Ortho and Wany were in Penzance looking for cows that had been taken by
the Press gang, when they met the Pope of Rome wearing a plumed hat and
Teresa’s second best dress. He had an iron walking stick in his hand
with a negro head carved at the top and an ivory ferrule, and every time
he tapped the road it rang under him.
“Hollow, you see,” said His Holiness. “Eaten away by miners and
Buccas—scandalous! One more convulsion like the Lisbon earthquake of
fifty-five and we shall all fall in. Everything is hollow, when you come
to think of it—cups, kegs, cannon, ships, churches, crowns and
heads—everything. We shall not only fall in but inside out. If you
don’t believe me, listen.”
Whereupon he gathered his skirts and ran up Market Jew Street laying
about him with the iron stick, hitting the ground, the houses and
bystanders on the head, and everything he touched rumbled like a big or
little gong, in proportion to its size. Finally he hit the Market House;
it exploded and Ortho woke up.
There was a full gale blowing from the southwest and the noise of the
sea was rolling up the valley in roaring waves. The Bosula trees creaked
and strained. A shower of broken twigs hit the window and the wind
thudded on the pane like a fist. Ortho turned over on his other side and
was just burying his head under the pillow when he heard the explosion
again. It was a different note from the boom of the breakers, sharper.
He had heard something like that before—where? Then he remembered the
Breton with the cutter in chase—guns! A chair fell over in his mother’s
room. She was up. A door slammed below, boots thumped upstairs, Bohenna
shouted something through his mother’s door and clumped down hurriedly.
Ortho could not hear all he said, but he caught two essential words,
“Wreck” and “Cove.” More noise on the stairs and again the house door
slammed; his mother had gone. He shook Eli awake.
“There’s a ship ashore down to Cove,” he said; “banging off guns she
was. Mother and Ned’s gone. Come on.”
Eli was not anxious to leave his bed; he was comfortable and sleepy. “We
couldn’t do nothing,” he protested.
“Might see some foreigners drowned,” said Ortho optimistically. “She
might be a pirate like was sunk in Newlyn last year, full of blacks and
Turks.”
“They’d kill and eat us,” said Eli.
Ortho shook his head. “They’ll be drowned first—and if they ain’t
Ned’ll wrastle ’em.”
In settlement of further argument he placed his foot in the small of his
brother’s back and projected him onto the floor. They dressed in the
dark, fumbled their way downstairs and set off down the valley. In the
shelter of the Bosula woods they made good progress; it was
comparatively calm there, though the treetops were a-toss and a rotten
bough hurtled to earth a few feet behind them. Once round the elbow and
clear of the timber, the gale bent them double; it rushed, shrieking, up
the funnel of the hills, pushed them round and backwards. Walking
against it was like wading against a strong current. The road was the
merest track, not four feet at its widest, littered with rough bowlders,
punctuated with deep holes. The brothers knew every twist and trick of
the path, but in the dark one can blunder in one’s own bedroom; moreover
the wind was distorting everything. They tripped and stumbled, were
slashed across the face by flying whip-thongs of bramble, torn by
lunging thorn boughs, pricked by dancing gorse-bushes. Things suddenly
invested with malignant animation bobbed out of the dark, hit or
scratched one and bobbed back again. The night was full of mad terror.
Halfway to the Cove, Ortho stubbed his toe for the third time, got a
slap in the eye from a blackthorn and fell into a puddle. He wished he
hadn’t come and proposed that they should return. But Eli wouldn’t hear
of it. He wasn’t enjoying himself any more than his brother, but he was
going through with it. He made no explanation, but waddled on. Ortho let
him get well ahead and then called him back, but Eli did not reply.
Ortho wavered. The thought of returning through those creaking woods all
alone frightened him. He thought of all the Things-that-went-by-Night,
of hell-hounds, horsemen and witches. The air was full of witches on
broomsticks and demons on black stallions stampeding up the valley on a
dreadful hunt. He could hear their blood-freezing halloos, the blare of
horns, the baying of hounds. He wailed to Eli to stop, and trotted,
shivering, after him.
The pair crawled into Monks Cove at last plastered with mud, their
clothes torn to rags. A feeble pilchard-oil “chill” burnt in one or two
windows, but the cottages were deserted. Spindrift, mingled with clots
of foam, was driving over the roofs in sheets. The wind pressed like a
hand on one’s mouth; it was scarcely possible to breathe facing it.
Several times the boys were forced down on all fours to avoid being
blown over backwards. The roar of the sea was deafening, appalling.
Gleaming hills of surf hove out of the void in quick succession,
toppled, smashed, flooded the beach with foam and ran back, sucking away
the sands.
The small beach was thronged with people; all the Covers were there,
men, women and children, also a few farm-folk, drawn by the guns. They
sheltered behind bowlders, peered seawards, and shouted in each other’s
ears.
“Spanisher, or else Portingal,” Ortho heard a man bellow.
“Jacky’s George seen she off Cribba at sundown. Burnt a tar barrel and
fired signals southwest of Apostles—dragging by her lights. She’ll
bring up presently and then part—no cables won’t stand this. The
Minstrel’ll have her.”
“No, the Carracks, with this set,” growled a second. “Carracks for a
hundred poun’. They’ll crack she like a nut.”
“Carracks, Minstrel or Shark’s Fin, she’m _ours_,” said the first.
“Harken!”
Came a crash from the thick darkness seawards, followed a grinding noise
and second crash. The watchers hung silent for a moment, as though awed,
and then sprang up shouting.
“Struck!”
“Carracks have got her!”
“Please God a general cargo!”
“Shan’t be long now, my dears, pickin’s for one and all.”
Men tied ropes round their waists, gave the ends to their women-folk and
crouched like runners awaiting the signal.
A dark object was tossed high on the crest of a breaker, dropped on the
beach, dragged back and rolled up again.
Half a dozen men scampered towards it and dragged it in, a ship’s
pinnace smashed to splinters. Part of a carved rail came ashore, a
poop-ladder, a litter of spars and a man with no head.
These also were hauled above the surf line; the wreckers wanted a clear
beach. Women set to work on the spars, slashing off tackle, quarreling
over the possession of valuable ropes and block. A second batch of spars
washed in with three more bodies tangled amongst them, battered out of
shape. Then a mass of planking, timbers, barrel staves, some bedding
and, miraculously, a live dog. Suddenly the surf went black with bobbing
objects; the cargo was coming in—barrels.
A sea that will play bowls with half-ton rocks will toss wine casks
airily. The breakers flung them on the beach; they trundled back down
the slope and were spat up again. The men rushed at them, whooping;
rushed right into the surf up to their waists, laid hold of a prize and
clung on; were knocked over, sucked under, thrown up and finally dragged
out by the women and ancients pulling like horses on the life-lines. A
couple of tar barrels came ashore among the others. Teresa, who was much
in evidence, immediately claimed them, and with the help of some old
ladies piled the loose planking on the wreck of the pinnace, saturated
the whole with tar and set it afire to light the good work. In a few
minutes the gale had fanned up a royal blaze. That done, she knotted a
salvaged halliard about Bohenna, and with Davy, the second farm hand,
Teresa and the two boys holding on to the shore end, he went into the
scramble with the rest.
Barrels were spewed up by every wave, the majority stove in, but many
intact. The fisher-folk fastened on them like bulldogs, careless of
risk. One man was stunned, another had his leg broken. An old widow,
having nobody to work for her and maddened at the sight of all this
treasure-trove going to others, suddenly threw sanity to the winds,
dashed into the surf, butted a man aside and flung herself on a cask.
The cask rolled out with the back-drag, the good dame with it. A breaker
burst over them and they went out of sight in a boil of sand, gravel and
foam. Bohenna plunged after them, was twice swept off his feet, turned
head over heels and bumped along the bottom, choking, the sand stinging
his face like small shot. He groped out blindly, grasped something solid
and clung on. Teresa, feeling more than she could handle on her line,
yelled for help. A dozen sprang to her assistance, and with a tug they
got Bohenna out, Bohenna clinging to the old woman, she still clinging
to her barrel. She lay on the sand, her arms about her prize, three
parts drowned, spitting salt water at her savior.
He laughed. “All right, mother; shan’t snatch it from ’ee. ’Tis your
plunder sure ’nough.” Took breath and plunged back into the surf. The
flow of cargo stopped, beams still came in, a top mast, more shattered
bodies, some lengths of cable, bedding, splinters of cabin paneling and
a broken chest, valueless odds and ends. The wreckers set about
disposing of the sound casks; men staggered off carrying them on rough
stretchers, women and children rolled others up the beach, the coils of
rope disappeared. Davy, it turned out, had brought three farm horses and
left them tied up in a pilchard-press. These were led down to the beach
now, loaded (two barrels a horse), and taken home by the men.
Teresa still had a cask in hand. Bohenna could hardly make a second
journey before dawn. Moreover, it was leaking, so she stove the head in
with a stone and invited everybody to help themselves. Some ran to the
houses for cups and jugs, but others could not wait, took off their
sodden shoes and baled out the contents greedily. It was overproof
Oporto wine and went to their unaccustomed heads in no time. Teresa,
imbibing in her wholesale fashion, was among the first to feel the
effects. She began to sing. She sang “Prithee Jack, prithee Tom, pass
the can around” and a selection of sottish ditties which had found favor
in Portsmouth taverns, suiting her actions to the words. From singing
she passed to dancing, uttering sharp “Ai-ees” and “Ah-has” and waving
and thumping her detached shoe as though it were a tambourine. She
infected the others. They sang the first thing that came into their
heads and postured and staggered in an endeavor to imitate her,
hoarse-throated men dripping with sea water, shrill young women, gnarled
beldames dribbling at the mouth, loose-jointed striplings,
cracked-voiced ancients contracted with rheumatism, squeaky boys and
girls. Drink inspired them to strange cries, extravagant steps and
gesticulations. They capered round the barrel, dipping as they passed,
drank and capered again, each according to his or her own fashion.
Teresa, the presiding genius, lolled over the cask, panting, shrieking
with laughter, whooping her victims on to fresh excesses. They hopped
and staggered round and round, chanting and shouting, swaying in the
wind which swelled their smocks with grotesque protuberances, tore the
women’s hair loose and set their blue cloaks flapping. Some tumbled and
rose again, others lay where they fell. They danced in a mist of flying
spindrift and sand with the black cliffs for background, the blazing
wreckage for light, the fifes and drums of the gale for orchestra. It
might have been a scene from an infernal ballet, a dance of witches and
devils, fire-lit, clamorous, abandoned.
The eight drowned seamen, providers of this good cheer, lay in a row
apart, their dog nosing miserably from one to the other, wondering why
they were so indifferent when all this merriment was toward, and barking
at any one who approached them.
When the Preventive men arrived with dawn they thought at first it was
not a single ship that had foundered but a fleet, so thick was the beach
with barrel staves and bodies, but even as they stared some corpses
revived, sat up, rose unsteadily and made snake tracks for the cottages;
they were merely the victims of Teresa’s bounty. Teresa herself was fast
asleep behind a rock when the Preventive came, but she woke up as the
sun rose in her eyes and spent a pleasant hour watching their fruitless
hunt for liquor and offering helpful suggestions.
Hunger gnawing her, she whistled her two sons as if they had been dogs
and made for home, tacking from side to side of the path like a ship
beating to windward and cursing her Maker every time she stumbled. The
frightened boys kept fifty yards in rear.
In return for Teresa’s insults the Preventives paid Bosula a visit later
in the day. Teresa, refreshed by some hours’ sleep, followed the
searchers round the steading, jeering at them while they prodded sticks
into hay-stacks and patches of newly dug ground or rapped floors and
walls for hollow places. She knew they would never find those kegs; they
were half a mile away, sunk in a muddy pool further obscured by willows.
Bohenna had walked the horses upstream and down so that there should be
no telltale tracks. The Preventives were drawing a blank cover. It
entertained Teresa to see them getting angrier and angrier. She was
prodigal with jibes and personalities. The Riding Officer retired at
dusk, informing the widow that it would give him great pleasure to tear
her tongue out and fry it for breakfast. Teresa was highly amused. Her
good humor recovered and that evening she broached a cask, hired a
fiddler and gave a dance in the kitchen.