"And when you touched deck again, what did you think?"
"I thought, 'Blowed if I'm not aboard again.'"
"Did the time seem long?"
"Longer than all my lifetime."
Not more than half a minute had passed since the hulk shook herself
clear, but Larmor and Lewis had lived long. The doctor took out the
handy flask and put it to the skipper's lips; the poor man's eyes were
bright and conscious, but his jaw hung. He pointed to his chin, and the
doctor knew that the blow of falling mast or wreckage had dislocated the
jaw.
In all the wide world was there such another drama of peril and terror
being enacted? Lewis's hands almost refused their office; he was
unsteady on his legs, but he gathered his powers with a desperate effort
of the will, and set the man's jaw. "Stop, stop! You mustn't speak.
Wait." With a dripping handkerchief and his own belt Ferrier bound
Larmor's jaw up; then for the first time he looked for the fellows
forward.
Both gone! Oh! friends who trifle cheerily with that dainty second
course, what does your turbot cost? Beckon it up by rigid arithmetic,
and work out the calculation when you are on your knees if you can. All
over the North Sea that night there were desolate places that rang to
the cry of parting souls; after vain efforts and vain hopes, the
drowning seamen felt the last lethargy twine like a cold serpent around
them; the pitiless sea smote them dumb; the pitiless sky, rolling over
just and unjust, lordly peer and choking sailor, gave them no hope;
there was a whole tragedy in the breasts of all those doomed ones--a
tragedy keen and subtle as that enacted when a Kaiser dies. You may not
think so, but I know. Forlorn hope of civilization, they met the onset
of the sea and quitted themselves like men; and, when the proud sun rose
at last, the hurrying, plundering, throbbing, straining world of men
went on as usual; the lovers spoke sweet words; the strong man rejoiced
exceedingly in his strength; the portly citizen ordered his fish for
dinner, and the dead fishermen wandered hither and thither in the dark
sea-depths, their eyes sealed with the clammy ooze.
That is an item in the cost of fish which occurs to a prosaic
arithmetician.
Lewis Ferrier had certainly much the worst so far in his defensive
battle with wind and wave. Here was a landsman on a swept hulk with a
dumb captain, a maimed man; two hands overboard, and a boy as the
available ship's company. Never mind. He got Larmor below, and the
dogged skipper made signs by hissing and moving his fist swiftly upward.
"The rockets?" Larmor nodded, and pointed to a high locker. Lewis
found the rockets easily enough; he also found a ginger-beer bottle full
of matches; but of what use would matches be in that torrent of blown
spray? The cabin was worse awash than ever, and there was no
possibility of making a fire. Ferrier felt in his inside breast pocket.
Ah! the tin box of fusees was there--all dry and sound inside. He
beckoned Larmor, and signed to him expressively; then he crouched under
the hatch and pressed the flaming ball to the root of the rocket. One
swing, and the rushing messenger was through the curtain of drift, and
away in the upper air. Larmor clapped his poor hands and bowed
graciously. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes they waited; no
reply came. With steadiness born of grim despair the doctor sent away
another rocket. With fiercely eager eyes he and Larmor strove to pierce
the lashing mist, and then!--oh, yes, the long crimson stream flew,
wavered in the gale, and broke into scattered star-drift. Larmor and
the doctor put their arms round each other and sobbed. Then they told
poor death-like Withers, and his wan eyes flickered with the faint image
of a smile. Ferrier gave him the remainder of the wine, and the
helpless seaman patted his benefactor's hand like a pleased child.
The gale dropped as suddenly as it had risen, but it left an immense
smooth sea behind, for the whole impetus of two successive breezes had
set the surface water hurling along, and it mostly takes a day to smooth
the tumult down.
To say that the _Haughty Belle_ was in danger would be to put the matter
mildly; the wonder was that she did not settle sooner. The only hope
was that the wind might bring the signalling vessel down before it fell
away altogether.
Larmor pointed to the boat (which had remained sound for a mercy), and
the doctor saw that he wanted her got ready. He sung out to the boy,
"Ask Withers to steady himself the best way he can, and you come up and
tell me how to clear the boat." Only one of the wire ropes needed to be
thrown off; then the boy squeaked shrilly, "Make the painter fast to a
belaying-pin for fear a sea lifts the boat over," and then Ferrier was
satisfied. His strength was like the strength of madness, and he felt
sure that he could whirl the boat over the side himself without the aid
of the falls. His evolutions while he was working on the swashing deck
were not graceful or dignified, but he was pleased with himself; the
fighting spirit of Young England was roused in him, and, in spite of
numbing cold, the bite of hunger, and all his bruises, he sang out
cheerily, "Never mind, skipper; I'll live to be an old salt yet."
Only one quarter of an hour passed, and then a vessel came curtseying
gracefully down.
"What's that?" shouted Ferrier.
Larmor pointed to the questioner.
"Do you mean it's the yacht?"
The skipper nodded. The doctor would have fallen had he not brought all
his force to bear; the strain was telling hard, and soon Lewis Ferrier's
third stage of education was to be completed.
The schooner swam swiftly on, like a pretty swan. Ah! sure no ship come
to bear the shipwrecked men to fairyland could have seemed lovelier than
that good, solid yacht. Right alongside she came, on the leeward quarter
of the hulk. _Four_ ladies were on deck.
"Ah! the invalid ghosts are up. _That_ ship hasn't suffered very much,"
said Lewis.
When Tom Lennard caught sight of Ferrier he gathered his choicest
energies together for the production of a howl. This vocal effort is
stated by competent critics to have been the most effective performance
ever achieved by the gifted warbler. He next began a chaste but
somewhat too vigorous war-dance, but this original sign of welcome was
soon closed by a specially vindictive roll of the vessel, and Thomas
descended to the scuppers like another Icarus.
Ah! blessed sight! The boat, the good, friendly faces of the seamen;
and there, in the stern sheets, the pallid, spiritual face of Henry
Fullerton, looking, as Ferrier thought, like a vision from a stormless
world of beatified souls.
"Two of you men must come and help to lug my patient up."
Could you only have seen that gallant simpleton's endurance of grinding
pain, and his efforts to suppress his groans, you would have had many
strange and perhaps tender thoughts. Mr. Blair was watching the
operations from the yacht, and he said--
"Yes, Lennard, the doctor is right; we need a hospital here. Look at
that poor bundle of agonies coming over the side. How easy it would be
to spare him if we only had the rudiments of proper apparatus here!
Yes, we must have a hospital."
Tom answered: "Yes, and look at the one with the head broken. He'll
suffer a bit when he jumps."
And indeed he did, but he bore the jar like the Trojan that he was--the
good, simple sea-dog.
"Hurry away now, all. I wouldn't give the poor old _Belle_ another
half-hour," said the mate.
In a minute or two the cripples were safe, and Ferrier was in the power
of Blair and Lennard, who threatened to pull his bruised arms away. The
two gentlemen pretended to be in an uproarious state of jollity, and to
hear them trying to say, "Ha! ha!" like veritable war-horses, while the
tears rolled down their cheeks, was a very instructive experience.
And now I must speak of a matter which may possibly offend the finer
instincts of a truly moral age. Mrs. Walton totally forgot matronly
reserve; she stepped up to Mr. Ferrier, and, saying, "My brave fellow"
(it is a wicked world, and I must speak truth about it)--yes, she said,
"My brave fellow!" and then she kissed him! Blair's sister, Mrs.
Hellier, was more Scotch in accent than her brother, and she crowned the
improprieties of this most remarkable meeting by giving the modest young
savant _two_ kisses--I am accurate as to the number--and saying, "My
bonny lad, you needn't mind me; I have three sons as big as yourself."
Then the battered hero was welcomed by two joyous girls, and the young
Scotch niece said, "We fairly thought you were gone, Mr. Ferrier, and
all of us cried, and Miss Dearsley worst of all."
Half dazed, starving, weary to the edge of paralysis, the young doctor
staggered below, ate cautiously a little bread and milk, bathed himself,
and ended this phase of his lesson with an ecstatic stretch on a couch
that was heavenly to his wrenched limbs. Before he sank over into the
black sleep of exhausted men, he saw Henry Fullerton's beautiful eyes
bent on him. The evangelist patted the young doctor's shoulder and
said, "God has sent a sign to show that you are a chosen worker; you
durst not reject it; you have gone through the valley of the shadow of
death, and you must not neglect the sign lest you displease the One who
made you His choice. I've heard already what the men say about you. Now
sleep, and I'll bring you some soup when you wake."
Like all the men who move the world, Fullerton was a practical man
doubled with a mystic. A mystic who has a wicked and supremely powerful
intellect may move the nations of men and dominate them--for a
time--yes, for a time. Your Napoleon, Wallenstein, Strafford have their
day, and the movement of their lips may at any time be the sign of
extinction for thousands; the murder-shrieks of nations make the music
that marks their progress; strong they are and merciless. But they lean
on the sword; they pass into the Night, leaving no soul the better for
their tremendous pilgrimage.
But the good mystic plants influences like seed, and the goodly growths
cover the waste places of the earth with wealth of fruit and glory of
bloom. I think of a few of the good mystics, and I would rather be one
of them than rule over an empire. Penn, George Fox, and General
Gordon--these are among the salt of the earth.
So the young man slept on, and the good folk who had come through peril
as well, talked of him until I think his dreams must have been coloured
with their praises. The wounded seamen were carefully bestowed, and Tom
Betts crawled out to greet them.
When Marion went down to see Withers, she said, "I was so grieved to see
how you had to be thrown about; but never mind, I have made up my mind
that very few more men shall suffer like that. Now sleep, and the
doctor shall see you when he has rested--at least, I know he will."
Then Withers took Miss Dearsley's hand in his brown, ragged, cracked
paw, and kissed it--which is offence number three against the
proprieties. But then you know the soldiers used to Mss Florence
Nightingale's shadow! Didn't they?
*CHAPTER V.*
*AFTER THE STORMS.*
It was very pleasant on the third day that followed the gale; the sky
once more took its steel-grey shade, the sharp breezes stole over gentle
rollers and covered each sad-coloured bulge with fleeting ripples. That
blessed breeze, so pure, so crisp, so potently shot through with magic
savours of iodine and ozone, exhilarates the spirits until the most
staid of men break at times into schoolboy fun. Do you imagine that
religious people are dull, or dowie, as the Scotch say? Not a bit of
it. They are the most cheerful and wholesome of mortals, and I only
wish my own companions all my life had been as genial and merry. How
often and often have I been in companies where men had been feeding--we
won't say "dining," because that implies something delicate and
rational. The swilling began, and soon the laughter of certain people
sounded like the crackling of thorns under a pot, and we were all
jolly--so jolly. The table was an arena surrounded by flushed persons
with codfishy eyes, and all the diners congratulated themselves on being
the most jovial fellows under the moon. But what about next morning?
At that time your thoroughly jovial fellow who despises saintly milksops
is usually a dull, morose, objectionable person who should be put in a
field by himself. Give me the man who is in a calmly genial mood at six
in the morning.
That was the case with all our saintly milksops on board the yacht. At
six Blair and Tom were astir; soon afterwards came the ladies and the
other men, and the company chatted harmlessly until the merry breakfast
hour was over; their palates were pure; their thoughts were gentle, and,
although a Cape buffalo may be counted as rather an unobtrusive vocalist
in comparison with Mr. Lennard, yet, on the whole, the conversation was
profitable, and generally refined. Tom's roars perhaps gave soft
emphasis to the quieter talkers.
In the middle of the bright, sharp morning the whole of our passengers
gathered in a clump aft, and desultory chat went on. Said Blair, "I
notice that the professor's been rather reticent since we mariners
rescued him."
"I am not quite a hero, and that last night on the _Haughty Belle_ isn't
the kind of thing that makes a man talkative. Then that poor silly soul
down below gave me a good deal to think about. He must have suffered
enough to make the rack seem gentle, and yet the good blockhead only
thought of telling us to leave him alone in case the vessel went. Did
you ever know, Miss Dearsley, of a man doing such a thing before? And
you see he hasn't said anything since he came aboard, except that he
never knowed what a real bed was afore. These things take me. We spend
hundreds of thousands on the merest wastrels in the slums, and the
finest class that we've got are left neglected. I would rather see
every racecourse loafer from Whitechapel and Southwark blotted out of
the world than I would lose ten men like that fellow Withers."
Marion Dearsley said, "I don't think the neglect is really blameworthy.
For instance, I'm sure that my uncle knows nothing about what we have
seen in the last few days. He is charitable on system, and he weighs
and balances things so much that we tease him. He never gives a sixpence
unless he knows all the facts of the case, and I'm sure when I tell him
he'll be willing to assist Mr. Fullerton. Then I'm as ignorant as my
uncle. I can guess a great deal, of course, but really I've only seen
about half a dozen men, after all. It's terrible to watch the ships in
bad weather, but for our purpose--I mean Mr. Fullerton's purpose--we
might as well have been looking at Stanfield's pictures."
"Never mind. You fahscinate your uncle, Miss Dearsley, and we'll show
you what we can do. What do you think, Miss Ranken?"
Miss Lena Ranken, Mr. Blair's niece, creased her brow in pert little
wrinkle; "I'm not sure that I know anything; Marion there studies
questions of all sorts, but an ordinary girl has to do without
knowledge. I know that when auntie and I were wishing you would drop us
over into the water, I thought of the men who use the same damp bed for
two months instead of having changes and all that."
"What is your idea now, Ferrier, about the business? I'm not asking you
for a gratis lecture, but I want to see how far you would go."
"Well, frankly, at present I think that Fullerton's the best guide for
all of us. I should be a mock-modest puppy if I pretended not to know a
good deal about books, because books are my stock-in-trade; but I've
just seen a new corner of life, and I've learned how little I really
know. Head is all well in its way; a good head may administer, but
great thoughts spring from the heart."
"Very good, Professor. Oh, bee-yootiful! Great thoughts spring from the
heart."
Fullerton broke in with dreamy distinctness, "I think the doctor will
agree with me that you must never frame a theory from a small number of
instances. I never even ventured to hint what I should like to any of
our friends until I had been at sea here for a long time. I'm convinced
now that there is much misery all over the fishing banks, and I have a
conviction that I shall help to remove it. I am called to make the
effort, but I never listen to sentiment without also hearing what common
sense has to say. Perhaps we should all see the everyday life of the
men, and see a good deal of it before we begin theorizing. Look at that
smack away on our port bow. I'll be bound one or two are hurt in some
way there. That's one of 120 sail that we saw; multiply 120 by 20, and
then you have the number of vessels that we must attend under this
crackbrained scheme of ours. All the ledger and daybook men say we are
crack-brained. Now, if we can go on doing just a little with our
ordinary dispensaries, is it wise to risk playing at magnificence? You
see I am taking the side of Mr. Commonsense against my own ideas."
"I certainly think you may succeed," said Miss Dearsley.
"So do I; and now you see my point. We want to persuade other people as
quickly as possible to think as we do. To persuade, we must back all
our talkee-talkee by facts, and to get facts we must work and endure in
patience. You see what an amazingly clear political economist I am.
Wait till we run into the fleet; we shall be sure to catch them before
the trawls go down for the night, and, unless I'm mistaken, some of us
will be astonished. I never go into a new fleet without seeing what a
little weir we have at present to check a Niagara of affliction."
Mrs. Walton had much to do with many philanthropic movements, and men
were always glad to hear her judgments--mainly because she was not a
platform woman. She turned an amused look on Fullerton, and said, "Of
course a woman can't deal with logic and common sense and all those
dreadful things, and I know what a terribly rigid logician Mr. Fullerton
is. I think, even without seeing any more misery and broken bones and
things, that we have no very great difficulty before us. The case is as
simple as can be--to a woman. There is an enormous fund set aside by
the public for charity, and everybody wants to see a fair distribution.
If a slater comes off a roof and breaks a limb, there is a hospital for
him within half an hour's drive in most towns. If one of our men here
breaks his arm, there is no hospital within less than two days' steam.
We don't want the public to think the fisher is a more deserving man
than the slater; we want both men to have a fair chance. Charitable men
can see the slater, so they help him; they can't see the fisher without
running the chance of being bruised and drenched, so they don't help
him--at present. They don't want good feeling; they want eyes, and we
must act as eyes for them. Women can only be useful on shore; you
gentlemen must do everything that is needed out here. I'm very glad
I've seen the North Sea in a fury, but I should not care to be a mere
coddled amateur, nor would any one else that I work with."
"Quite right, madam," said the professor, nodding his head with the
gravity of all Cambridge; "and I should like to see women taking part in
the management of our sea hospitals if the scheme is ever to be any more
than a dream. The talking women are like the talking men: they
squabble, they recriminate, they screech and air their vanity, and they
mess up every business they touch. But if you have committee work to do,
and want economy and expedition, then give me one or two lady members to
assist."
Then Blair called, "Come along, skipper; she's going easy. Bring up one
or two of the men and we'll have some singing."
Now the ordinary sailor sings songs with the merriest or most blackguard
words to the most dirge-like tunes; but our fishermen sing religious
words to the liveliest tunes they can learn. I notice they are fonder
of waltz rhythms than of any others. The merchant sailor will drawl the
blackguard "I'll go no more a-roving" to an air like a prolonged wail;
the fisherman sings "Home, beautiful home" as a lovely waltz. Blair
always encouraged the men to sing a great deal, and therein he showed
the same discretion as good merchant mates.
I cannot describe Freeman's ecstasies, and I wish I could only give an
idea of the helmsman's musical method. This latter worthy had easy
steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang
some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the
gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you
expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his
voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most blood-curdling bass growl,
which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the
silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was
entranced with the sweetness and power of his own performance, and the
passengers were more than amused, so every one was satisfied.
The gentlemen who vary my slumbers by howling "The Rollicking Rams" in
eight different keys at four in the morning would call the ship's
company of that schooner soft. There are opinions and opinions. At any
rate the hours passed softly away until the yacht ran clean into the
thick of the fleet, and the merry, eldritch exchange of salutes began.
The second breeze had been worse than the first, and many men had gone;
but the smacksmen, by a special mercy, have no time for morbid brooding.
They will risk their lives with the most incredible dauntlessness to
save a comrade. The Albert Medal is, I make bold to say, deserved by a
score of men in the North Sea every year. The fellows will talk with
grave pity about Jim or Jack, who were lost twenty years ago; they
remember all his ways, his last words, his very relatives; but, when a
breeze is over, they make no moan over the lost ones until they gather
in prayer-meetings.
"Watch now, and you'll soon see something," said Blair to Ferrier.
The boats began to flit round on the quiet sea, and the lines of them
converged towards the schooner or towards a certain smart smack, which
Fullerton eyed with a queer sort of paternal and proprietary interest.
The men knew that the yacht was free to them as a dispensary, and the
care they took to avoid doing unnecessary damage was touching. When you
are wearing a pair of boots weighing jointly about three stone, you
cannot tread like a fairy. Blair knew this, and, though his boat was
scrupulously clean, he did not care for the lady's boudoir and oak floor
business.
Lewis had his hands full--so full that the ladies went below. The great
scholar's mind was almost paralyzed by the phenomena before him. Could
it be possible that, in wealthy, Christian England there ever was a time
when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of affairs?
The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after the
fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow, drizzle
of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's nerves.
The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were other
accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to
fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through such a battle
without risks. There were no malingerers; the bald, brutal facts of
crushed bones, or flayed scalp, or broken leg, or poisoned hand were
there in evidence, and the men used no extra words after they had
modestly described the time and circumstances under which they met with
their trouble. Ferrier worked as long as he could, and then joined the
others at tea--that most pleasant of all meetings on the sombre North
Sea. The young man was glum in face, and he could not shake off his
abstraction. At last he burst out, in answer to Fullerton, "I feel like
a criminal. I haven't seen fifty per cent. of the men who came, and
I've sent back at least half a dozen who have no more right to be
working than they have to be in penal servitude. It is ghastly, and yet
what can we do? I have no mawkish sentiment, but I could have cried
over one fellow. His finger was broken, and then blood-poisoning set
in. Up to the collar-bone his arm is discoloured, and the glands are
blackish-blue here and there. He smiled as he put out his hand, and he
said, 'He du hurt, sir. I've had hardly an hour's sleep since the first
breeze, and, when I du get over, I fare to feel as if cats and dogs and
fish and things was bitin'.' Then I asked him if he had stuck to work.
Yes; he had helped to haul as late as this last midnight. Now he's gone
back, and I must see him, at any price, to-morrow, or I cannot save that
arm. I couldn't hurry like a butcher, and so there will be many a man
in pain this night."
Marion Dearsley was deeply stirred. "I wish I could go round with you
to-morrow and search out any bad cases."
"I must tell you that, so far as I can see, almost every conceivable
kind of accident happens during a violent gale--everything, from death
to a black eye. But, all the same, I wish you _could_ come with me."
Blair burst into his jolly laugh; he was such a droll dog was Blair, and
he _would_ have his joke, and he _would_ set up sometimes, as a sly
rascal, don't you know--though he was the tenderest and kindest of
beings.
"This is what your fine scheme has come to, is it? Oh! I see a grand
chance for the novel-writers."
Oh, Blair was indeed a knowing customer. He made Ferrier look a little
foolish; but the ladies knew him, Tom Lennard adored him, and the grand,
calm Marion smiled gently on him. In the case of any other man it would
have seemed like sacrilege to talk of a sentimental flirtation before
that young woman; but then she sometimes called him Uncle John and
sometimes Mr. Blair, according to the company they were in; so what
would you have?
After tea came the men's time for smoking; the bitter night was thick
with stars; the rime lay on the bulwarks, and, when the moon came out,
the vessel was like a ghostly fabric. Ferrier took charge of the two
girls, and Tom entertained the elder ladies with voluminous oratory.
The surgeon was uneasy; the sudden splendour of the moon was lost on
him, and he only thought of her as he might of a street lamp.
"I'm glad the moon has come, Miss Dearsley. If there is no chance of her
clouding over, I shall ask the skipper to slip us into the thick of the
fleet, and I'll take the boat."
"You are very good to take the risk after that dreadful time."
"I'm afraid I only follow a professional instinct. One thing is
certain, I shall stay out here for the winter and do what I can."
Girls are tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in
fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of
laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion
Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but she said
enough.
"I'm not sure that you will not be better here than spending time in
society--that is, if you have no pressing ambition, as most men have. I
mean ambition for personal success and praise, and position. My brother
always spoke of Parliament, and I suppose you would aim at the Royal
Society. Girls have little scope, but I should imagine you must
suffer."
"Maisie, you're the dearest old preacher in the world. Why don't you
persuade Mr. Ferrier to be a great man on shore instead of coming out
here to be bruised, and drowned, and sent home, and all that kind of
thing?"