By the time Octavius Pell had clothed, and fed, and warmed his drenched
and buffeted guests, the sun was slipping out of sight, and glad to be
quit of the mischief. For a minute or two, the cloud–curtain lifted
over St. Albanʼs Head, and a narrow bar of lively green striped the
lurid heavens. This was the critical period, and John Rosedew was
aware of it, as well as Octave Pell. Either the wind would shift to
south–west quicker than vanes could keep time with it, and then there
would be a lively storm, with no very wide area; or else it would come
on again with one impetuous leap and roar, and no change of direction,
and work to the south–west gradually, blowing harder until it got
there. The sea was not very heavy yet, when they went out to look at
it; the rain had ceased altogether; there was not air enough to move
the fur of a ladyʼs boa; but, out beyond the Atlantic offing, ridges
like edges of knives were jumping, as if to look over the sky–line.
“Nulla in prospectu navis,” said John Rosedew, who always talked Latin,
as a matter of course, when he met an Oxford man; “at least, so far as
I can see with the aid of my long–rangers.”
“No,” replied Pell, “and Iʼm heartily glad that there is no ship in
sight; for, unless Iʼm much mistaken—run, sir, run like lightning.
_Iʼve got no more dry clothes._”
They ran for it, and were just in time before the fury came down again.
Bob Garnet was ready to slip away, for he knew that his father would be
wild about him; he had taken his drenched hat from the firetongs, and
was tugging at the latch of the door. But now there was no help for it.
“We are in for it now,” cried Mr. Rosedew; “I have not come down for
nothing. It is, what I feared this morning, the heaviest storm that
has broken upon us for at least a generation. And we are not yet in
the worst of it. God grant there be no unfortunate ship making for the
Needles. All our boats, you say, Pell, are in the Solent long ago. Bob,
my boy, you must not expect to see your father to–night. I hope he will
guess what has happened.”
The beach, or pebble bank of Hurst, is a long and narrow spit of land,
growing narrower every year, which forms a natural breakwater to the
frith of the Solent. It curves away to the south of east from the
straighter and more lofty coast of Barton, Hordle, and Rushford. Hurst
Castle, in which it terminates, is the eastern horn of Christchurch
Bay, as Hengistbury Head is the western. The Isle of Wight and the
Needle Rocks protect this bay from the east windʼs power, but a due
south wind brings in the sea, and a south–west the Atlantic. Off this
coast we see at times those strange floating or rising islands known
by the name of the “Shingles;” which sometimes stay above water so
long, that their surface is clad with the tender green of bladderwort
and samphire; but more often they disappear after taking the air for a
few short hours. For several years now they have taken no air; and a
boatman told me the other day, that, from the rapid strides of the sea,
he thought it impossible for the “Shingles” ever to top the waves again.
Up and down the Solent channel the tide pours at a furious speed;
and the rush of the strong ebb down the narrows, flushed with the
cross–tide from St. Helenʼs, combs and pants out into Christchurch Bay,
above the floodmark of two hours since. This great eddy, or reflux,
is called the “double–tide;” and an awkward power it has for any poor
vessel to fall into.
All that night it blew and blew, harder and harder yet; the fishermenʼs
boats on the beach were caught up, and flung against the gravel–cliff;
the stout men, if they ventured out, were snatched up as a mother
snatches a child from the wheels of a carriage; the oaks of the wood,
after wailing and howling, as they had done to a thousand tempests,
found that outcry go for nothing, and with it went themselves. Seven
hundred towers of Natureʼs building showed their roots to the morning.
The old moon expired at O·32; and many a gap the new moon found,
where its mother threw playful shadows. The sons of Ytene are not
swift–witted, nor deeply read in the calendar; yet they are apt to mark
and heed the great convulsions of nature. The old men used to date
their weddings from the terrible winter of 1787; the landmark of the
young menʼs annals is the storm of 1859.
All that night, young Robert Garnet was strung by some strange tension.
Of course he could not sleep, amid that fearful uproar, although he
was plunged and lost from sight in Octavius Pellʼs great chair. The
only luxury Pell possessed—and that somehow by accident—was a deep,
and soft, and mighty chair, big enough for three people. After one of
the windows came in, which it did, with a crash, about ten oʼclock,
scattering Pellʼs tobacco–jars, and after they had made it good with
books and boxes and a rug, so that the wind was filtered through it,
John Rosedew and his curate sat on a couple of hard old Windsors,
watching the castle of Hurst. Thence would come the signal flash, if
any hapless bark should be seen driving over the waters. There they
sat, John Rosedew talking, as he could talk to a younger man, when
his great heart was moved to its depth, and the multitude of his mind
in march, and his soul anticipating it: talking so that Octave Pell,
following his silver tones, even through that turmoil, utterly forgot
the tempest, and the lapse of hours, and let fall on his lap the pipe,
which John had made him smoke.
The thunder of the billows waxing, for the wind was now south–west,
began to drown the roar of the gale, and a storm of foam was flying,
when the faint gleam of a gun at sea was answered by artilleryʼs flash
from the walls of old Henry the Eighth. Both men saw the landward light
leap up and stream to leeward; but only the younger one descried the
weak appeal from the offing.
“Where is she, Pell? Have you any idea?”
“She is away, sir, here to the right: dead in the eye of the wind.”
“Then may our God and Father pity our brothers and our sisters!”
Out ran both those strong good men, leaving poor Bob (as they thought)
asleep in the depth of the easy–chair. The little cottage was partly
sheltered by an elbow of the cliff; otherwise it would have been flying
up the bunney long ago. The moment the men came out of the shelter,
they were driven one against the other, and both against the cliff.
“My castle will go at high–water,” said Pell, though none could hear
him; “but I shall be back in time enough to get the old woman out.”
Then, as far as Pell could make out in the fierce noise and the
darkness, John Rosedew begged him to go back, while himself went
on alone. For it was Johnʼs especial business; he had procured the
lifeboat, chosen the crew, and kept the accounts; and he thought
himself responsible for any wreck that happened. But what good on earth
could Pell do, and all his chattels in danger?
“No good, very likely,” Pell shouted, “and a good deal perhaps
in–doors! Keep the sea out with a besom.”
Octave had a dry way with him, not only when he sang, but when he
thought he saw the right, and did not mean to argue it. So rector and
curate, old man and young man, trudged along together, each bending
low, and throwing his weight, like a quoit, against the wind; each
stopping and crouching at every tenth yard, as the blast irresistible
broke on them. Crusted with hunks of froth pell–mell, like a storm of
eggs on the hustings, drenched by pelting sheets of spray, deafened by
the thundering surf, and often obliged to fly with the wind from a wave
that rushed up scolloping, they battled for that scoop of the bay where
the ship must be flung by the indraught.
Up to the present, Christchurch Point, and St. Albanʼs Head beyond it,
broke (as the wind was westering) some little of the wildest sea–brunt.
But now they stood, or rather crouched, where the mountain rollers
gathering, sweeping, towering onward, avalanche upon avalanche, burst
on their destined barrier. A thousand leagues of water, swelled by
the whole weight of heaven flung on it, there leaped up on the solid
earth, and to the heaven that vexed it. As a strong man in his wrath
accepts his wifeʼs endorsement, so the surges took the minor passion of
a fierce spring–tide, rolled it in their own, and scorned the flat land
they looked down upon. Tush, the combing of their crests was bigger
than any town there. On they came, too grand to be hurried even by
the storm that roused them; each had a quarter of a mile to himself,
and who should take it from him? The white foam fell back in the wide
water valleys, and hissed and curdled away in flat loops, and the storm
took the mountain ridges again and swept the leaping snow off. Anon,
as it struck the shelving shore, each rolling monster tossed its crest
unspeakably indignant; hung with impending volume, curling like the
scroll of God; then thundered, as in judgment, down, and lashed the
trembling earth.
Among them, not a mile from shore, as the breaking daylight showed it,
heaved, and pitched, and wallowed hog–like in the trough of waters, a
large ship, swept and naked. Swept of her masts, of her canvas naked;
but clad, alas! with men and women, clustering, clinging, cowering
from the great white grave beneath them. As she laboured, reeled, and
staggered up to the storm–rent heavens, and then plunged down the
yawning chasm, every attitude, every gesture of terror, love, despair,
and madness could be descried on the object–glass of the too–faithful
telescope. As a ghastly wan gleam from the east lit up all that
quivering horror, all that plight of anguish, John Rosedew turned away
in tears, and fell upon his knees.
But Pell caught up the clear Munich glass, blocked every now and then
with foam; he wiped it with his cuff, and levelled it on a stony ledge.
There he lay behind the pebbles, himself not out of danger, unable to
move, or look away, spellbound by the awe of death in numbered moments
coming. Round him many a sturdy boatman, gazing, listening, rubbing his
eyes, wondering about the wives and children of the brave men there.
The great disaster imminent was known all over the village, and all who
dared to cross the gale had crept, under shelter, hitherwards. None was
fool enough to talk of boat, or tug, or lifeboat; a child who had then
first seen the sea must have known better than that. The best ship in
the British navy could not have come out of the Needles in the teeth of
such a hurricane.
Some of the tars had brought their old Dollonds, preventive glasses
long cashiered, and smugglersʼ night–rakers cheek by jowl, and
every sort of “perspective,” fifty years old and upward, with the
lenses cracked and rattling, and fungoid tufts in the object–glass.
Nevertheless, each man would swear that his own glass was the best of
the lot, and his neighbourʼs “not of much count.” To their minds,
telescopes like spectacles suit the proprietor only.
“By Jove, I believe sheʼll do it!” cried Pell, the chief interpreter,
his glass being the only clear one.
“Do what, sir? what?” asked a dozen voices, hurriedly.
“Get her head round to windward, and swing into smoother water. Theyʼre
in the undertow already. Oh, if they only knew it!”
They knew it, he saw, in a moment. They ran up a spare sail, ere he
could speak, to the stump of the mizen–mast, and a score of brave men
strained on the sheets until they had braced them home. They knew that
it could not stand long; it would fly away to leeward most likely
when once they mounted the wave–crest; but two or three minutes might
save them. With eight hands jamming the helm up, and the tough canvas
tugging and bellying, the ship, with the aid of the undertow, plunged
heavily to windward. All knew that the ship herself was doomed, that
she never could fetch off shore; but, if she could only hold her
course for some half–mile to the westward, she would turn the flank of
those fearful rollers, and a good stout boat might live. For there a
south–western headland broke the long fury of the sea.
Every eye was intent, every bosom drew a deep breath, as the next great
billow rose under the ship, and tossed her up to the tempest. They
had brought her as near to the wind as they dared, so as still to
have steerage way on her, and she took the whole force of the surge on
her port bow, not on her beam, as the people on shore had feared. The
sea broke bodily over her, and she staggered back from the blow, and
shook through every timber, then leaped and lurched down the terrible
valley, but still, with the good sail holding. She was under noble
seamanship, that was clear to every one, and herself a noble fabric. If
she could but surmount two billows more, without falling off from the
wind, within three points of which her head lay, most of the crew might
be rescued. Already a stout galley, manned with ten oars, was coming
out of Christchurch Harbour, dancing like a cork on the waves, though
sheltered by the headland.
Our ship rode over the next billow gallantly; it was a wave that had
some moderation, and the lungs of the gale for the moment were panting,
just as she topped the comb of it. “Hurrah!” shouted the men ashore;
“By God, sheʼll do it yet!”
By God alone could she do it. But the Father saw not fit; the third
billow was the largest of all that had yet rolled up from the ocean.
Beam–end on she clomb the mountain, heeling over heavily, showing to
the shore her deck–seams,—even the companion–finial, and the poor
things clinging there; a wail broke from them as the great sea struck
her, and swept away half a score of them.
“Nowʼs your chance, men. D—n your eyes! She wonʼt hang there two
minutes. Out with the boats you—— lubbers. Look sharp, and be d—d to
you.”
The ancient pilot, Thwarthawse, dancing and stamping, his blue jacket
flapping in the wind, and his face of the deepest plum colour, roared
to windward his whirlwind of oaths up an old split trumpet, down which
the wind came bellowing harder than his voice went up it.
“Stow that, Jacob!” cried an old Scotchman, survivor of many a wreck;
“can ye nae see his reverence, mon? Itʼs an unco thing for an auld
mon like you to swear at your mates in their shrouds, chap. I ken the
skipper of that there ship, and heʼs no lubber, no more than I be.”
Sandy Macbride was known to fear God, and to have fifty pounds in the
savings bank. Therefore no one flouted him.
“Youʼre right, Mac; youʼre right, by George!” cried Pell. “What a
glorious fellow! I can see him there holding on by the stanchion,
giving his orders as coolly as if for the cabin dinner. I could die
with that man.”
The tear in Octavius Pellʼs right eye compelled him to shift the glass
a bit. He was just the man who would have done even as that captain did.
“Hurrah, hurrah! theyʼve got the launch out; only she and the gig are
left. Troops on the deck, drawn up in a line, and the women hoisted in
first. Give them three cheers, men, though they canʼt hear you! Three
cheers, if you are Englishmen! Glorious, glorious! There they go; never
saw such a fine thing in all my life. Oh, I wish I had been a sailor!”
The tears ran down the young parsonʼs cheeks, and were blown into the
eyes of old Macbride; or else he had some of his own.
“Shove off, shove off; nowʼs your time, for the under–current is
failing her. Both of them off, as Iʼm alive; and yet a third boat I
could not see. What magnificent management! That man ought to command a
fleet. Two of them off for Christchurch Harbour; away, away, while the
wind lulls; but what is the third boat doing?” Every one was looking:
no one answered. Old Mac knew what it was, though his eyes were too old
to see much.
“Captain Roberts, Iʼll go bail, at his old tricks again. And thereʼs
none with the sense to mutiny on him, and lash his legs, as we did in
the _Samphire_.”
“At the side of the ship there is some dispute. The boat is laden to
the waterʼs edge, and the ship paying off to leeward, for there is no
man at the wheel; there goes the sail from the bolt–ropes. If they
donʼt push off, ere an oarʼs length, they will all be sucked into the
rollers! Good God! now I see what it is. There is only room for one
more, and not one of those three will take it. Two white–haired men
and a girl. Life against honour with the old men; and what is life
compared with it? Both resolved not to stir a peg; now they join to
make the girl go. Her father has got her in his arms to pitch her into
the boat; she clings around his neck so that both must go, or neither.
He could not throw her; she falls on her knees, and clings to his legs
to die with him. Smack—there, the rope is parted, and it is too late
for further argument. The troops in the boat salute the officer, and he
returns it as on parade.”
“Name of that ship?” said Jacob, curtly, to old Sandy Macbride.
“_Aliwal_, East India trader, Captain Roberts. Calcutta to Southampton.”
“Then itʼs all up now with the _Aliwal_, and every soul on board of
her.”
“Donʼt want a pilot to tell us that,” answered old Mac, testily.
“Youʼve seed a many good craft, pilot, but never one as could last five
minutes on the Shingle Bank, with this sea running.”
“Ropes, ropes!” cried Octave Pell; “in five minutes sheʼll be ashore
here.”
“No, she ‘ont, nor yet in ten,” answered his landlord, gruffly; “sheʼll
fetch away to the eastward first, now she is in the tide again,
specially with this gale on; and sheʼll take the ground over yonner,
and go to pieces with the next breaker.”
She took her course exactly as old Jacob mapped it out for her. He knew
every run and flaw of the tide, and how it gets piled in the narrows by
a very heavy storm, and runs back in the eddy which had saved so many
lives there. This has nothing to do with the “double tide;” that comes
after high–water. As the good ship traced the track of death, doing
as the waves willed (like a little boyʼs boat in the Serpentine), the
people on shore could see those three, who had contested the right of
precedence to another world.
They were all upon the quarter–deck; and three finer figures never
yet came to take the air there, in the weariness of an Indian voyage.
Captain Roberts, a tall, stout man, with ruddy cheeks and a broad white
beard, stood with his hands in his pockets, and his feet asunder,
and a sense of discipline in his face, as of a man who has done his
duty, and now obeys his Maker. No sign of flinching or dismay in his
weather–beaten eyes, as he watched his death roll towards him; though
the gazers fancied that one tear rose, perhaps at the thought of his
family just coming down–stairs at Lymington. The military man beside
him faced his death quite differently; perhaps with even less of
fear, but with more defiance, broken, every now and then, by anguish
for his daughter. He had not learned to fear the Lord, as those men
do who go down into the great deep. He looked as if he ought to be
commanding–officer of the tempest. The ship, running now before wind
and sea, darted along as a serpent darts over the graves in the
churchyard; she did not lurch any more, or labour, but rose and fell,
just showing her fore–foot or stern–post, as the billows passed under
her. And so that young maiden could stand and gaze, with her fatherʼs
arm thrown round her.
She was worthy to be his daughter; tall, and light of form, and calm,
with eyes of wondrous brightness, she was looking at her fatherʼs face
to say the last good–bye. Then she flung both arms around his neck, and
fondly, sadly, kissed him. Meanwhile the ship–captain turned away, and
thought of Susy Roberts. Suddenly he espied a life–belt washed into the
scuppers. He ran for it in a moment, came behind the maid, and, without
asking her consent, threw it over her, and fastened it. There was
little chance of it helping her, but that little chance she should have.
“Sheʼll take the ground next biller,” cried the oracular Jacob; “stand
by there with the ropes, boys.”
On the back of a huge wave rose for the last time the unfortunate
_Aliwal_. Stem on, as if with strong men steering, she rushed
through the foam and the white whirl, like a hearse run away with
in snow–drifts. Then she crashed on the stones, and the raging sea
swept her from taffrail to bowsprit, rolled her over, pitched her
across, and broke her back in two moments. The shock rang through the
roar of billows, as if a nerve of the earth were thrilling. Another
mountain–wave came marching to the roll of the tempest–drum. It curled
disdainfully over the side, like a fog sweeping over a hedgerow;
swoop—it broke the timbers away, as a giant tosses a fir–cone.
“I canʼt look any longer,” cried Pell; “give me something to feel,
men. Quick, there! I see something!”
He seized the bight of a rope, and rushed anyhow into the waters. But
John Rosedew and the life–boatmen held hard upon the coil of it, and
drew him with all their might back again. They hauled Octavius Pell
up in the manner of a cod–fish, and he was so bruised and stupefied,
that he could not tell what he had gone for. They only saw floating
timber and gear, and wreck of every sort drifting, till just for one
sight–flash a hoary head, whiter than driven waters, leaped out of the
comb of the billow. A naval man, or a military—who knows, and to whom
does it matter?
Brave men ashore, all waiting ready, dashed down the steep of death to
save him, if the great wave should toss up its plaything. All Rushford
strained at the cables that held them from the savage recoil. Worse
than useless; the only chance of it was to make more widows. The sea
leaped at those gallant strong men; there were five on either cable;
it leaped at them as the fiery furnace leaped on the plain of Dura. It
struck the two ropes into one with a buffet, as a lionʼs paw shatters
a cobweb; it dashed the menʼs heads together, and flung them all in a
pile on a ballast–heap. Lucky for them that it fought with itself, and
clashed there, and made no recoil. The white–haired corpse was seen no
more; and all Rushford shrunk back in terror.
The storm was now at its height; and of more than a hundred people
gathered on the crown of the shore, and above the reach of the billows,
not one durst stand upright. Nearer the water the wind had less power,
for the wall of waves broke the full brunt of it. But there no man,
unless he were most quick of eye and foot, might stand without great
peril. For scarcely a single billow broke, but what, in the first
rebound and toss, two churning hummocks of surf met, and flashed up
the strand like a mad white horse, far in advance of the rest. Then a
hissing ensued, and a roll of shingle, and the water poured huddling
and lappeting back from the chine itself had crannied.
As brave men fled from a rush of this sort, and cowards on the bank
were laughing at them, something white was seen in the curl of the wave
which was breaking behind it. The ebb of that inrush met the wave and
partly took the crash of it, then the white thing was shot on the shore
like a pellet, and lay one instant motionless. There was no rope there,
and the men hung back; John Rosedew cried “Shame!” and ran for it; but
they joined hands across and stopped him. Before they could look round
again, some one had raised the body. ‘Twas young Bob Garnet, and in his
arms lay the maiden senseless. She had looked at him once, and then
swooned away from the whirl, and the blows, and the terror. No rope
round his body, no cork, no pad; he had rushed full into the raging
waves, as he woke from his sleep of heaviness. He lifted the girl, and
a bending giant hung thirty feet above them.
Then a shriek, like a womanʼs, rang out on the wind, and two great arms
were tossed to heaven. Bull Garnet stood there, and strove to rush on,
strove with every muscle, but every nerve strove against it. He was
balanced and hung on the wind for a moment, as the wave hung over his
heartʼs love. Crash came the wave—what shriek should stop it, after
three hundred miles of rolling?—a crash that rang in the souls of all
whom youth could move or nobleness. Nothing was seen in the depth of
water, the swirling, hurling whiteness, until the billow had spent its
onset, and the curdle of the change was. Then Bob, swept many a fathom
in–shore, but griping still that senseless thing, that should either
live or die with him—Bob, who could swim as well or better than he
could climb a tree, but felt that he and his load were only dolls for
the wave to dandle—down he went, after showing his heels, and fought
the deadly outrush. None but Natureʼs pet would have thought of, none
but the favoured of God could have done, it. He felt the back–wave
tugging at him, he felt that he was going; if another billow broke on
him, it was all up with his work upon wire–worm. Holding his breath,
he flung his right leg over the waist of the maiden, dug his two hands
deep into the gravel, and clapped his feet together. Scarcely knowing
what was up, he held on like grim death for life, and felt a barrowload
of pebbles rolling down the small of his back. Presently he saw light
again, and sputtered out salt water, and heard a hundred people
screaming out “Hurrah!” and felt a strong arm thrown round him—not his
fatherʼs, but John Rosedewʼs. Three senseless bodies were borne to the
village—Bull Garnetʼs, and Bobʼs and the maidenʼs.