Complete Works of Bram Stoker (20 page)

We shortly arrived at the south side of the western slope of the Hill, and, as Andy took care to inform me, at the end of the boreen leading to the two farms, and close to the head of the Snake’s Pass.

Accordingly, I let Sutherland start on his way to Murdock’s, while I myself strolled away to the left, where Andy had pointed out to me, rising over the slope of the intervening spur of the Hill, the top of one of the rocks which formed the Snake’s Pass. After a few minutes of climbing up a steep slope, and down a steeper one, I arrived at the place itself.

From the first moment that my eyes lit on it, it seemed to me to be a very remarkable spot, and quite worthy of being taken as the scene of strange stories, for it certainly had something “uncanny” about it.

I stood in a deep valley, or rather bowl, with behind me a remarkably steep slope of greensward, while on either hand the sides of the hollow rose steeply  —  that on the left, down which I had climbed, being by far the steeper and rockier of the two. In front was the Pass itself.

It was a gorge or cleft through a great wall of rock, which rose on the sea-side of the promontory formed by the Hill. This natural wall, except at the actual Pass itself, rose some fifty or sixty feet over the summit of the slope on either side of the little valley; but right and left of the Pass rose two great masses of rock, like the pillars of a giant gate-way. Between these lay the narrow gorge, with its walls of rock rising sheer some two hundred feet. It was about three hundred feet long, and widened slightly outward, being shaped something funnel-wise, and on the inner side was about a hundred feet wide. The floor did not go so far as the flanking rocks, but, at about two-thirds of its length, there was a perpendicular descent, like a groove cut in the rock, running sheer down to the sea, some three hundred feet below, and as far under it as we could see. From the northern of the flanking rocks which formed the Pass the rocky wall ran northward, completely sheltering the lower lands from the west, and running into a towering rock that rose on the extreme north, and which stood up in jagged peaks something like The Needles off the coast of the Isle of Wight.

There was no doubt that poor Joyce’s farm, thus sheltered, was an exceptionally favored spot, and I could well understand how loath he must be to leave it.

Murdock’s land, even under the enchantment of its distance, seemed very different, and was just as bleak as Sutherland had told me. Its south-western end ran down towards the Snake’s Pass. I mounted the wall of rock on the north of the Pass to look down, and was surprised to find that down below me was the end of a large plateau of some acres in extent which ran up northward, and was sheltered north and west by a somewhat similarformation of rock to that which protected Joyce’s land. This, then, was evidently the place called the Cliff Fields, of which mention had been made at Widow Kelligan’s.

The view from where I stood was one of ravishing beauty. Westward in the deep sea, under gray clouds of endless variety, rose a myriad of clustering islets, some of them covered with grass and heather, where cattle and sheep grazed; others were mere rocks rising boldly from the depths of the sea, and surrounded by a myriad of screaming wild-fowl. As the birds dipped and swept and wheeled in endless circles, their white breasts and gray wings varying in infinite phase of motion, and as the long Atlantic swell, tempered by its rude shocks on the outer fringe of islets, broke in fleecy foam and sent living streams through the crevices of the rocks and sheets of white water over the bowlders where the sea-rack rose and fell, I thought that the earth could give nothing more lovely or more grand.

Andy’s voice beside me grated on me unpleasantly:

“Musha! but it’s the fine sight it is intirely; it only wants wan thing.”

“What does it want?” I asked, rather shortly. “Begor, a bit of bog to put your arrum around while ye’re lukin’ at it,” and he grinned at me knowingly.

He was incorrigible. I jumped down from the rock and scrambled into the boreen. My friend Sutherland had gone on his way to Murdock’s, so calling to Andy to wait till I returned, I followed him.

I hurried up the boreen and caught up with him, for his progress was slow along the rough lane-way. In reality I felt that it would be far less awkward having him with me; but I pretended that my only care was for his sprained ankle.

Some emotions make hypocrites of us all!

With Dick on my arm limping along we passed up the boreen, leaving Joyce’s house on our left. I looked out anxiously in case I should see Joyce  —  or his daughter; but there was no sign of any one about. In a few minutes Dick, pausing for a moment, pointed out to me the Shifting Bog.

“You see,” he said, “those two poles? The line between them marks the mearing of the two lands. We have worked along the bog down from there.” He pointed as he spoke to some considerable distance up the Hill to the north where the bog began to be dangerous, and where it curved around the base of a grassy mound, or shoulder of the mountain.

“Is it a dangerous bog?” I queried. “Rather! It is just as bad a bit of soft bog as ever I saw. I wouldn’t like to see anyone or anything that I cared for try to cross it!” “Why not?”

“Because at any moment they might sink through it; and then, good-bye  —  no human strength or skill could ever save them.”

“Is it a quagmire, then, or like a quicksand?”

“Like either, or both. Nay, it is more treacherous than either. You may call it, if you are poetically inclined, a ‘carpet of death!’ What you see is simply a film or skin of vegetation of a very low kind, mixed with the mould of decayed vegetable fibre and grit and rubbish of all kinds, which have somehow got mixed into it, floating on a sea of ooze and slime  —  of something half liquid, half solid, and of an unknown depth. It will bear up a certain weight, for there is a degree of cohesion in it; but it is not all of equal cohesive power, and if one were to step on the wrong spot  —  ” He was silent.

“What then?” “Only a matter of specific gravity! A body suddenly immersed would, when the airof the lungs had escaped and the rigor mortis had set in, probably sink a considerable distance; then it would rise after nine days, when decomposition began to generate gases, and make an effort to reach the top. Not succeeding in this, it would ultimately waste away, and the bones would become incorporated with the existing vegetation somewhere about the roots, or would lie among the slime at the bottom.”

“Well,” said I, “for real cold-blooded horror, commend me to your men of science.” This passage brought us to the door of Murdock’s house  —  a plain, strongly-built cottage, standing on a knoll of rock that cropped up from the plateau round it. It was surrounded with a garden hedged in by a belt of pollard ash and stunted alders. Murdock had evidently been peering surreptitiously through the window of his sitting-room, for, as we passed in by the gate, he came out to the porch. His salutation was not an encouraging one: “You’re somethin’ late this mornin’, Mr. Sutherland. I hope ye didn’t throuble to delay in ordher to bring up this sthrange gintleman. Ye know how particular I am about any wan knowin’ aught of me affairs.” Dick flushed up to the roots of his hair, and, much to my surprise, burst out quite in a passionate way: “Look you here, Mr. Murdock, I’m not going to take any cheek from you, so don’t you give any. Of course I don’t expect a fellow of your stamp to understand a gentleman’s feelings  —  damn it! how can you have a gentleman’s understanding when you haven’t even a man’s? You ought to know right well what I said I would do, I shall do I despise you and your miserable secrets and your miserable trickery too much to take to myself anything in which they have a part; but when I bring with me a friend, but for whom I shouldn’t have been here at all  —  for I couldn’t have walked  —  I expect that neither he nor I shall be insulted. For two pins I’d not set foot on your dirty ground again!” Here Murdock interrupted him: “Aisy now! Ye’re undher agreement to me; an’ I hould ye to it.”

“So you can, you miserable scoundrel, because you know I shall keep my word; but remember that I expect proper treatment; and remember, too, that if I want an assistant I am to have one. Again Murdock interrupted, but this time much more soothingly:

“Aisy! aisy! Haven’t I done every livin’ thing ye wanted, and helped ye meself every time? Sure arn’t Iyer assistant?”

“Yes, because you wanted to get something, and couldn’t do without me. And mind this: you can’t do without me yet. But be so good as to remember that I choose my own assistant; and I shall not choose you unless I like. You can keep me here and pay me for staying as we agreed; but don’t you think that I could fool you if I would?”

“Ye wouldn’t do that, I know  —  an’ me thrusted ye!”

“You trusted me! you miserable wretch  —  Yes! you trusted me by a deed, signed, sealed, and delivered. I don’t owe you anything for that.”

“Mr. Sutherland, sir, ye’re too sharp wid me. Yerfrind is very welkim. Do what you like  —  go where you choose  —  bring whom you will  —  only get on wid the worrk and kape it saycret.”

“Aye!” sneered Dick, “you are ready to climb down because you want something done, and you know that this is the last day for work on this side of the hill. Well, let me tell you this  —  for you’ll do anything for greed  —  that you and I together, doing all we can, shall not be able to cover all the ground. I haven’t said a word to my friend  —  and I don’t know how he will take any request from you after your impudence; but he is myfriend, and a clever man, and if you ask him nicely, perhaps he will be good enough to stay and lend us a hand.”

The man made me a low bow and asked me in suitable terms if I would kindly stop part of the day and help in the work. Needless to say I acquiesced. Murdock eyed me keenly, as though to make up his mind whether or no I recollected him  —  he evidently remembered me  —  but I affected ignorance, and he seemed satisfied. I was glad to notice that the blow of Joyce’s riding-switch still remained across his face as a livid scar. He went away to get the appliances readyforwork, in obedience to a direction from Sutherland.

“One has to cut that hound’s corns rather roughly,” said the latter, with a nice confusion of metaphors, as soon as Murdock had disappeared.

Dick then told me that his work was to make magnetic experiments to ascertain, if possible, if there was any iron hidden in the ground.

“The idea,” he said, “is Murdock’s own, and I have neither lot nor part in it. My work is simply to carry out his ideas, with what mechanical skill I can command, and to invent or arrange such appliances as he may want. Where his theories are hopelessly wrong, I point this out to him, but he goes on or stops just as he chooses. You can imagine that a fellow of his low character is too suspicious to ever take a hint from anyone. We have been working forthree weeks past and have been all over the solid ground, and are just finishing the bog.”

“How did you first come across him?” I asked.

“Very nearly a month ago he called on me in Dublin, having been sent by old Gascoigne, of the College of Science. He wanted me to search for iron on his property. I asked if it was regarding opening mines? He said, ‘No, just to see if there should be any old iron lying about.’ As he offered me excellent terms for my time, I thought he must have some good  —  or rather, I should say, some strong motive. I know now, though he has never told me, that he is trying for the money that is said to have been lost and buried here by the French after Humbert’s expedition to Killala.”

“How do you work?” I asked. “The simplest thing in the world; just carry about a strong magnet  —  only we have to do it systematically.”

“And have you found anything as yet?”

“Only old scraps  —  horseshoes, nails, buckles, buttons; our most important find was the tire of a wheel. The old Gombeen thought he had it that time!” and Dick laughed.

“How did you manage the bog?” “That is the only difficult part; we have poles on opposite sides of the bog with lines between them. The magnet is fixed, suspended from a free wheel, and I let it down to the centre from each side in turn. If there were any attraction I should feel it by the thread attached to the magnet which I hold in my hand.”

“It is something like fishing?”

“Exactly.”

Murdoch now returned and told us that he was ready, so we all went to work. I kept with Sutherland at the far side of the bog, Murdoch remaining on the nearside. We planted, or rather placed, a short stake in the solid ground, as close as we could get it to the bog, and steadied it with a guy from the top; the latter I held, while Murdoch, on the other side, fulfilled a similar function. A thin wire connected the two stakes; on this Sutherland now fixed the wheel, from which the magnet depended. On each side we deflected the stake until the magnet almost touched the surface of the bog. After a few minutes’ practice I got accustomed to the work, and acquired sufficient dexterity to be able to allow the magnet to run freely. Inch by inch we went over the surface of the bog, moving slightly to the south-west each time we shifted, following the edges of the bog. Every little while Dick had to change sides, so as to cover the whole extent of the bog, and when he came round again had to go back to where he had last stopped on the same side. All this made the process very tedious, and the day was drawing to a close when we neared the posts set up to mark the bounds of the two lands. Several times during the day Joyce had come up from his cottage and inspected our work, standing at his own side of the post. He looked at me closely, but did not seem to recognise me. I nodded to him once, but he did not seem to see my salutation, and I did not repeat it.

All day long I never heard the sweet voice; and as we returned to Carnaclif after a blank day  —  blank in every sense of the word  —  the airseemed chillier and the sunset less beautiful than before. The last words I heard on the mountain were from Murdock: “Nothin’ to-morrow, Mr. Sutherland! I’ve a flittin’ to make, but I pay the day all the same; I hould ye to your conthract. An’ remember, surr, we’re in no hurry wid the wurrk now, so ye’ll not need help any more.” Andy made no remark till we were well away from the Hill, and then said, dryly: “I’m afeerd yer ‘an’r has had but a poor day; ye luk as if ye hadn’t seen a bit iv bog at all, at all. Gee up, ye ould corn-crake! the gintlemin does be hurryin’ home fur their tay, an’ fur more wurrk wid bogs to-morra!”