Alec lay sprawled on the bare rock in pitch darkness. A trickle of blood ran out of a deep gash on his head.
At last he tried to move, slowly and painfully. His head may have been the most seriously injured, but his shoulder and foot had also been grazed by the falling rock. Feeling a sharp throb in his head, he brought his hand to the wound and felt the sticky moistness of blood. He could see nothing around him and might reasonably have feared blindness until his eyes adjusted and he began to distinguish dim shadows.
“Harry!” he called, thinking of the boy the moment his head began to clear.
“I’m here, Mr. MacNeil.”
“Are ye safe, boy?”
“Aye, sir. ’Tis jist my leg hurts sorely.”
“Stay where ye are, Harry, an’ I’ll get t’ ye.”
Alec rolled over and attempted to pull himself up. He barely reached his knees when everything solid seemed to melt from under him and he crumbled back to the ground. “’Tis goin’ t’ take me a minute or twa, lad. Can ye wait?”
“Aye, sir,” said the boy, but his voice trembled with each word. “Mr. MacNeil, do ye think we’re stuck in here fore’er?”
“Not a bit o’ it, lad,” Alec replied as buoyantly as he could make his voice sound. “We’ll be oot o’ here afore supper. Jesse will get help an’ they’ll clear away the rock before we know it.” He paused, then added, trying to conceal his concern, especially with the rising tide in the back of his mind, “Hoo lang hae I been lyin’ here, lad?”
“A powerful lang time, sir. I thought ye was—” Harry’s voice broke, and the remainder of his thought hardly needed to be spoken. Then he added in a tearful rush, “Oh, I’m glad I’m na here alane!”
“Noo, lad,” said Alec, “ye wouldna hae been alane whate’er had happened. Our Lord’s here wi’ ye—wi’ us both, lad. He’ll ne’er leave us alane—ye ken that, dinna ye, lad?”
“Aye, sir, but I’m guessin’ I forgot for a bit.”
Alec’s smile was unseen in the darkness, but it could be heard in his gentle words. “I’m thinkin’ the Lord understan’s that. But let’s remember t’ remin’ one another o’ it.”
“Aye, sir,” said Harry.
“I’m comin’ t’ ye noo,” said Alec, praying silently for strength.
He crawled along the floor of the cave for a foot or two until he came to an upright wall. He could not tell if it was the wall of the cave or merely a section of the rubble that had shut them in. At least it was solid enough to hold his weight. Groping at one protruding rock after another, he pulled himself to a standing position. Everything spun before him, and he felt fresh blood flow into his eyes, obscuring what little vision he had. He wiped a hand across his eyes, then steadied himself for a moment before beginning to inch his way along the wall toward the boy’s voice. His foot throbbed, seemingly in rhythm with the ache in his head. He must have twisted it during the fall.
It took him five long, torturous minutes to reach Harry. When he finally did so, he nearly collapsed on the ground beside him. He rested a moment, then tried to examine the boy’s leg.
It was a definite break, but there was little he could do. It was a wonder the poor boy had not yet fainted from shock. His medical instinct forced him to make some attempt to help, no matter how feeble it turned out to be. But he had not even come across a piece of driftwood he could use as a splint. He lurched to his feet, and, after instructing Harry to keep perfectly still, began groping about the cave. Vagrants and wanderers often camped out around here. Perhaps some sticks from an old campfire might be lying around.
After some searching, his hands lit upon several pieces of charred wood. They were irregular, and it took some skill to suit them to his purpose. But with the aid of his shirt, torn into strips, he made them work. He had made better splints for injured kittens, but at least the boy’s every movement would not incapacitate him.
When he had done all he could do medically, he turned his attention to their plight. After loosening a few of the smaller stones and forcing his shoulder several times against the large ones, he realized there was no way a single man, especially an injured one, was going to be able to begin to budge the debris. Not a man given to fits of hopelessness, he limped back and forth across their narrow prison for several minutes, thinking and praying, wishing there were something he could do. Strong as his faith was, it was agony to Alec MacNeil simply to sit and wait for the hand of the Lord to act, without being able to participate in the process himself.
At length, so that his agitation would not further upset the boy, he sat down once more next to Harry, reaching his arm around him to give the child both warmth and comfort. There was nothing else to do but to wait and pray, and give what strength he could to the frightened child.
When he started awake after some time, he wasn’t certain if the sounds he heard were from his dreams or from somewhere beyond the blackness. He cocked his head and listened intently.
There it was again! A high-pitched sound, almost like the wail of the wind, yet there was a desperate human quality about it. He jumped up, forgetting his injured foot, and nearly fell again to the ground. Supporting himself as best he could, he hobbled as quickly as his head and foot would allow to the mouth of the cave.
The sound came again, more distinct now, yet seemingly still as part of his dream. Yet he was almost certain he could make out the single unlikely word:
Daddy!
He shouted out a reply, and Harry’s small voice joined his own. “We’re here! We’re all right!”
———
The sound of her father’s voice filled Allison with an unabashed and childlike joy such as she had not recently allowed herself to feel.
“He’s safe!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around Logan and squeezing him as if he had been the object of her anxieties. The tears were flowing freely now, but she seemed unconcerned and did not try to hide them. She stood back, looked into his eyes, laughed with relief, then embraced him again.
All at once a loud clamor reached them from above the wail of the wind. It was the approach of the rescue party. Logan and Allison fell apart awkwardly, trying quickly to regain their composure. But Allison hardly cared what the others might think. In a single bound, she had, for the moment at least, moved beyond that. Her embarrassed reaction was merely a response of habit, and now as the men came, she ran toward them with an uncharacteristic exuberance. For the first time in her life she realized how glad she was to see men of this sort, men like her father, men of brawn, men of loyalty to their kind, the kind of men her arrogant eyes had always been blind to. Suddenly, the inner door of her spirit was flung open to the truth that her parents and great-grandparents had always stressed, that the simple and common people of the valley of Strathy embodied the true and lasting Stonewycke heritage. How glad she was that these men came to rescue her father, not the smooth-of-speech, silky-of-dress, dainty-of-hand Charles Fairgates she had known.
Seven men appeared around the bend in the path, each a shining specimen of Port Strathy’s manhood. Burly and muscular, they represented the fishing and farming communities. They carried rope, picks, crowbars, long lengths of metal pipes, and anything else they thought might aid in the excavation.
“Oh, thank you! thank you!” cried Allison. “Do hurry. They’re all right . . . I heard them!”
Dislodging the great stone spar that had caused the mishap in the first place proved rather a simple matter when eight strong backs, including Logan’s, were thrust against it. With a booming crash which rose even above the din of wind and waves, the spar tumbled to the sea.
But the boulders blocking the entrance were another matter. Six of the men climbed to a point above the cave, and, using pipes and crowbars as levers, attempted to separate the largest of the rocks. They inched it slowly apart, but before an opening even six inches had been made, the strength of the laborers gave out and the rocks snapped back together.
“We’ll ne’er be able t’ keep the rocks open lang enough fer them t’ crawl through!” yelled Jimmy MacMillan from his perch overhead.
Logan, waiting below, shook his head in despair. The thing looked so hopeless! Glancing around, his eyes focused on a foot-long length of pipe lying on the ground where one of the men had abandoned it. He ran to it, caught it up, and hurried back to the site.
“I have an idea,” he shouted. “Spread the rocks apart again. I’ll try to wedge this pipe between them!”
Again the men set their shoulders to the bars, this time with yet greater determination, and again the rocks were pried apart—five, six, seven inches. Logan could hear Alec and Harry shouting encouragement from deep within the cavity. He scrambled toward the small opening, placing himself in the middle of the temporary breach they had made, and gripped the pipe firmly in his fingers, waiting for the exact moment when the pipe could be wedged in perpendicularly so that it would hold the rocks apart. No one needed to tell him that if the men above lost their traction, or if the pipe proved inadequate, his arm, and perhaps half his body, would be crushed in an instant.
. . . Nine inches . . . eleven . . .
Logan set the pipe into place. It was still a little crooked.
“Another inch or two!” he shouted, hiding his fear.
Carefully the men continued to increase the pressure. At last the opening was wide enough and Logan jammed the pipe securely in place.
“Back off slightly!” called Logan. He removed himself from the hole as the men eased the tension on their bars, everyone holding his breath during the tense moments, waiting to see if the bar would hold. At that moment Logan found himself worried more about saving himself than about saving Alec and the boy.
“It’s holding!” cried Jimmy.
Alec needed to hear no more. Now it was his turn to spring into action.
“Help me wi’ the boy!” he called out.
Still closest to the opening, Logan peered into the blackness below. Gently, but with great haste, Alec lifted Harry into the breach where Logan took his outstretched arms and pulled him up to safety.
“A rope!” called Logan out behind him, and in moments felt Alec tugging on the bottom of the line he had fed through. Several men joined him, holding the upper end of the line secure, while Alec pulled his bulky frame, not without some difficulty, through the narrow opening. Within three minutes more, he was standing safely on the ledge with the others. A great cheer went up. Alec greeted them with a smile and a wave of the hand, then turned back, picked up a length of wood, and with a great blow knocked the pipe loose. The rocks crashed firmly and permanently together.
“We canna be havin’ anyone else gettin’ trapped in there!” he said.
He turned back to face the small and happy crowd, but then swayed unsteadily. Abandoning the reluctance that had come upon her at the sight of him, Allison ran forward and threw her arms around him. “Daddy,” she said, “you’re hurt!”
“Allison, lass,” Alec answered stroking his daughter’s hair. “I thought I was jist dreamin’ when I heard yer voice.”
“No, Daddy. I was here, and I’m so happy you’re safe. Here, let me help you.”
Logan stepped forward to lend some support to the brawny veterinarian, but he almost wished he had remained in the background when Alec turned his attention toward him.
“Thank ye, Logan, fer what ye did there. It took a good bit o’ courage, an’ jist may ha’ saved my life!”
The temporary glow and sense of satisfaction with having done a brave deed suddenly vanished. The words a good bit o’ courage resounded in his brain like a painful gong intended to humiliate him before the whole world. He had almost forgotten who he really was, and why he had come. So caught up in his happy ride with Allison and the struggle to free Alec and young Harry, he had temporarily blanked his true self out of his mind. But now, reminded so graphically of his deception by Alec’s thanks, he felt like throwing his hands over his ears. Those were the last words he wanted to hear, for he knew he deserved none of them.
“There were others who did as much,” he answered.
“Aye, an’ I’ll be thankin’ them, too. But ye’re a stranger an’ so it means even more comin’ from yersel’, riskin’ yer life fer a man ye hardly know. I’ll na be forgettin’.”
The clamorous approach of the men who had been scrambling down from their perch on the rocks above relieved Logan of the necessity to make any further response.
But his conscience was not relieved of the fact that Alec’s praise was both unmerited and unfounded. He was a liar and a con man, and, if his plan to make off with the family’s lost treasure succeeded, he would also be a thief. He deserved no praise.
He was far from brave. And he knew it. Because he lacked the most fundamental courage of all—the courage simply to tell the truth.