with her cunning eyes half shut, as she spoke; then, satisfied from her scrutiny that the idea was accepted, she went on quickly, as if to prevent argument:


Abel broke the silence:

"It don't seem the square thing to toss for the girl. She wouldn't like it herself, and it doesn't seem respectful-like to her——"


"Are ye afraid of the hazard?"

"Not me!" said Abel, boldly.




Mrs. Trefusis' little canning eyes twinkled. She heard Sarah's step in the yard, and said:




She took her hat and went out of the house up the winding path to the steep rock crowned with a high flagstaff, where once the wreckers' fire-basket used to burn. This was the rock which formed the northern jaw of the little harbor. There was only room on the path for two abreast, and it marked the state of things pretty well when, by a sort of implied arrangement, Sarah went first, and the two men followed, walking abreast and keeping step. By this time, each man's heart was boiling with jealousy. When they came to the top of the rock, Sarah stood against the flagstaff, and the two young men stood opposite her. She had chosen her position with knowledge and intention, for there was no room for any one to stand beside her. They were all silent for a while; then Sarah began to laugh and said:

"I promised the both of you to give you an answer today. I've been thinking and thinking and thinking, till I began to get angry with you both for plaguing me so; and even now I don't seem any nearer than ever I was to making up my mind."

Eric said suddenly: "Let us toss for it, lass!"

Sarah showed no indignation whatever at the proposition; her mother's eternal suggestion had schooled her to the acceptance of something of the kind, and her weak nature made it easy to her to grasp at any way out of the difficulty. She stood with downcast eyes, idly picking at the sleeve of her dress, seeming to have tacitly acquiesced in the proposal. Both men instinctively realizing this pulled each a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air, and dropped his other hand over the palm on which it lay. For a few seconds they remained thus, all silent; then Abel, who was the more thoughtful of the men, spoke:

"Sarah! is this good?"

As he spoke he removed the upper hand from the coin and placed the latter back in his pocket Sarah was nettled.




"It was my mother. She keeps telling me."



Hereupon Sarah turned upon him in sudden fury, and cried:

"Hold your tongue! What is it to you, at any rate?" and she resumed her crying.

Eric was so flabbergasted that he had not a word to say, but stood looking foolish, with his mouth open and his hands held out with the coin still between them. All were silent till Sarah, taking her hands from her face, laughed hysterically and said:



"Yes," said Eric.

"I'll marry him on my next birthday," said Sarah. Having said it, the intolerably mercenary spirit of her action seemed to strike her, and impulsively she turned away with a bright blush. Fire seemed to sparkle in the eyes of both the men.









"You have a year. Make the most of it! And be sure you're in time to claim your wife! Be back to have your bans up in time to be married on the 11th of April. If you're not, I tell you I shall have my bans up, and you may get back too late."



"The game won't change!" said Abel shortly. "Sarah, you'll be true to me? You won't marry till I return?"

"For a year!" added Eric, quickly; "that's the bargain."


"I mustn't be too hard or get angry tonight. Come, Eric! we played and fought together. I won fairly. I played fairly all the game of our wooing. You know that as well as I do; and now when I am going away, I shall look to my old and true comrade to help me when I am gone."






Early on the next morning Abel heard a noise at his door, and on going out saw Eric walking rapidly away; a small canvas bag full of gold and silver lay on the threshold; on a small slip of paper pinned to it was written:

Take the money and go. I stay. God for you! The Devil for me! Remember the 11th of April. - Eric Sanson.



More than six months had since then elapsed, but no other letter had come, and Eric's hopes, which had been dashed down by the letter from Pahang, began to rise again. He perpetually assailed Sarah with an "if!" If Abel did not return, would she then marry him? If the 11th of April went by without Abel being in the port, would she give him over? If Abel had taken his fortune, and married another girl on the head of it, would she marry him, Eric, as soon as the truth were known? And so on in an endless variety of possibilities.

The power of the strong will and the determined purpose over the woman's weaker nature became in time manifest. Sarah began to lose her faith in Abel and to regard Eric as a possible husband; and a possible husband is in a woman's eye different from all other men. A new affection for him began to arise in her breast, and the daily familiarities of permitted courtship furthered the growing affection. Sarah began to regard Abel as rather a rock in the road of her life, and had it not been for her mother's constantly reminding her of the good fortune already laid by in the Bristol bank she would have tried to shut her eyes altogether to the fact of Abel's existence.

The 11th of April was Saturday, so that in order to have the marriage on that day it would be necessary that the bans should be called on Sunday, the 22nd of March. From the beginning of that month Eric kept perpetually on the subject of Abel's absence, and his outspoken opinion that the latter was either dead or married began to become a reality to the woman's mind. As the first half of the month wore on, Eric became more jubilant, and after church on the 15th he took Sarah for a walk to the Flagstaff Rock.

There he asserted himself strongly:

"I told Abel, and you too, that if he was not here to put up his bans in time for the eleventh, I would put up mine for the twelfth. Now the time has come when I mean to do it. He hasn't kept his word——"

Here Sarah struck in out of her weakness and indecision: "He hasn't broken it yet!"

Eric ground his teeth with anger. "If you mean to stick up for him," he said, as he smote his hands savagely on the flagstaff, which sent forth a shivering murmur, "well and good. I'll keep my part of the bargain. On Sunday I shall give notice of the bans, and you can deny them in the church if you will. If Abel is in Pencastle on the eleventh, he can have them canceled, and his own put up; but till then, I take my course, and wo to any one who stands in my way!"

With that he flung himself down the rocky pathway, and Sarah could not but admire his Viking strength and spirit, as crossing the hill, he strode away along the cliffs toward Bude.

During the week no news was heard of Abel, and on Saturday Eric gave notice of the bans of marriage between himself and Sarah Trefusis. The clergyman would have remonstrated with him, for although nothing formal had been told to the neighbors, it had been understood since Abel's departure that on his return he was to marry Sarah; hut Eric would not discuss the question.


The parson said no more, and on the next day he read out the bans for the first time amidst an audible buzz from the congregation. Sarah was present, contrary to custom, and though she blushed furiously enjoyed her triumph over the other girls whose bans had not yet come.


The bans were read a second time on the 29th, and Eric's hope grew more and more fixed, though there were to him moments of acute despair when he realized that the cup of happiness might be dashed from his lips at any moment, right up to the last. At such times he was full of passion—desperate and remorseless—and he ground his teeth and clenched his hands in a wild way as though some taint of the Berserker fury of his ancestors still lingered in his blood. On the Thursday of that week he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a flood of sunshine, putting finishing touches to her white wedding gown. His own heart was full of gayety, and the sight of the woman who was so soon to be his own so occupied, filled him with a joy unspeakable, and he felt faint with a languorous ecstasy. Bending over he kissed Sarah on the mouth, and then whispered in her rosy ear:

"Your wedding dress, Sarah! And for me!"

As he drew back to admire her she looked up saucily, and said to him: "Perhaps not for you. There is more than a week yet for Abel!" and then cried out in dismay, for with a wild gesture and a fierce oath Eric dashed out of the house, banging the door behind him.

The incident disturbed Sarah more than she could have thought possible, for it awoke all her fears and doubts and indecision afresh. She cried a little, and put by her dress, and to soothe herself went out to sit for a while on the summit of the Flagstaff Rock. When she arrived she found there a little group anxiously discussing the weather. The sea was calm and the sun bright, but across the sea were strange lines of darkness and light, and close in to shore the rocks were fringed with foam, which spread out in great white curves and circles as the currents drifted. The wind had backed, and came in sharp, cold puffs. The blow-hole, which ran under the Flagstaff Rock, from the rocky bay without to the Harbor within, was booming at intervals, and the sea-gulls were screaming ceaselessly as they wheeled about the entrance of the port.

"It looks bad," she heard an old fisherman say to the coast guard. "I seen it just like this once before, when the East Indiaman Coromandel went to pieces in Dizzard Bay!"


THE old fisherman's weather prophecy was justified. That night at dusk a wild storm came on. The sea rose and lashed the western coasts of Skye to Scilly and left a tale of disaster everywhere. The sailors and fishermen of Pencastle all turned out on the rocks and cliffs and watched eagerly. Presently, by a flash of lightning, a ketch was seen drifting under only a jib about half a mile outside the port. All eyes and all glasses were concentrated on her, waiting for the next flash, and when it came a chorus went up that it was the Lovely Alice, trading between Bristol and Penzance, and touching at all the little ports between. "God help them!" said the harbormaster, "for nothing in this world can save them when they are between Bude and Tintagel and the wind on shore."





"Not a bit," came the reply. "You remember how Abel Behenna saved me there on a night like this when my boat went on the Gull Rock. He dragged me up from the deep water in the seal cave, and now some one may drift in there again as I did," and he was gone into the darkness.




Eric Sanson and Abel Behenna were face to face, and none knew of the meeting save themselves—and God.


Before he could recover himself, Abel, encumbered with the rope that should have aided him, was plunged with a despairing cry back into the darkness of the devouring sea.


"We feared you were lost when we heard a cry. How white you are! Where is your rope? Was there any one drifted in?"

"No one," he shouted in answer, for he felt that he could never explain that he had let his old comrade slip back into the sea, and at the very place and under the very circumstances in which that comrade had saved his own life. He hoped by one bold lie to set the matter at rest for ever. There was no one to bear witness—and if he should have to carry that still white face in his eyes and that despairing cry in his ears for evermore, at least none should know of it. "No one," he cried, more loudly still. "I slipped on the rock, and the rope fell into the sea." So saying he left them, and, rushing down the steep path, gained his own cottage and locked himself within.

The remainder of that night he passed lying on his bed—dressed and motionless—staring upward, and seeming to see through the darkness a pale face gleaming wet in the lightning, with its glad recognition turning to ghastly despair, and to hear a cry which never ceased to echo in his soul.

In the morning the storm was over and all was smiling again, except that the sea was still boisterous with its unspent fury. Great pieces of wreck drifted into the port, and the sea around the island rock was strewn with others. Two bodies also drifted into the harbor—one the master of the wrecked ketch, the other a strange seaman whom no one knew.



Sarah was glad to have the reconciliation so easy; but, woman-like, when she saw the storm was over and her own fears groundless, she at once repeated the cause of offense.


She saw Eric no more till Sunday afternoon, after the bans had been called the third time, when he came up to her before all the people with an air of proprietorship which half pleased and half annoyed her.



The week passed uneventfully; however, as Saturday drew nigh, Sarah had occasional moments of anxiety, and Eric went about at night-time like a man possessed. He restrained himself when others were by, but now and again he went down amongst the rocks and caves and shouted aloud. This seemed to relieve him somewhat, and he was better able to restrain himself for some time after. All Saturday he stayed in his own house and never left it. As he was to be married on the morrow, the neighbors thought it was shyness on his part, and did not trouble or notice him. Only once was he disturbed, and that was when the chief boatman came to him and sat down, and after a pause said:




The afternoon of that day, when the children had left school, they strayed as usual on half -holidays along the quay and the paths by the cliffs. Presently some of them came running in a state of great excitement to the harbor, where a few men were unloading a coal ketch, and a great many were superintending the operation. One of the children called out:

"There is a porpoise in the harbor mouth! We saw it come through the blow-hole! It had a long tail, and was deep under the water!"


The other children bore various testimony, but on two points they were unanimous—it, whatever it was, had come through the blow-hole deep under the water, and had a long, thin tail—a tail so long that they could not see the end of it.

There was much unmerciful chaffing of the children by the men on this point, but as it was evident that they had seen something, quite a number of persons, young and old, male and female, went along the high paths on either side of the harbor-mouth to catch a glimpse of this new addition to the fauna of the sea, a long-tailed porpoise or seal. The tide was now coming in. There was a slight breeze, and the surface of the water was rippled so that it was only at moments that any one could see clearly into the deep water. After a spell of watching, a woman called out that she saw something moving up the channel, just below where she was standing. There was a stampede to the spot, but by the time the crowd had gathered, the breeze had freshened, and it was impossible to see with any distinctness below the surface of the water. On being questioned, the woman described what she had seen, but in such an incoherent way that the whole thing was put down as an effect of imagination; had it not been for the children's report she would not have been credited at all. Her semi-hysterical statement that what she saw was "like a pig with the entrails out" was only thought anything of by an old coast guard, who shook his head but did not make any remark. For the remainder of the daylight this man was seen always on the bank, looking into the water, but always with disappointment manifest on his face.


"This is my wedding day! Abel can not claim her now—living or dead!—living or dead! Living or dead!"


The way from the church led down to the back of Eric's cottage, a narrow passage being between it and that of his next neighbor. When the bridal couple had passed through this, the remainder of the congregation, who had followed them at a little distance, were startled by a long, shrill scream from the bride. They rushed through the passage and found her on the bank with wild eyes, pointing to the river bed opposite Eric Sanson's door.

The falling tide had deposited there the body of Abel Behenna stark upon the broken rocks. The rope trailing from its waist had been twisted by the current round the mooring-post, and had held it back whilst the tide had ebbed away from it. The right elbow had fallen in a chink in the rock, leaving the hand outstretched toward Sarah, with the open palm upward as though it were extended to receive hers, the pale, drooping fingers open to the clasp.


"Devil's help! Devil's faith! Devil's price!"

Written by Bram Stoker

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