The Rocks of Valpré | Page 8

still up! The grass was beginning to yield in his clutching fingers; he dug them into the earth below. Now his shoulders were above the edge; his chest also, heaving with strenuous effort. To lower himself again was impossible. His feet dangled over space. And the surging of the water below him was as the roaring of an angry monster cheated of its prey.
He set his teeth. He was nearing the end of his strength. Had he, after all, attempted the impossible, flung the dice too recklessly, dared his fate too far? If so, he would pay the penalty swiftly, swiftly, down among the cruel rocks where many another had perished before him.
The surging sounded louder. It seemed to be in his brain. It bewildered him, deprived him of the power to think. A great many voices seemed to clamour around him, but only one could be clearly heard; only one, and that the voice of a child close to him--or was that also an illusion born of the racking strain that had driven all the blood to his head?
"You won't fail me, will you?" it said.
Surely his grasp was slackening, his powers were passing, when like a flashlight those words illuminated his brain. He was as one in deep waters, swamped and sinking; but that voice called him back.
He opened his eyes, he drew a great breath. He flung his whole soul into one last great effort. He remembered suddenly that the little English girl, the child with the glorious hair and laughing eyes, his acquaintance of an hour, would be looking for him exactly two weeks from that moment. He was sure she would look, and--she would be disappointed if she looked in vain. One must not disappoint a child.
The memory of her went through him, vivid, enchanting, compelling. It nerved his sinking heart. It renewed his grip on life. It urged him upwards.
Only a child! Only a child! But yet--
"I shall not--shall not--fail you!" he gasped, and with the words his knees reached the top of the cliff.
His strength collapsed instantly, like the snapping of a fiddle-string. He fell forward on his face, and lay prone...
A little later he worked the whole of his body into security, rolled over on his back with closed eyes to the sky, and waited while his heart slowed down to its normal rhythmic beat.
At last, quite suddenly, he sat up and looked around him. The laughter flashed back into his eyes. He sprang to his feet, mud-stained, dishevelled, yet exultant.
He clicked his heels together and faced the sinking sun, slim and upright, one stiff hand to his head. He had diced with the gods, and he had won.
"_Destinée! Je te salue!_" he said, and the next instant whizzed smartly round with a soldier's precision of movement and marched away towards the fortress that crowned the hill above the rocks of Valpré.

CHAPTER III
A ROPE OF SAND
Undoubtedly Mademoiselle Gautier was querulous, and equally without doubt she had good reason to be so; but it made it a little dull for Chris. Accidents would happen, wherever one went, and what was the good of making a fuss?
Of course, every allowance had to be made for poor Mademoiselle in consideration of the fact that she was torn in pieces by the valiant attempt to keep her attention focussed upon three children at once. The effort had not so far been a brilliant success, and Mademoiselle, conscious within herself of her inability to cope adequately with her threefold responsibility, being moreover worn out by her gallant struggle to do so, was inclined to shortness of temper and a severity of judgment that bordered upon injustice.
If Chris would persist in flying about the shore in that wild fashion with her hair loose--that flaming hair which Mademoiselle considered in itself to be almost indecent--what could be expected but that some contretemps must of necessity arrive? It was useless for Chris to protest that it was not her hair that had got her into difficulties, that she had only left it loose to dry it after her bathe, that there had been no one to see--at least, no one that mattered--and that the cut on her foot was solely due to the fact that she had taken off her sand-shoes to climb over the rocks. Mademoiselle only shook her head with pursed lips. Chris _était méchante--très méchante_, and no amount of arguing would make her change her opinion upon that point.
So Chris abandoned argument while the worried little Frenchwoman bathed and bandaged her foot anew. She would not be able to bathe again for at least a week, and this fact was of itself sufficient to depress her into silence. Yet, after a little, when Mademoiselle was gone, a cheery little tune rose to her lips. It was not