THE ATLANTIC CABLE. BY ISIDORE G. ASCHER. O MIGHTY leagues of dreary, pathless main! To knit with ours Columbia's throbbing heart. And dreadful, pitiless waves no longer dread, When mind from either shore can flash its gleams, And wake response through ocean's silent bed. No dark mischance, nor cumbrous toil to make, The croaking heart and craven soul despair, Could baffle sturdy natures to forsake Their conquering task, or their vast plans impair. But hoards its favours for the battling strife, Of firm success, that dazzles craven eyes. O heritage of man, eternal thought! Whose fruits can lessen toil and lighten care, Sweeter than perfume borne on summer's wings; That kindred nations are no longer twain; A test of brotherhood, dear friendship's plight, When blood-stained War shall vanish from the earth, With loving speech, that Britain signals forth, 66 IDALIA. BY THE AUTHOR OF GRANVILLE DE VIGNE," ‚" "STRATHMORE,"* &c. BOOK THE FIFTH. RIEN QUE TOI. CHAPTER XI. 66 THE SERPENT'S VOICE LESS SUBTLE THAN HER KISS." THE fishing hamlet lay under the shadow of a great sea-worn, redbrown, sullen cliff, that had the mists of the dawn still on its rugged forehead, and the foam of the uprising tide now angrily splashing its feet; a mighty fortress of rock, that would break from its gloom to a wonderful beauty when the sun should come round to the west, and the glory spread over the waters. There were but four or five cabins, dropped in amongst the loose piles of stone and the pale plumes of the sand grasses; huts low nestled, and hidden like the nests on northern beaches of the sea-hovering tern. And these, few as they were, were deserted the men had been out two days and two nights with their boats and their nets-out far beyond where craggy Ischia lay, and their womankind were alone left, with children like Murillo's beggars, wild haired and ruddy cheeked, and with naked limbs of a marvellous mould and grace, who lived all day long waist-deep in water, and slept all night long on a wet soil, and not seldom crushed the seaweed between their bright hard teeth in the sheer longing of famine, and yet who, with all that, might have thanked God, had they known it, that they were born by the water's width and to the water's liberty, instead of in the stifling agony of cities, where human lives breathe their first and their last, never having known what one breath of ocean wind blows like, or what the limitless delight of an horizon line can mean. The women were fine animals-and nothing more. Those who were young were splendidly coloured and built; those who were past youth were sear, and yellow, and scaly as the fish they smoked and hung to the beams of their huts for the winter's fare. They said little, comprehended less. The shine of silver made their eyes glisten, but they could give nothing in return for it. Of the boats, there was not one left; not the craziest craft that ever was hauled high upon a beach to be broken up into firewood; nor of the boys did one remain of years enough to handle a rope or hold a tiller. Here, on this barren shore, there was no help; the great freedom of the sea stretched there as though in so much mockery; it would yield nothing— save a grave. He stood on the narrow strip of yellow sand, with the ripple of the high tide rolling upward and over his feet, and looked over the sweet, fresh, tumultuous vastness of the waters as men, when camels and mules, and even the hardy sons of the soil, have perished one by one in their rear, look over the stretch of the desert where no aid is to be called, no *All rights reserved. change can come, except the aid and the change of the death that shall leave their flesh to the vulture, their bones to the bleach of the noon. All he had done had been in vain. Reaching the sea, they were as far from liberty as when the monastery's doors had closed them in; unless some vessel could be chartered to bear westward before the day should be at its meridian, they must turn back, and share the wolf's lair, the hare's terror, the stag's life of torture, when on every breeze may come the note of chase, when every curling moss and broken leaf may bear a mark to bring the hunters down. An intense agony came on him as his eyes looked blindly out at the grey waste, with the sun's first rays reflected in a broad crimson trail across its gloom. The desire of his heart was come to him, and with it had come also to him an exceeding bitterness passing any that his life had known. That which he had coveted with so passionate a longing was granted him, and it brought with it a terrible penalty. The weight of a sickly dread, never before then known to the fearlessness of his nature, oppressed him; a dread that had its root less in her physical danger than in the darkness that shrouded all knowledge of her real fate, all knowledge of her past and of her future. And even for her mere bodily peril, her peril from the chains and the cells of the government, he could do nothing; he could defend her to his last breath with such strength as one man could bring against thousands —that was all. There was not a sail in sight, as far as his eyes could reach over the water line; it might be two or three nights more yet, as the women told him, before the fishing-boats would come in; to leave her for the length of time needful to traverse the coast in search of some other sea-side hamlet was impossible; he saw no course but to retrace his steps to her, and leave the choice of their retreat with her. These people were miserably poor, and would do what was asked of them for the sake of the glitter of gold; they were bold, too, and willing to offer such shelter as their miserable cabins could; at the worst, it was possible that they might rest undiscovered under the refuge of these lonely rocks until such time as the fishing fleet, returning, should give them means to sail westward, or send a vessel with orders to the yacht. He stood there some moments, looking seaward from the beach, his head sunk, his thoughts very weary; he was condemned to the torture of inaction, the deadliest trial that can be fastened on high courage and on eager energies; he turned swiftly as he heard steps lightly passing along the pile of rough loose stones that made a sort of stairway from the high ground, down between two steep and leaning sides of rock; he looked up in anxious hope of welcoming some boatman who could help him to a vessel; as he did so, the morning sun, shining from the east, that faced him as he turned, fell full upon his head and throat, and on his tall athletic limbs, loosely clad in the linen folds of the fishingdress. Standing thus, catching the brightest glisten of the morning beams, the barcarolo dress served little to disguise him, and through the mist-wreaths that still hovered round all the upper border of the shore, his eyes, ere escape or avoidance was possible, met those of the man above upon the broken tiers of cliff. They were the keen blue serene eyes of Victor Vane. For a moment they looked in silence at each other, met thus, face to face, in the coolness of the young day, in the solitude of the unfrequented shore. On the one side amazement was sincere; on the other, it was to perfection counterfeited. Then, with an easy supple grace, the man, in whom Erceldoune's instinct felt a foe, swung himself downward from ledge to ledge, and dropped upon the sands beside him, with the common courtesies of a carelessly astonished and complimentary greeting. "I came to bathe; I am staying for a villeggiatura not far from this," he said, as his words of welcome closed. "It is a wild shore here, and unutterably lonely. You are yachting, I suppose ?" "No." Erceldoune thought nothing of what was asked him, of what he answered; he thought of her alone. This man was her friend, her guest, her associate; could he be trusted with her secret ? Could he be trusted to assist her flight? And, if not trusted with it, could he be held back from the knowledge of it? "Not yachting ?" pursued Vane, carelessly still. "I thought that fisher-costume was surely a sailor's dress. May I ask what brings you, then, to this world-forgotten nook ?" "I came to get a boat, and a boat's crew if I could." "Ah! you have lost your way? There is a dangerous landslip hard by Erceldoune crushed his heel down into the wet loose sand; a gesture that was not lost on his companion. "I know the coast well. I merely need a boat-of what kind matters little. Can you help me?" "I grieve to say no. My friends' residence is some way from here; and, besides, they have not even a pleasure skiff; they care nothing for the water. But you would not put out to the open sea in a mere boat ?" 'Why so?" Why! Because I fancy no man would who was not weary of his life, or "I am not weary of mine." —or one whose "Pardon me, I was going to end my sentence with-o life was menaced on the land." He spoke the last words gravely, gently, meaningly, with an emphasis that left no doubt of their personal application. Erceldoune's forehead flushed with a hot dark rush of blood; a tempestuous shadow came in his eyes; he turned abruptly. 66 Explain that phrase ?" "Nay; translate it yourself, if you will." "Not I. I am in no mood for enigmas, and have no time for them. You had your meaning; out with it!" He spoke between his clenched teeth; a fiery misery possessed him, and a great longing to wring the truth out of this man who crossquestioned him, if he wrung it by force with a hand on his throat, and a heel on his chest. Victor Vane looked him steadily in the eyes; a serious, compassionate, candid gaze that silently rebuked his passions and his instinct of antagonism. "I am sorry you trust me so little," he said, briefly. Ornamented protests would have forewarned and forearmed his listener, 81837 whom the simplicity and manliness of the reply put off his guard; they made the loyal, generous nature that they dealt with repent as of some craven sin of false suspicion; rebuke itself, as for some ignominy of cowardly injustice. Moreover, Erceldoune saw that he knew muchhow much it was best to learn at once, let the learning cost what it should. "He has eaten at her board; he has enrolled himself her friend; he cannot turn traitor to her; he cannot play false to a woman!" his thoughts ran swiftly, in the tumult of a thousand emotions. It seemed to him so vile a thing, that to suspect even his rival of it looked base to him. "Let us waste no words," he said, rapidly, while he stood facing the new-comer with the challenge of his gallant eyes testing the truth of those which met them. "Time is life to me, and more than life! You guess rightly so far. Answer me two things. What do you know?and why should you be trusted ?" "The latter question, I imagine, one gentleman should scarcely put to another!" "That may be. I am in no temper for these subtleties. I know nothing of you except through rumour. Such rumour would not incline me to place confidence in you. You used strange language; you seem aware of my present peril. Simply, say what it is you know." Victor Vane, with a dignity that had in it the compassionate forbearance of one who respects and pities another whose insolence he can afford to pass over and extenuate, seated himself on the lowest stair of rock, and answered, without hesitation, in a grave and regretful accent : "Sir, I forgive your innuendo on myself, since the extremity of your peril may serve to excuse it, and I believe that this peril has fallen on you through a rashly noble and generous action. We have met here singularly enough. I do not know-positively-anything of your actions or position; but I should be half a fool did I not divine much of both. Briefly, we are both acquainted with a fair revolutionist, who has been made a prisoner of the royal executive. I heard, late last night, that she had been rescued from her captivity-rescued by a man in a fisher dress, who displayed the most reckless chivalry in her defence, and even implicated himself so deeply as to use violence to Giulio Villaflor, whereby Monsignore lies now in danger at his Benedictine monastery. I heard this; such news soon spreads, specially to Court and Church; and I heard also that both soldiers and sbirri are on the track of the fugitives, who are known to have made their way seaward. Now can you wonder that it needs no great exercise of intelligence to recognise in you the barcarolo who despoiled Church and State of their captive, and to conclude that the vessel you stand in need of is to be employed in the service of Miladi Idalia, for whom, living or dead, both Church and State would give as weighty a reward as the full coffers of the one, and the lean treasures of the other could afford to yield? Scant penetration is requisite for such a discovery; every sailor on the coast will make it with me in a few hours' time. It is not a little thing to free a political prisoner, and to leave a mighty prelate half dead amongst his own monks." He spoke perfectly quietly, his eyes, with an unusual melancholy, |