“Jesse!” exclaimed Logan. “What’s all the hurry?”
“There’s been an accident,” she replied between gasps. “Some children were a playin’ in one o’ them sea caves on the Head. I don’t know what the parents was thinkin’ t’ let them oot on a day such as this. But one o’ them—young Harry Stewart—got himsel’ hurt an’ couldna climb oot. Alec happened t’ be at my place seein’ t’ one o’ my goats when the other young’un came fer help. Weel, he went doon t’ lend a hand. He was gone sae lang I went doon. An’ the cave they were in was all blocked up wi’ rocks!”
“How—” asked Allison anxiously, “what do you mean?”
“Looks like one o’ them tall pinnacles up above’t may hae been struck by that blast o’ lightnin’, an’ when it fell, it must hae dislodged the boulders that formed the walls o’ the cave. ’Tis all I can think o’. But Logan, man, they’re trapped inside. I’m goin’ t’ toon t’ get the others.”
“How can you be certain it was the right cave?” Allison’s voice was shaky. Many new emotions were assailing her all at once.
“The boy—oh, here he is noo—” A boy of about eleven came trotting out onto the road. He was smudged and wet and trembling with fear, exhaustion, and cold. Jesse put her thick arm around the child. “Tommy’s certain. An’ we’d hae seen them by noo. I’m sorry, Lady Allison. I canna believe otherwise.”
“You think they might be . . .” Allison managed to say in a weak whisper, then stopped, swaying unsteadily in the saddle.
Logan caught her and held her tightly with one arm. Then with his free hand he took charge of the reins.
“Could you hear them?” he asked.
“No,” Jesse answered, “but wi’ the wind an’ the noise o’ the sea, not t’ mention the solid rock blockin’ up the mouth o’ the cave, ’tis not surprisin’. There’s still reason t’ hope fer the best.”
“You look spent already, Jesse,” said the practical Logan. “You best take the boy back to your place and we’ll ride for help.”
“I’m going to my father,” said Allison firmly, and, springing back to life, she wrenched the reins from Logan and dug her heels into the bay.
“Lass, ye canna do that,” Jesse called. “Yer mother’ll hae worry enough!”
But it was too late. The riders were already well out of earshot, even if Allison had been listening. Jesse wasted no more time trying to yell after them. Perhaps the two young folks could do something while she went for help. In the meantime she hurried back down the hill to her house, deposited the boy, hastily saddled her own horse, and rode for town.
Allison’s bay found the going slow down the trail to the neck connecting the Head to the mainland. From there the animal had to thread her way cautiously up the muddy incline of Ramsey Head. In summer, the terrain on this, the leeward side of the promontory, was green with heather and bracken, dotted here and there with a handful of trees, bent and contorted by the constant sea winds. But at this time of year the foliage was brown and wet, beaten down by the steady barrage of rain. From the bleak face of nature, it would have been difficult to surmise that spring had already come to this region—come, and then seemingly given way again to winter without a hint of anything in between.
The horse was surefooted enough on this turf, but when they had climbed the path toward the seaward side, the hard and rocky surface, stripped of nearly all vegetation and slick with rain, became impossible to traverse. Several caves crowded this part of the promontory, some merely large crevices formed by the haphazard placement of boulders and cliffs, others extending well into the depths of the Head, bored through the rock over thousands of years by the constant contact with the sea. The floors of most were under water either part or all of the time, but there were a few high enough to remain snug and dry even at high tide. Those most challenging to Strathy’s children were the ones accessible during low tide, but whose floors sunk below the ocean’s surface as the tide came in.
“We’ll have to leave the horse here,” she called back to Logan over her shoulder. Though he was only inches from her, the wind velocity forced her to yell in order to be heard.
They dismounted and made their way along a narrow footpath skirting the circumference of the bluff some fifty feet above the water’s edge. In a few minutes they rounded a curve, reaching the outermost point of the promontory, and were suddenly met with the full force of the wind and the open expanse of the sea. The gray waters frothed white around the edges like the mouth of a mad dog. The rain-filled blasts lashed at Allison’s face, whipping her hair into a tangled mass about her head.
“There it is!” shouted Allison, pointing to a spot some distance down the path below a steep grade. They could make out the scattered rubble on the ledge, broken shards from the larger rocks that had been dislodged. A spike of stone, larger than a tree, lay against the wall of the mountain as if some giant had leaned his walking stick against a garden wall. On closer inspection, Allison saw that the cave was indeed one of the rock crevices. When the spike had fallen, its movement had displaced the boulders forming the walls of the cave, as Jesse had described.
Before they reached their destination, they had to traverse a steep descent which dropped about ten feet, where the trail had once been. Allison scrambled down with little difficulty, too intent on her father’s peril to pay the least attention to her own. But Logan, afraid for her safety, was paying closer attention to the dropoff to the sea fifty feet below, just beyond the ledge. Into his imagination came a vision of the legendary murderer flying off a spot just like this to his death on the sharp rocks below. Even as he shook his head to rid his mind of the ominous picture, his foot slipped, and he had to struggle and claw at the precarious surface to keep himself from falling. He let out an involuntary cry which, muffled by the gale, went unheard by Allison several feet ahead. With trembling knees he followed slowly, none too confident they could accomplish anything even if they could reach the cave alive, resisting the great urge to turn around and run.
Slipping and sliding, and walking where possible, they made their way farther, till at last they neared the place where the cave-in had occurred. Still racing ahead, Allison began to yell for her father. But the wind carried her voice off as a vanishing puff of smoke.
She came to the heap of rock and immediately began to tear at the jagged slab of stone with her bare hands. Seeing her pathetic gesture, Logan set his hands also to the task, but nothing budged, save a few inconsequential stones. Her bravado tempered somewhat, she looked helplessly at Logan. She didn’t have to speak for him to know what she was thinking. Even if the whole town turned out, they’d have difficulty moving these stones. And what good would the entire town do anyway? Only a handful of people could move about safely on the ledge that faced the cave.
In an agony of despair Allison stood back and began pacing around the area. Where was everyone? Why was it taking them so long to get here? All at once her eyes filled with tears.
“Daddy . . .” she murmured.
It had been so long since she thought about him as she once had when a child, how much he meant to her, how she needed him. She had been so cold to him in recent times, so independent, so unfeeling. What would happen now if she never had the chance to make it up to him?
“Oh, please . . . please,” she whispered, hardly realizing her distraught mind was forming a prayer for the first time in years, “please don’t let anything happen to him.”
Logan went to her side.
“You have to believe he’s safe,” he said gently. “We’ll get him out.”
“Oh, Logan,” she wailed, “I’m so afraid I won’t ever get a chance to tell him—”
She could not go on. A sob choked out her words. She turned away, embarrassed at the show of emotion.
Logan laid a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but said nothing.
“I’ve never been much of a daughter to him,” she blurted out, crying now. “I don’t think I’ve ever told him how proud I am to have him for my father.”
“Oh, how could he know?” she wailed despondently. “I’ve let him think I’m ashamed of him because of his common birth. I’ve just been all mixed up, Logan,” she confessed. “Why, he’s better than a hundred highbred men together. It’s just that—” she sniffed and brushed a sleeve across her nose, all pretense at playing the sophisticated role now gone. “Oh, I was so blind . . . I’ve been so confused. Why did I treat him like that?”
“Don’t think of it now,” said Logan lamely. He did not know any words of real comfort to give, so he settled for hollow phrases he had heard others give. Yet even as he spoke, he knew his words were empty, and wished he could offer more to soothe her aching heart. “It won’t be long until he’ll be right here next to you, and then you can make everything right.”
“Oh, Logan,” she cried, “if only I could do something now!” She turned her face back toward the rock wall and shouted with all her might, “Daddy, can you hear me!”