Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3

The tear in Octavius Pellʼs right eye compelled him to shift the glass a bit. He was just the man who would have done even as that captain did.

“Hurrah, hurrah! theyʼve got the launch out; only she and the gig are left. Troops on the deck, drawn up in a line, and the women hoisted in first. Give them three cheers, men, though they canʼt hear you! Three cheers, if you are Englishmen! Glorious, glorious! There they go; never saw such a fine thing in all my life. Oh, I wish I had been a sailor!”

The tears ran down the young parsonʼs cheeks, and were blown into the eyes of old Macbride; or else he had some of his own.

“Shove off, shove off; nowʼs your time, for the under–current is failing her. Both of them off, as Iʼm alive; and yet a third boat I could not see. What magnificent management! That man ought to command a fleet. Two of them off for Christchurch Harbour; away, away, while the wind lulls; but what is the third boat doing?” Every one was looking: no one answered. Old Mac knew what it was, though his eyes were too old to see much.

“Captain Roberts, Iʼll go bail, at his old tricks again. And thereʼs none with the sense to mutiny on him, and lash his legs, as we did in the Samphire.”

“At the side of the ship there is some dispute. The boat is laden to the waterʼs edge, and the ship paying off to leeward, for there is no man at the wheel; there goes the sail from the bolt–ropes. If they donʼt push off, ere an oarʼs length, they will all be sucked into the rollers! Good God! now I see what it is. There is only room for one more, and not one of those three will take it. Two white–haired men and a girl. Life against honour with the old men; and what is life compared with it? Both resolved not to stir a peg; now they join to make the girl go. Her father has got her in his arms to pitch her into the boat; she clings around his neck so that both must go, or neither. He could not throw her; she falls on her knees, and clings to his legs to die with him. Smack – there, the rope is parted, and it is too late for further argument. The troops in the boat salute the officer, and he returns it as on parade.”

“Name of that ship?” said Jacob, curtly, to old Sandy Macbride.

“Aliwal, East India trader, Captain Roberts. Calcutta to Southampton.”

“Then itʼs all up now with the Aliwal, and every soul on board of her.”

“Donʼt want a pilot to tell us that,” answered old Mac, testily. “Youʼve seed a many good craft, pilot, but never one as could last five minutes on the Shingle Bank, with this sea running.”

“Ropes, ropes!” cried Octave Pell; “in five minutes sheʼll be ashore here.”

“No, she ‘ont, nor yet in ten,” answered his landlord, gruffly; “sheʼll fetch away to the eastward first, now she is in the tide again, specially with this gale on; and sheʼll take the ground over yonner, and go to pieces with the next breaker.”

She took her course exactly as old Jacob mapped it out for her. He knew every run and flaw of the tide, and how it gets piled in the narrows by a very heavy storm, and runs back in the eddy which had saved so many lives there. This has nothing to do with the “double tide;” that comes after high–water. As the good ship traced the track of death, doing as the waves willed (like a little boyʼs boat in the Serpentine), the people on shore could see those three, who had contested the right of precedence to another world.

They were all upon the quarter–deck; and three finer figures never yet came to take the air there, in the weariness of an Indian voyage. Captain Roberts, a tall, stout man, with ruddy cheeks and a broad white beard, stood with his hands in his pockets, and his feet asunder, and a sense of discipline in his face, as of a man who has done his duty, and now obeys his Maker. No sign of flinching or dismay in his weather–beaten eyes, as he watched his death roll towards him; though the gazers fancied that one tear rose, perhaps at the thought of his family just coming down–stairs at Lymington. The military man beside him faced his death quite differently; perhaps with even less of fear, but with more defiance, broken, every now and then, by anguish for his daughter. He had not learned to fear the Lord, as those men do who go down into the great deep. He looked as if he ought to be commanding–officer of the tempest. The ship, running now before wind and sea, darted along as a serpent darts over the graves in the churchyard; she did not lurch any more, or labour, but rose and fell, just showing her fore–foot or stern–post, as the billows passed under her. And so that young maiden could stand and gaze, with her fatherʼs arm thrown round her.

She was worthy to be his daughter; tall, and light of form, and calm, with eyes of wondrous brightness, she was looking at her fatherʼs face to say the last good–bye. Then she flung both arms around his neck, and fondly, sadly, kissed him. Meanwhile the ship–captain turned away, and thought of Susy Roberts. Suddenly he espied a life–belt washed into the scuppers. He ran for it in a moment, came behind the maid, and, without asking her consent, threw it over her, and fastened it. There was little chance of it helping her, but that little chance she should have.

“Sheʼll take the ground next biller,” cried the oracular Jacob; “stand by there with the ropes, boys.”

On the back of a huge wave rose for the last time the unfortunate Aliwal. Stem on, as if with strong men steering, she rushed through the foam and the white whirl, like a hearse run away with in snow–drifts. Then she crashed on the stones, and the raging sea swept her from taffrail to bowsprit, rolled her over, pitched her across, and broke her back in two moments. The shock rang through the roar of billows, as if a nerve of the earth were thrilling. Another mountain–wave came marching to the roll of the tempest–drum. It curled disdainfully over the side, like a fog sweeping over a hedgerow; swoop – it broke the timbers away, as a giant tosses a fir–cone.

“I canʼt look any longer,” cried Pell; “give me something to feel, men. Quick, there! I see something!”

He seized the bight of a rope, and rushed anyhow into the waters. But John Rosedew and the life–boatmen held hard upon the coil of it, and drew him with all their might back again. They hauled Octavius Pell up in the manner of a cod–fish, and he was so bruised and stupefied, that he could not tell what he had gone for. They only saw floating timber and gear, and wreck of every sort drifting, till just for one sight–flash a hoary head, whiter than driven waters, leaped out of the comb of the billow. A naval man, or a military – who knows, and to whom does it matter?

Brave men ashore, all waiting ready, dashed down the steep of death to save him, if the great wave should toss up its plaything. All Rushford strained at the cables that held them from the savage recoil. Worse than useless; the only chance of it was to make more widows. The sea leaped at those gallant strong men; there were five on either cable; it leaped at them as the fiery furnace leaped on the plain of Dura. It struck the two ropes into one with a buffet, as a lionʼs paw shatters a cobweb; it dashed the menʼs heads together, and flung them all in a pile on a ballast–heap. Lucky for them that it fought with itself, and clashed there, and made no recoil. The white–haired corpse was seen no more; and all Rushford shrunk back in terror.

The storm was now at its height; and of more than a hundred people gathered on the crown of the shore, and above the reach of the billows, not one durst stand upright. Nearer the water the wind had less power, for the wall of waves broke the full brunt of it. But there no man, unless he were most quick of eye and foot, might stand without great peril. For scarcely a single billow broke, but what, in the first rebound and toss, two churning hummocks of surf met, and flashed up the strand like a mad white horse, far in advance of the rest. Then a hissing ensued, and a roll of shingle, and the water poured huddling and lappeting back from the chine itself had crannied.

As brave men fled from a rush of this sort, and cowards on the bank were laughing at them, something white was seen in the curl of the wave which was breaking behind it. The ebb of that inrush met the wave and partly took the crash of it, then the white thing was shot on the shore like a pellet, and lay one instant motionless. There was no rope there, and the men hung back; John Rosedew cried “Shame!” and ran for it; but they joined hands across and stopped him. Before they could look round again, some one had raised the body. ‘Twas young Bob Garnet, and in his arms lay the maiden senseless. She had looked at him once, and then swooned away from the whirl, and the blows, and the terror. No rope round his body, no cork, no pad; he had rushed full into the raging waves, as he woke from his sleep of heaviness. He lifted the girl, and a bending giant hung thirty feet above them.

Then a shriek, like a womanʼs, rang out on the wind, and two great arms were tossed to heaven. Bull Garnet stood there, and strove to rush on, strove with every muscle, but every nerve strove against it. He was balanced and hung on the wind for a moment, as the wave hung over his heartʼs love. Crash came the wave – what shriek should stop it, after three hundred miles of rolling? – a crash that rang in the souls of all whom youth could move or nobleness. Nothing was seen in the depth of water, the swirling, hurling whiteness, until the billow had spent its onset, and the curdle of the change was. Then Bob, swept many a fathom in–shore, but griping still that senseless thing, that should either live or die with him – Bob, who could swim as well or better than he could climb a tree, but felt that he and his load were only dolls for the wave to dandle – down he went, after showing his heels, and fought the deadly outrush. None but Natureʼs pet would have thought of, none but the favoured of God could have done, it. He felt the back–wave tugging at him, he felt that he was going; if another billow broke on him, it was all up with his work upon wire–worm. Holding his breath, he flung his right leg over the waist of the maiden, dug his two hands deep into the gravel, and clapped his feet together. Scarcely knowing what was up, he held on like grim death for life, and felt a barrowload of pebbles rolling down the small of his back. Presently he saw light again, and sputtered out salt water, and heard a hundred people screaming out “Hurrah!” and felt a strong arm thrown round him – not his fatherʼs, but John Rosedewʼs. Three senseless bodies were borne to the village – Bull Garnetʼs, and Bobʼs and the maidenʼs.

CHAPTER V

Meanwhile that keen engineering firm, wind, wave, and tide, had established another little business on the coast hard by. This was the general wreck and crack–up of the stout Pell–castle, a proceeding unnoticed by any one except good mother Jacob, whose attention was drawn to it forcibly, as the head of the bed fell in upon her. Thereupon the stout dame made a rush for it, taking only her cat and spectacles, and the little teapot of money. As she started at a furious pace, and presented to the elements a large superficial area, the wind could not resist the temptation, but wafted her to the top of the bunney, without her feet so much as once a–touching the blessed earth – she goes mad if any one doubts it – and planted her in a white–thorn tree, and brought an “elam” of thatch to shelter her from her own beloved roof. There, when the wind subsided, she was happily discovered by some enterprising children; the cat was sitting at her side; in one blue hand she held her specs, and in the other a teapot.

Poor Pellʼs easy–chair was thrown up, three miles to the westward, in the course of the next spring–tides, and, being well known all over the neighbourhood (from his lending it to sick people), was brought to him, with a round of cheers, by half a dozen fishermen. They refused the half–crown he offered them, and displayed the greatest anxiety lest his honour should believe it was them as had taken the shine off. The workmanship not being modern, the chair was little the worse for its voyage; only it took six months to dry, and had a fine smell of brine ever afterwards. Then, having been lent to an old saltʼs widow, it won such a reputation, all across the New Forest, as a specific for “rheumatics in the small of the back,” that old women, having no small to their backs, walked all the way from Lyndhurst, “just to sot themselves down in it, and how much was to pay, please, for a quarter of an hour?” “A shilling,” said Octave Pell, “a shilling for the new lifeboat that lives under Christchurch Head.” Then they pulled out mighty silver watches, and paid the shilling at the fifteen minutes. The walk, and the thought of the miracle, and the fear of making fools of themselves, did such a deal of good, that a man got up a ‘bus for it; but Pell said, “No; none who come by ‘bus shall sit in my chair of ease.”

The greedy sea returned brave Pell no other part of his property. His red tobacco–jar, indeed, was found by some of the dredgemen three or four years afterwards, but they did not know it was his, and sold it – crusted as it was with testacea, and ribboned with sea–weed – to the zealous secretary of – I wonʼt say what museum. “Roman, or perhaps Samian, or possibly Phœnician ware,” cried the secretary, lit with fine – though, it may be, loose – ideas; and he catalogued it: “Phœnician in the opinion of an F.A.S. There is every reason to believe it a vase for Thuricremation.” “Hollo!” cried Pell, when he went there to lecture upon cricket as played by Ulysses, “why, Iʼm blessed if you havenʼt got – ” “The most undoubted Phœnician relic contained in any museum!” So he laughed with other peopleʼs cheeks, like a man of sense.

All the folk of Rushford, and many too of Nowelhurst, contributed to a secret fund for refurnishing Octavius Pell. So great were the mystery and speed, and so clever the management of the dissenting parson, that two great vans were down upon Pell before he had heard a word of it. He stood at the door of the cobblerʼs shop, and tried to make a speech; but the hurrahs were too many for him, and he turned away and cried. Tell me that any man in England need be anything but popular who has a heart of his own, and is not ashamed of having it!

At the Crown, where the three sick people were, a very fine trade was doing; but a finer one still upon the beach, as the sea went down and the choice contents of the Aliwal came up. For that terrible storm began to abate about noon on the 26th. It had blown as hard for twenty–four hours as it ever does blow in any land, except in the gaps of the Andes and during cyclones of the tropics. Now the core of the storm had no more cells in it; and the puffs that came from the west and north–west, and so on till it got to the pole–star, were violent indeed, but desultory, and seemed not to know where they were going. Finally, about midnight, the wind owned that its turn was over, and sunk (well satisfied with its work) into the arms of slumber – “placidâque ibi demum morte quievit.” And its work had been done right well. No English storm since the vast typhoon of 1703 – which I should like to write about some day if my little life–storm blows long enough – had wrought such glorious havoc upon that swearing beaver, man. It had routed his villages at the Landʼs End, and lifted like footstools his breakwater blocks; it had scared of their lives his Eddystone watchmen, and put out half his lighthouses; it had broken upon his royalty, and swept down the oaks of the New Forest; it had streaked with wrecks the Goodwin Sands, and washed ships out of harbours of refuge; it had leaped upon London as on a drain–trap, and jarred it as a man whistles upon his fingers; it had huddled pell–mell all the coal–trade; – saddest vaunt (though not the last), it had strewn with gashed and mangled bodies (like its own waves, countless) the coasts of Anglesea and Caernarvon.

On the morning now of the 27th, with the long sullen swell gold–beater–skinned by the recovering sun, the shingle–bank was full of interest to an active trader. They had picked up several bodies with a good bit of money upon them, and the beach was strewn with oranges none the worse for a little tossing. For the stout East Indiaman Aliwal had touched at the Western Islands, and taken on board a thousand boxes of the early orange harvest. And not only oranges were rolling among the wrack, the starfish, the sharkʼs teeth, and the cuttle–eggs, but also many a pretty thing, once prized and petted by women. There were little boxes with gilt and paint, sucked heartily by the salt water, and porcupine–quills rasping up from panels of polished ebony, cracked mirrors inside them, and mother–of–pearl, and beading of scented wood; all the taste and the labour of man yawning like dead cockles, crimped backward, sodden and shredded, as hopeless a wreck as a drunkard.

Then there were barrels, and heavy chests, planking already like hemp in the prison–yard, bulkheads, and bulwarks, and cordage, and reeve–blocks, and ten thousand other things, well appreciated by the wreckers, who were hauling them up the bunneys; while the Admiralty droitsmen made an accurate inventory of the bungs and the blacking bottles. Some of the sailors, and most of the passengers, who had escaped in the boats to Christchurch, came over to look for anything that might turn up of their property. Hereupon several fights ensued, and many poor fellows enjoyed opportunity for a closer inspection of the Rushford stratum than the most sanguine of their number anticipated; until the police came down in force, and extinguished at once all other rights of salvage except their own.

Nevertheless there was yet one field upon which the police could not interfere; although Jack wished for nothing better than to catch the lubbers there. This was Jackʼs own domain, the sea, where an animated search was going on for the body of Colonel Nowell. His servant had hurried from Christchurch to Nowelhurst to report the almost certain death of Sir Cradockʼs only brother. He did not go first to ascertain it; for the road along the cliffs was impassable during the height of the storm. Sir Cradock received the announcement with very few signs of emotion. He had loved that Clayton in early youth, but now had almost forgotten him; and Clayton had never kept his brother at all apprised of his doings. Sir Cradock had gone into mourning for him, some three years ago; and Colonel Nowell never took the trouble to vindicate his vitality until Dr. Huttonʼs return. And, even though they had really known and loved one another as brothers, the loss would have been but a tap on the back to a man already stabbed through the heart. Therefore Sir Cradockʼs sorrow exploded (as we love to make our griefs do, and as we so often express them) in the moneyed form. “I will give 500l. to the man who finds my poor brotherʼs body.”

That little speech launched fourteen boats. What wrecker could hope for anything of a tenth part of the value? Men who had sworn that they never would pull in the same boat again together – might the Great Being, the Giver of life, strike them dead if they did! – forgot the solemn perjuration, and cried, “Give us your flipper, Ben; after all, there are worse fellows going than you, my lad:” and Ben responded, “Jump into the starn–sheets; you are just the hand as we want, Harry. Manyʼs the time Iʼve thought on you.” Even the dredging smacks hauled in–shore from their stations, and began to dredge for the Colonel; till the small boats resolved on united action, tossed oars, and held solemn council. Several speeches were made, none of them very long, but all embodying that fine sentiment, “fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” in the form of “fair play, and be d – d to you.” Then Sandy Mac, of the practical mind, made a suggestion which was received with three wild rounds of cheers.

“Give ‘em a little ballast, boys, as they be come in–shore to dredge for it.”

With one consent the fourteen boats made for the shore, like the fleet of canoes described by the great Defoe. Nor long before each shallopʼs nose “grated on the golden sands.” The men in the dredging smacks looked at the sky to see if a squall was coming. And soon they got it, thick as hail, and as hot as pepper. The fourteen boats in battle array advanced upon them slowly, only two men rowing in each, all the rest standing up, and every man charged heavily. When they were at a nice wicket distance, old Mac gave the signal, and a flight of stones began, which, in the words of the ancient chroniclers, “well–nigh darkened the noonday sun.” The bravest dredger durst not show his head above the gunwale; for the Rushford stones are close of grain, and it is sweeter to start than to stop them. As for south–westers and dreadnoughts, they were no more use than vine–leaves in a storm of electric hail.

“Ah, little then those mellow grapes their vine–leaf shall avail,
So thickly rattles on the tiles the pelting of the hail.”

    Georg. i. 448.
The dredgers gave in, and hoisted a shirt as a signal for a parley. The Rushford men refused to hear a syllable about “snacks.” What they demanded was “unconditional surrender;” and the dredgers, having no cement–stones on board, were compelled to accept it. So they took up their bags, and walked the smacks off three miles away to their station, with very faint hopes indeed that the obliging body might follow them. The boatmen celebrated their victory with three loud cheers for Sandy Mac, and a glass of grog all round. Then they returned to the likeliest spot, and dragged hard all the afternoon.

“Tarnation ‘cute body,” cried Ben, “as ever I come across. Whoʼd a thought as any perfessing Christian would have stuck to Davy Jonesʼs locker, and refooged the parson and clerk so? Spit on your grapples, my lads of wax, and better luck the cast after.”

“The Lord kens the best,” replied Sandy Mac, with a long–drawn sigh, “us poor vessels canna do more than is the will of the Lord, boys. Howsomever, I brought a bit of bait, a few lug–worms, and a soft crab or two; and please the Lord Iʼll rig my line out, and see if the bass be moving. And likely there may be a tumbling cod on the run speering after the puir bodies. Ah, yes, the will of the Lord; we ates them, and they ates us.”

The canny old Scotchman, without foregoing his share in the general venture – for he helped to throw the grapnels, or took a spell at the rudder – rigged out a hook on his own account, and fastened the line to the rowlocks.

“Fair play, my son,” cried Ben, winking at his comrades; “us go snacks in what you catch, mind. And the will of the Lord be done.”

“Dinna ye wish ye may get it?” – the old man glowered at him indignantly – “Iʼll no fish at all on that onderstanding.”

“Fish away, old boy, and be blessed, then. I see he ainʼt been in the purwentive sarvice for nothing. But Iʼm blowed if heʼll get much supper, Harry, if itʼs all to come off that darned old hook.” They all laughed at old Mac, who said nothing, but regarded his line attentively.

With many a joke and many an oath, they toiled away till the evening fog came down upon the waters. Then, as they turned to go home, old Mac felt a run upon his fishing–gear. Hand over hand he began to haul in, coiling the line in the stern–sheets.

“Itʼs a wapping big fish, as ever I feel, mates; na, na, yeʼll no touch it, or yeʼll be claiming to come and sup wi’ me. And deil a bit – the Lord forgive me – will ye haʼ, for grinning at an auld mon the likes of that, I tell ye. Lord ha’ mercy on me, a wake and sinful crater!”

They all fell back, except Macbride, as before them in the twilight rose the ashy grey face and the long white hair of Colonel Clayton Nowell.

Mac stuck to his haul like a Scotchman; to him the main chance was no ghost. Many a time has he told that story, and turned his quid upon it, cleverly raining between his teeth with fine art to prolong the crisis.

The line being his, and the hook being his, and the haul of his own hands only, Sandy Mac could never see why he should not have all the money. The question came close to litigation; but for that, except as a word of menace, Mac was a deal too wide awake. He compounded at last for 300l. and let the other four share the residue.

So poor Colonel Nowellʼs countenance, still looking grand and dignified, was saved from the congers and lobsters; and he sleeps close by his nephew and namesake in Nowelhurst churchyard. The body of Captain Roberts was found a long way up the Solent. He had always carried a weather helm, and shaped a good course for harbour. May they rest in peace!