The Seaboard Parish, Complete

All were forward of the foremast. The bowsprit, when I looked through Roxton’s telescope, was shapeless as with a swarm of bees. Now and then a single shriek rose upon the wild air. But now my attention was fixed on the life-boat. She had got into the wildest of the broken water; at one moment she was down in a huge cleft, the next balanced like a beam on the knife-edge of a wave, tossed about hither and thither, as if the waves delighted in mocking the rudder; but hitherto she had shipped no water. I am here drawing upon the information I have since received; but I did see how a huge wave, following close upon the back of that on which she floated, rushed, towered up over her, toppled, and fell upon the life-boat with tons of water: the moon was shining brightly enough to show this with tolerable distinctness. The boat vanished. The next moment, there she was, floating helplessly about, like a living thing stunned by the blow of the falling wave. The struggle was over. As far as I could see, every man was in his place; but the boat drifted away before the storm shore-wards, and the men let her drift. Were they all killed as they sat? I thought of my Wynnie, and turned to Roxton.

“That wave has done for them,” he said. “I told you it was no use. There they go.”

“But what is the matter?” I asked. “The men are sitting every man in his place.”

“I think so,” he answered. “Two were swept overboard, but they caught the ropes and got in again. But don’t you see they have no oars?”

That wave had broken every one of them off at the rowlocks, and now they were as helpless as a sponge.

I turned and ran. Before I reached the brow of the hill another rocket was fired and fell wide shorewards, partly because the wind blew with fresh fury at the very moment. I heard Roxton say—“She’s breaking up. It’s no use. That last did for her;” but I hurried off for the other side of the bay, to see what became of the life-boat. I heard a great cry from the vessel as I reached the brow of the hill, and turned for a parting glance. The dark mass had vanished, and the waves were rushing at will over the space. When I got to the shore the crowd was less. Many were running, like myself, towards the other side, anxious about the life-boat. I hastened after them; for Percivale and Joe filled my heart.

They led the way to the little beach in front of the parsonage. It would be well for the crew if they were driven ashore there, for it was the only spot where they could escape being dashed on rocks.

There was a crowd before the garden-wall, a bustle, and great confusion of speech. The people, men and women, boys and girls, were all gathered about the crew of the life-boat,—which already lay, as if it knew of nothing but repose, on the grass within.

“Percivale!” I cried, making my way through the crowd.

There was no answer.

“Joe Harper!” I cried again, searching with eager eyes amongst the crew, to whom everybody was talking.

Still there was no answer; and from the disjointed phrases I heard, I could gather nothing. All at once I saw Wynnie looking over the wall, despair in her face, her wide eyes searching wildly through the crowd. I could not look at her till I knew the worst. The captain was talking to old Coombes. I went up to him. As soon as he saw me, he gave me his attention.

“Where is Mr. Percivale?” I asked, with all the calmness I could assume.

He took me by the arm, and drew me out of the crowd, nearer to the waves, and a little nearer to the mouth of the canal. The tide had fallen considerably, else there would not have been standing-room, narrow as it was, which the people now occupied. He pointed in the direction of the Castle-rock.

“If you mean the stranger gentleman—”

“And Joe Harper, the blacksmith,” I interposed.

“They’re there, sir.”

“You don’t mean those two—just those two—are drowned?” I said.

“No, sir; I don’t say that; but God knows they have little chance.”

I could not help thinking that God might know they were not in the smallest danger. But I only begged him to tell me where they were.

“Do you see that schooner there, just between you and the Castle-rock?”

“No,” I answered; “I can see nothing. Stay. I fancy I can. But I am always ready to fancy I see a thing when I am told it is there. I can’t say I see it.”

“I can, though. The gentleman you mean, and Joe Harper too, are, I believe, on board of that schooner.”

“Is she aground?”

“O dear no, sir. She’s a light craft, and can swim there well enough. If she’d been aground, she’d ha’ been ashore in pieces hours ago. But whether she’ll ride it out, God only knows, as I said afore.”

“How ever did they get aboard of her? I never saw her from the heights opposite.”

“You were all taken up by the ship ashore, you see, sir. And she don’t make much show in this light. But there she is, and they’re aboard of her. And this is how it was.”

He went on to give me his part of the story; but I will now give the whole of it myself, as I have gathered and pieced it together.

Two men had been swept overboard, as Roxton said—one of them was Percivale—but they had both got on board again, to drift, oarless, with the rest—now in a windless valley—now aloft on a tempest-swept hill of water—away towards a goal they knew not, neither had chosen, and which yet they could by no means avoid.

A little out of the full force of the current, and not far from the channel of the small stream, which, when the tide was out, flowed across the sands nearly from the canal gates to the Castle-rock, lay a little schooner, belonging to a neighbouring port, Boscastle, I think, which, caught in the storm, had been driven into the bay when it was almost dark, some considerable time before the great ship. The master, however, knew the ground well. The current carried him a little out of the wind, and would have thrown him upon the rocks next, but he managed to drop anchor just in time, and the cable held; and there the little schooner hung in the skirts of the storm, with the jagged teeth of the rocks within an arrow flight. In the excitement of the great wreck, no one had observed the danger of the little coasting bird. If the cable held till the tide went down, and the anchor did not drag, she would be safe; if not, she must be dashed to pieces.

In the schooner were two men and a boy: two men had been washed overboard an hour or so before they reached the bay. When they had dropped their anchor, they lay down exhausted on the deck. Indeed they were so worn out that they had been unable to drop their sheet anchor, and were holding on only by their best bower. Had they not been a good deal out of the wind, this would have been useless. Even if it held she was in danger of having her bottom stove in by bumping against the sands as the tide went out. But that they had not to think of yet. The moment they lay down they fell fast asleep in the middle of the storm. While they slept it increased in violence.

Suddenly one of them awoke, and thought he saw a vision of angels. For over his head faces looked down upon him from the air—that is, from the top of a great wave. The same moment he heard a voice, two of the angels dropped on the deck beside him, and the rest vanished. Those angels were Percivale and Joe. And angels they were, for they came just in time, as all angels do—never a moment too soon or a moment too late: the schooner was dragging her anchor. This was soon plain even to the less experienced eyes of the said angels.

But it did not take them many minutes now to drop their strongest anchor, and they were soon riding in perfect safety for some time to come.

One of the two men was the son of old Coombes, the sexton, who was engaged to marry the girl I have spoken of in the end of the fourth chapter in the second volume.

Percivale’s account of the matter, as far as he was concerned, was, that as they drifted helplessly along, he suddenly saw from the top of a huge wave the little vessel below him. They were, in fact, almost upon the rigging. The wave on which they rode swept the quarter-deck of the schooner.

Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out “Aboard!” The captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat. Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them along the schooner’s side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they dropped on the deck together.

But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through.

When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was Agnes Harper.

The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved out its business, and was departing into the past.

“Agnes,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips—at least it seemed so in the moonlight—only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly down before her.

“The storm is breaking-up, Agnes,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a moment’s pause, she spoke out of her heart.

“Joe’s at his duty, sir?”

I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant that point I am not quite sure.

“Indubitably,” I returned. “I have such faith in Joe, that I should be sure of that in any case. At all events, he’s not taking care of his own life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else.”

“Then there’s nothing to be said, sir, is there?” she returned, with a sigh that sounded as of relief.

I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job’s comfort by blaming her husband.

“Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she reproached him with having left her and his father?”

“I can’t remember anything at this moment, sir,” was her touching answer.