You will think me as crazy as poor Isaac himself, when I say that I listened with deep interest to these half mystic, half prophetic, but most earnestly delivered utterances. But we have all a crazy side to our characters (politely called a weakness), and I am bound to repeat that what I had seen in the States had vastly developed this my weakness, and had left the truth of spiritualism quite a moot point in my mind. To me there was as much reason in this man’s pretensions to hold commune with the spirits of the departed as any of the mediums with whom I had come in contact; albeit he knew little of the ways in which such powers were used. Why, then, should I not place myself in his mediumistic hands, and see if he could put me en rapport with this troubled spirit from the “vasty deep,” after the manner of some of my late American experiences? I determined to do so, and it was arranged that I should meet him the following morning, between five and six, on that part of the shore commanding the nearest view of the haunted rock.
Verily a wild-goose chase it might have appeared even to the fisher-folk of Porth Guerron, had they known our purpose when the few early movers among them saw us meet at the foot of the village, and stroll away along the lonely shore in the semi-darkness of that chill, grey, misty morning.
A perfect calm prevailed—but heavy banks of dense sea-fog hung about the headlands, now shrouding and now slightly revealing their gloomy masses. At first the Leopard stood out gaunt and huge against the grey surroundings, but as we approached it became more and more obscure. The tardy dawn just gave enough light to indicate our whereabouts, lending a most weird aspect to the scene. When we had gone about half a mile round the western arm of the bay, Isaac, who kept in advance of me, and scarcely ever spoke, suddenly stopped, and, stretching back a hand, whispered—
“Hold on, Sir—I saw her but now—take my hand and turn your eyes due west. See where she hovers with the sea-birds round the Leopard’s base!”
I gazed eagerly in the direction indicated, and faintly beheld a form, which for one moment certainly did look like that of a woman clothed in silver light, rising out of the sea, but in another, like nothing but that of a fantastic wreath of mist. It was gone as rapidly as it had appeared—as rapidly as though it had been but the flashing whiteness from the outstretched pinions of the birds that by myriads soared and swooped through the heavy folds of the fog—gone as though it had been but a passing fancy, an ocular illusion, momentary, vague, and unsubstantial as the misty air itself.
“Ye saw her, Sir, I doubt not,” then went on my guide. “Silence, patience, and faith, and ye shall see her again.”
We had reached the utmost limits of the shingly shore, where the frowning cliffs at the western horn of the cove stretched precipitously into the sea and stopped farther progress. Fifty yards beyond this barrier began the sandy causeway connecting the mainland with the Leopard. But had the tide been out even we could not have seen it from our position; and the Leopard, when the fog lifted a little, lay before us completely isolated. Nothing in nature could well have looked more weird and ghostly than did the scene, or more in harmony with our purpose. The day was breaking languidly, and still shedding but the faintest, palest light, whilst the restless fog-banks, swirling to and fro, might have been likened to giant spectres as they swept across the oily ocean, or clung to the towering cliffs in strange, fantastic forms. An intense chill was in the air, which was greatly increased when, every now and then, the grey mist enveloped us in its ghostly folds, shutting out everything beyond an arm’s length, and seeming to cut us off from the world of fact and light.
During one of the densest of these visitations, I felt the rough, broad palm of Isaac close tightly on mine; and through a gap which suddenly appeared in the obscurity surrounding us I once more saw the female form in strong relief against the dark crags of the Leopard. Now there was no mistake about it. Bathed in the same translucent light, there it plainly was, floating in mid-air, as one has seen angels represented in pictures, and slowly waving one arm, half-beckoning and pointing upwards. Say it was some three hundred yards distant across the water—say that it was still vague and vapour-like, semi-transparent in parts, as the fog itself—say that I was out of my mind, or in a dream, or unduly acted on by those Transatlantic experiences and the imaginings arising therefrom, which old Isaac had rekindled: say all this, if you please; but I say distinctly that with these eyes I saw a woman’s form, palpable, unmistakable, floating upwards across the face of the cliff, pointing and beckoning. The features at such a distance, of course, could not be discerned—nor do I say that I could see any details. All was merged into the unsubstantial substance—if I may use the paradox—of silvery light; but the form and action were distinct. For two minutes or more, it may have been, the vision was so far clearly before me; nor did it dissolve into the mist, of which, I admit, it seemed composed, until the figure reached, in its slow ascent, the topmost verge of the isolated crag. Then the fog again shut it all out, and for a while held us in its weird gloom. But soon after this it lifted, a soft breeze sprang up, and the cheering rays of the morning sun restored us to warmth and reality.
Beyond a momentary look of triumph which shot from old Isaac’s lack-lustre eyes as he turned them on me, little or nothing passed between us as we retraced our steps, and I had full time to cogitate over this strange experience. At length I said, as we got back among the boats,
“How long is it since the Leopard was explored?” Isaac shook his head, as he answered,
“It never was explored; no one can land there—no one ever goes nearer to it than we have been. If they did, the iron net which the evil spirit of the place stretches across the channel, and which cost Raymond his life, and made my wits to wander, would wind itself round and strangle the life out of those who should dare to brave the dangers of the crag.”
“But I am told,” said I, “one could manage to land there, when the sand is exposed, at very low tide.”
“Aye, but you would not bide there long—the net would be shot over you as surely as fate.”
“There are spring tides now, I think,” I went on; “when will the sand be clearest?”
“At this evening’s ebb; it was nearly clear this morning when we were first there. This evening the tide will run out farther, and be dead low water somewhere nigh to five o’clock.”
“Then,” said I, decidedly, “if the sea holds smooth I’ll land there myself, and have a closer look at the place where this troubled spirit wanders.”
This determination was the result of my cogitation, for, notwithstanding what I had seen, I had no dread of, nor belief in the existence of this direful net—that part of the story was, doubtless, founded on some antique myth, as old as the crag itself. If I understood spiritual manifestations aright, they always pointed to a purpose, and it is nothing but man’s own wilful blindness and scepticism which hides from him their end and aim, and leads him in his arrogance to ask, “What is their use; what good ever comes from these departed souls ‘revisiting the glimpses of the moon,’ and by sights, signs, or sounds, holding converse with us of the visible world?”
Isaac’s face was something to see as I announced my resolve, and, in spite of all persuasion and argument, he entirely refused to accompany me on the expedition. He declared his conviction that I should never return alive, and that I should find no one in Porth Guerron who would go with me, adding—
“I doubt whether they’ll even lend ye a boat, if they know your bent.”
I was so fully determined, however, that by an hour before low water that evening I had hired the lightest row-boat in the place, and, keeping my object to myself, was afloat in the bay under pretext of simple amusement. Old Isaac reluctantly promised to say nothing of my intention, and, though doing all he could to dissuade me, helped me to push the boat off from the beach. As I pulled out, I saw his tall, gaunt figure passing along the shore towards the point we had occupied in the morning.
It was a lovely, soft, windless, autumn evening, as the sun sank, towards the west, and, keeping my eye upon the tide, I had lazily pulled to within twenty boats’ length of the sandy ridge when the thin line of rippling breakers marking its position faded away and left it bare. Then I gave way lustily, and in a few minutes the boat’s nose ran softly up on to the sand just below the spur of the fatal crag. Springing ashore, I made her fast by the grapnel I had ready in her bows. An athlete, and a fairish cragsman, I soon managed to scale the lower declivities, and before long I had clambered well-nigh to the top of the Leopard’s Head. I will not stop to describe the wild beauty of the scene stretching around me, nor do more than hint at the strange undercurrent of feeling which had prompted me to make this exploration; but a conviction had taken root in my mind that I might by it gain some clue to the purpose of the manifestation I had witnessed—a conviction, as I have said, that there had been an object in it, and that I might trace this object out. Thus I began examining and surveying every rift and fissure, cleft, and ledge of this wild storm-beaten islet; this hitherto undisputed home of the sea-birds, which, astounded by my audacity, at first seemed so reluctant to move that I might almost have captured many with my hands. But at length the whole colony was on the wing—swirling, swooping, hovering, until the air was darkened with them as by a cloud, and their shrill, piping, and discordant notes nearly deafened me.
Half an hour passed, and by the time I had wandered wherever foothold was possible, all over and around the top of the plateau, twilight was setting in. I was descending by the way I had come, and had got a short distance down, when, upon a rocky shelf just below a strangely beetling crag, my eye fell upon an object which startled me, and instantly riveted my attention. Getting close to the edge of the overhanging rock the better to look down upon this discovery, I all but lost my footing through the shock which the spectacle then gave me, for there, partially coiled under shelter of the projecting cliff, lay a human skeleton, bleached and mouldering, with the face of the skull turned upwards to the sky—the hollow sockets of the eyes seeming to meet mine with a horrible, imploring expression. When the amazement caused by this ghastly sight a little subsided, I began to realise the fact that in it perhaps lay the very clue I was looking for! How had the unhappy being whose remains lay thus exposed before me come there? Instantly I thought of Raymond Sass, and the account Jacob Sellar had given me of either he or his companion being seen clinging to the rocks when their boat foundered in the Leopard’s Grip, just thirty years ago this very night! If these bleaching bones were indeed those of the hapless fisherman, and it seemed the likely solution, had I not discovered the purpose for which the restless spirit of Alice Dournelle had ever since haunted this wild and supposedly inaccessible rock?
Well! not to prolong my tale, I got back to my boat, and as soon as it touched the shore of the cove, without waiting to answer the questions with which I was assailed, I hastened straight away to the vicarage, and communicated my discovery to the incumbent of the square-towered, tiny church at the head of the village. He was a pompous, unsociable man, whom I had rather avoided, and, although at first he seemed to entirely discredit my statement—for, unwisely, I told him how I had been led to visit the Leopard—I convinced him of its truth.
In the end, he took such steps as led to the interment in the churchyard, by the grave of Alice Dournelle, of the remains of poor Raymond Sass. That they were his there could be no doubt, inasmuch as, lying with them besides the remains of some other slowly perishable trifles, such as a tobacco-box, knife, &c., there was found a little trinket in the shape of a heart. On it was engraved his name, and that of Alice, the donor, and he had evidently worn it round his neck by the little chain to which it was attached.
One word more about Isaac Sellar and my fisher friends. Although I had, for a few of them, dispelled the fable of the iron net and had shown that access to the rock was easy, and without danger, he entirely refused to make one of the small party who were at length persuaded to accompany me on a second visit, to assist in the removal of all that was left of their lost comrade.
And as to the phantom? Well; it has never appeared again. Even Isaac Sellar, whom I had a talk with only last autumn, has never seen it, though three years have passed since I cleared up the mystery by restoring to rest and peace the erewhile troubled spirit of Alice Dournelle—for that I did this by procuring for her lover Christian burial I have no manner of doubt.
My experiences at Porth Guerron have finally determined my wavering belief in the truth of spiritual manifestations. I can no longer doubt that they have their object, and that they have a real existence for those whose minds are rightly attuned, and who can, as Isaac put it, have “faith in something just beyond what ye can touch and lay hold of.”