The Coxswain's Bride; also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue

From the motion of the vessel several facts could be deduced. Although the scraping and crashing of the masts overhead told eloquently of destruction going on in that direction, the heaving of the ship, and her striking occasionally on either side, proved that there was deep water below her. That they were not progressing into an interminable cavern was made evident by the frequent plunging of the shattered bowsprit against the inner end of the cave. This action sent the vessel reeling backwards, as it were, every time she struck, besides shattering the bowsprit. That the cave, also, was open to the full force of the sea was only too severely proved by the rush of the billows into it, and the frequent and severe shocks to which they were in consequence subjected. These shocks had extinguished the lamps, and it was only by the aid of a few candles that they were delivered from sitting in absolute darkness.

In these awful circumstances the young Wesleyan proved that, besides the courage that he had already shown in facing danger on a sudden emergency, he also possessed that far higher courage which can face the slow and apparently sure approach of death with equanimity and self-possession. Moreover, he proved that the Word of God and prayer are the true resources of man in such extremities.

Calling those who were willing around him, he led them in prayer, and then quieted the timid among them, as well as comforted all, not by reading, but by quoting appropriate passages from Scripture, in which he was profoundly versed.

“D’ee know when it’ll be low water, sir?” asked Joe Slag of the captain, when the ship gave one of her upward heaves and rasped her timbers again on the sides of the cave.

“Not for three hours yet, but it’s falling. I expect there will be less sea on in a short time. If the ship holds together we may yet be saved.”

There was a murmured “thank God” at these words. Then Bob Massey expressed some fear that there might be a danger of striking the rocks underneath before low water.

“I wish it was the risin’ tide,” he said, and the words took his mind back, like a flash of lightning, to the time when he used them in a very different sense. Then all was peace, hope, sunshine, and his bride was sitting like a good angel beside him, with a sweet smile on her fair face. Now, something like darkness visible, showed him his poor wife—still beside him, thank God—but clinging to his arm with looks of terror amounting almost to despair. “What a contrast!” he thought, and for the first time a feeling of rebellion arose in his mind.

“There’s no use o’ sittin’ here to be drowned like rats,” he cried, starting up. “I’ll go on deck an’ take a cast o’ the lead, an’ see what chances we have.”

“No, you won’t, Bob,” cried Nellie, throwing her arms firmly round him. “There’s big stones falling all about the deck yet. Don’t you hear them?”

As if to corroborate her words, a piece of rock nearly half a ton in weight fell on the sky-light at that moment, crashed completely through it, through the table below, and even sank into the cabin floor. Fortunately, no one was hurt, though Slag had a narrow escape, but that worthy was not easily intimidated. He rose up, and, saying that, “it was as well to be killed on deck doin’ somethin’ as in the cabin doin’ nothin’,” was about to ascend the ladder when Dr Hayward suddenly entered, all wet and dishevelled, and with blood trickling down his face.

“No use going up just now, Joe,” he said, as he sat down beside his wife, and permitted her to tie a kerchief round his head. “Only a slight wound, Eva, got while taking soundings. I find that there are sixteen fathoms of water under us, and, although I couldn’t see my hand held up before my face, I managed to make out by the flash of a match, which burned for a moment before being blown out, that the sides of the cave are quite perpendicular, not the smallest ledge to stand on. The tide, however, is ebbing fast, and the water in the cave calming, so that if no bad leak has been made by all this thumping we may yet be saved. Our only chance is to stick to the ship.”

While he was speaking the vessel again surged violently against one side of the cave, and another of the huge masses of rock that were brought down by the swaying masts came crashing on the deck.

“There is no bad leak as yet,” said the captain, re-entering the cabin, which he had quitted for the purpose of sounding the well. “If we can keep afloat for an hour or two we may be able to use the boats. Just now it would be useless to attempt launching them.”

Although the captain’s words were not particularly reassuring, his confident tone and manner infused hope, and comforted the people greatly. Some of the male passengers even volunteered to face the shower of stones, if need be, and lend a hand in launching the boats, when the time for doing so arrived.

These boats, three in number, were lying bottom up on deck, and to reach them involved the risk of death to whoever should attempt it. They were therefore compelled to wait.

It is difficult to form even a slight conception of the horrors of that night. For several hours they sat in the after-cabin, and the ship surged and plunged in the wildly-heaving water, striking the sides continually, while rocks fell at intervals on the deck, thus adding to the noise of wind and waves as they raged with echoing, deafening noise in the black cavern. Each moment it seemed as if the ship must have her planks stove in and be sunk, but she was a new vessel and strong. Of course she leaked considerably, but when the tide went down the sea calmed a little, the rocks ceased falling from the roof, and they were enabled to rig the pumps and work them vigorously. The boats, meanwhile, were cast loose and got ready to launch at the first glimmer of daylight! Fortunately, they had received no serious injury from the falling rocks.

Oh, how they longed and prayed for the day! It came at last, a gleam so faint that it showed nothing of their surroundings save the outline of the cavern’s great mouth.

“Shall we launch the boats now, sir?” asked the first mate, who was becoming anxious, because the carpenter had just reported that the water in the hold was increasing dangerously in spite of the pumps.

“Not yet—not yet,” returned the captain, hurriedly. “We must have more light first. The loss of a boat would be fatal. I’m afraid of the rising tide.”

“Afraid of the rising tide!” Again the words struck strangely on Bob Massey’s ears as he stood wiping the perspiration from his brow after a long spell at the pumps—and once more carried him back to the sunlit sands of Old England.

Soon the increase of water in the hold was so great that the getting out of the boats could no longer be delayed. The first launched was a small one. It was lowered over the stern by means of the studding-sail boom, with a block and whip, which kept it from dropping too quickly into the water. Massey and his friend Slag, being recognised as expert boatmen in trying circumstances, were sent in it, with two of the crew, to run out a line and drop an anchor in the sea outside, so that the heavier boats might be hauled out thereby. Two hundred and fifty fathoms of rope were given them—more than sufficient for the purpose. On getting outside, Bob and his friend, according to custom as lifeboat men, kept a sharp look-out on everything around them, and the feeble daylight enabled them to see that the black cliff which had, as it were, swallowed up the Lapwing, was full six hundred feet high and a sheer precipice, in some places overhanging at the top, and without the symptom of a break as far as the eye could reach in either direction.

“A black look-out, Joe,” muttered Massey, as he assisted his comrade to heave the anchor over the side.

“Ay, Bob, an’ the worst of it is that the tide’s risin’. A boat can live here as long as that ridge o’ rocks keeps off the seas, but in an hour or so it’ll be rollin’ in as bad as ever.”

“I knows it, Joe, an’ the more need to look sharp.”

Returning to the ship, our coxswain made his report, and recommended urgent haste. But the captain required no urging, for by that time the ship’s main deck was level with the water, and the seas were making a clean breach over the stern. The passengers and crew crowded towards the port gangway where the large boat was being brought round to receive the women and children first. This was such a familiar scene to the two lifeboat men that they kept cool and self-possessed from the mere force of habit. Seeing this, the captain ordered Mitford to get into the boat first, and help to stow the others, for it would be a tight pack, he said, to stow them all. Dr Hayward was ordered to assist. Ned Jarring volunteered to help to fend the boat off during the operation, and, without waiting for permission, jumped into her.

Mitford had consigned his wife to the care of his friend Massey, who at once undertook the duty by tying a kerchief round Peggy’s head to keep her hair out of her eyes, after which he did the same for Nellie. Both women were perfectly quiet and submissive—the first owing to fear and exhaustion, the last from native courage, which enabled her to rise to the occasion. Massey then stripped off all his own clothes, except shirt and trousers, so as to be ready for swimming, and, catching up a rope, advanced towards his wife, intending to fasten it round her waist.

“Peggy first, Bob; I’ll wait for you,” said his wife.

“Look sharp!” cried the captain.

Bob turned at once to Peggy, and in a few seconds she was lowered into the boat. Mrs Hayward followed. Then Massey insisted on his wife going, and the obedient Nellie submitted, but, owing to a lurch of the ship at the moment, she missed the boat, and dropped into the water. One of the men attempted to pull her in, but could not, and, as all the others were engaged at the moment in trying to fend off the rocks, Massey at once jumped into the sea, and helped to get his wife into the boat.

At that moment there arose a cry that the ship was sinking, and a wild rush was made for the long-boat, which had also been successfully launched. Of course it was instantly overcrowded, for all discipline was now at an end. Before anything else could be done the Lapwing sank in sixteen fathoms of water, carrying the long-boat and all the people in her along with it, but those in the other boat had shoved off at the first wild cry, and hauling on the anchored cable, just escaped being sucked down by the sinking ship.

Bob Massey clung to the boat’s gunwale, and thus escaped. Rowing back instantly, however, to the spot where the ship had gone down, they sought eagerly for swimmers. Only three were discovered and rescued, but the others—seventy souls in all—found a watery grave in the dark cavern of that unknown land.

Story 1 – Chapter 7

So rapidly did the final catastrophe take place that it was difficult for the rescued party at first to credit the evidence of their senses. On the spot where the Lapwing had been beating her sides against the cruel walls of the cavern, and where so many hearts had been throbbing wildly between hope and fear, no living creature remained; nothing but a few feet of the shattered masts appearing now and then above the surging waves was left to tell of the terrible tragedy that had been enacted there.

For upwards of an hour the party in the boat hovered about the place, not so much with the hope of rescuing any of their shipmates as on account of the difficulty of tearing themselves away from the fatal spot. Perhaps the natural tendency of man to hope against hope had something to do with it. Then they passed silently out of the cavern and rowed slowly along the base of the tremendous cliffs.

At length the feeling of self-preservation began to assert itself, and Bob Massey was the first to break silence with the question—

“Does any one know if there’s anything to eat aboard?”

“We’d better see to that,” observed Dr Hayward, who was steering.

Bob Massey pulled in his oar, and, without remark, began to search the boat. It was found that all the food they had brought away consisted of nine tins of preserved meat and three pieces of pork, a supply which would not go far among ten persons.

The ten survivors were Dr Hayward and his wife; Massey and Nellie; Joe Slag; John Mitford and his wife Peggy; Terrence O’Connor, the assistant cook; Tomlin, one of the cabin passengers; and Ned Jarring. All the rest, as we have said, had perished with the ill-fated Lapwing.

Little was said at first, for the hopelessness of their condition seemed so obvious that the men shrank from expressing their gloomy fears to the women who sat huddled together, wet and cold, in the bottom of the boat.

As we have said, as far as the eye could see in any direction, the frowning cliffs rose perpendicularly out of deep water. There was not even a strip of sand or a bay into which they could run in case of the wind increasing.

“There is nothing for it but to push on till we come to an inlet or break of some sort in the cliffs by which we may land,” said Hayward, speaking encouragingly to the women. “God helping us, we are sure to find some such place ere long.”

“Don’t look very like it,” muttered Black Ned, gloomily.

“We can see how it looks about as well as you can,” retorted John Mitford, indignantly. “If ye can’t say somethin’ to cheer the women, there’s no need for to look blue an’ tell us what a mere babby could see for itself.”

This remark, coming as it did from lugubrious Mitford, caused Terrence O’Connor to smile.

“True for ye,” he said, “we can see what’s fornint us, but even Black Ned can’t see round the corner.”

“Besides, there may be a flat shore on the other side o’ the island,” added Bob Massey in a cheerful tone; “I’ve often noticed islands o’ this build, and when they’re so high on one side they usually are low on the opposite side; so we’ll only have to pull round—an’ mayhap there are people on it—who knows?”

“Ay, natives pr’aps,” growled Jarring, “an’ cannibals who are fond of eatin’ white folk—specially women!”

“Shut up your black muzzle, or I’ll heave ye overboard!” said Mitford, fiercely, for like many easy-going, quiet men, he was unusually savage when fairly roused.

Whatever Black Ned may have felt, he gave no expression to his thoughts or feelings by word or look, but continued calmly to pull his oar.