The Seaboard Parish, Complete

The record of our conversation looks as quiet on the paper as if we had been talking in a curtained room; but all the time the ocean was raving in my very ear, and the awful tragedy was going on in the dark behind us. The wind was almost as loud as ever, but the rain had quite ceased, and when we reached the bridge the moon shone out white, as if aghast at what she had at length succeeded in pushing the clouds aside that she might see. Awe and helplessness oppressed us. Having crossed the canal, we turned to the shore. There was little of it left; for the waves had rushed up almost to the village. The sand and the roads, every garden wall, every window that looked seaward was crowded with gazers. But it was a wonderfully quiet crowd, or seemed so at least; for the noise of the wind and the waves filled the whole vault, and what was spoken was heard only in the ear to which it was spoken. When we came amongst them we heard only a murmur as of more articulated confusion. One turn, and we saw the centre of strife and anxiety—the heart of the storm that filled heaven and earth, upon which all the blasts and the billows broke and raved.

Out there in the moonlight lay a mass of something whose place was discernible by the flashing of the waves as they burst over it. She was far above low-water mark—lay nearer the village by a furlong than the spot where we had taken our last dinner on the shore. It was strange to think that yesterday the spot lay bare to human feet, where now so many men and women were isolated in a howling waste of angry waters; for the cry of women came plainly to our ears, and we were helpless to save them. It was terrible to have to do nothing. Percivale went about hurriedly, talking to this one and that one, as if he still thought something might be done. He turned to me.

“Do try, Mr. Walton, and find out for me where the captain of the life-boat is.”

I turned to a sailor-like man who stood at my elbow and asked him.

“It’s no use, I assure you, sir,” he answered; “no boat could live in such a sea. It would be throwing away the men’s lives.”

“Do you know where the captain lives?” Percivale asked.

“If I did, I tell you it is of no use.”

“Are you the captain yourself?” returned Percivale.

“What is that to you?” he answered, surly now. “I know my own business.”

The same moment several of the crowd nearest the edge of the water made a simultaneous rush into the surf, and laid hold of something, which, as they returned drawing it to the shore, I saw to be a human form. It was the body of a woman—alive or dead I could not tell. I could just see the long hair hanging from the head, which itself hung backward helplessly as they bore her up the bank. I saw, too, a white face, and I can recall no more.

“Run, Percivale,” I said, “and fetch Turner. She may not be dead yet.”

“I can’t,” answered Percivale. “You had better go yourself, Mr. Walton.”

He spoke hurriedly. I saw he must have some reason for answering me so abruptly. He was talking to a young fellow whom I recognised as one of the most dissolute in the village; and just as I turned to go they walked away together.

I sped home as fast as I could. It was easier to get along now that the moon shone. I found that Turner had given Connie a composing draught, and that he had good hopes she would at least be nothing the worse for the marvellous result of her excitement. She was asleep exhausted, and her mother was watching by her side. It, seemed strange that she could sleep; but Turner said it was the safest reaction, partly, however, occasioned by what he had given her. In her sleep she kept on talking about the ship.

We hurried back to see if anything could be done for the woman. As we went up the side of the canal we perceived a dark body meeting us. The clouds had again obscured, though not quite hidden the moon, and we could not at first make out what it was. When we came nearer it showed itself a body of men hauling something along. Yes, it was the life-boat, afloat on the troubled waves of the canal, each man seated in his own place, his hands quiet upon his oar, his cork-jacket braced about him, his feet out before him, ready to pull the moment they should pass beyond the broken gates of the lock out on the awful tossing of the waves. They sat very silent, and the men on the path towed them swiftly along. The moon uncovered her face for a moment, and shone upon the faces of two of the rowers.

“Percivale! Joe!” I cried.

“All right, sir!” said Joe.

“Does your wife know of it, Joe?” I almost gasped.

“To be sure,” answered Joe. “It’s the first chance I’ve had of returning thanks for her. Please God, I shall see her again to-night.”

“That’s good, Joe. Trust in God, my men, whether you sink or swim.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” they answered as one man.

“This is your doing, Percivale,” I said, turning and walking alongside of the boat for a little way.

“It’s more Jim Allen’s,” said Percivale. “If I hadn’t got a hold of him I couldn’t have done anything.”

“God bless you, Jim Allen!” I said. “You’ll be a better man after this, I think.”

“Donnow, sir,” returned Jim cheerily. “It’s harder work than pulling an oar.”

The captain himself was on board. Percivale having persuaded Jim Allen, the two had gone about in the crowd seeking proselytes. In a wonderfully short space they had found almost all the crew, each fresh one picking up another or more; till at length the captain, protesting against the folly of it, gave in, and once having yielded, was, like a true Englishman, as much in earnest as any of them. The places of two who were missing were supplied by Percivale and Joe, the latter of whom would listen to no remonstrance.

“I’ve nothing to lose,” Percivale had said. “You have a young wife, Joe.”

“I’ve everything to win,” Joe had returned. “The only thing that makes me feel a bit faint-hearted over it, is that I’m afraid it’s not my duty that drives me to it, but the praise of men, leastways of a woman. What would Aggy think of me if I was to let them drown out there and go to my bed and sleep? I must go.”

“Very well, Joe,” returned Percivale, “I daresay you are right. You can row, of course?”

“I can row hard, and do as I’m told,” said Joe.

“All right,” said Percivale; “come along.”

This I heard afterwards. We were now hurrying against the wind towards the mouth of the canal, some twenty men hauling on the tow-rope. The critical moment would be in the clearing of the gates, I thought, some parts of which might remain swinging; but they encountered no difficulty there, as I heard afterwards. For I remembered that this was not my post, and turned again to follow the doctor.

“God bless you, my men!” I said, and left them.

They gave a great hurrah, and sped on to meet their fate. I found Turner in the little public-house, whither they had carried the body. The woman was quite dead.

“I fear it is an emigrant vessel,” he said.

“Why do you think so?” I asked, in some consternation.

“Come and look at the body,” he said.

It was that of a woman about twenty, tall, and finely formed. The face was very handsome, but it did not need the evidence of the hands to prove that she was one of our sisters who have to labour for their bread.

“What should such a girl be doing on board ship but going out to America or Australia—to her lover, perhaps,” said Turner. “You see she has a locket on her neck; I hope nobody will dare to take it off. Some of these people are not far derived from those who thought a wreck a Godsend.”

A sound of many feet was at the door just as we turned to leave the house. They were bringing another body—that of an elderly woman—dead, quite dead. Turner had ceased examining her, and we were going out together, when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce hiss, vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards, something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side of the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.

“Thank God! that’s the coastguard,” I cried.

We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down below the great mass, of the vessel’s hulk, with the waves breaking every moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.

“This is a terrible job, sir,” he said when I approached him; “I doubt if we shall save one of them.”

“There’s the life-boat!” I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters approaching the vessel from the other side.

“The life-boat!” he returned with contempt. “You don’t mean to say they’ve got her out! She’ll only add to the mischief. We’ll have to save her too.”

She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water. But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the same moment.

“Over her starn!” he cried. “There’s a fellow getting down from the cat-head to run aft.—Stop, stop!” he shouted involuntarily. “There’s an awful wave on your quarter.”

His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed—so coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar things without discomposure—

“He’s gone! I said so. The next’ll have better luck, I hope.”

That man came ashore alive, though.