Until she was nineteen years old, Dorothy lived a very uneventful life;
for one week was much the same as another in the placid existence of the
village. On Sunday mornings, when the church-bells began to ring, you
would meet her walking over the moor with a springy step. Her shawl was
gay, and her dress was of the most pronounced colour that could be
bought in the market-town. Her brown hair was gathered in a net, and her
calm eyes looked from under an old-fashioned bonnet of straw. Her feet
were always bare, but she carried her shoes and stockings slung over her
shoulder. When she got near the church she sat down in the shade of a
hedge and put them on; then she walked the rest of the distance with a
cramped and civilized gait. On the Monday mornings early she carried the
water from the well. Her great "skeel" was poised easily on her head;
and, as she strode along singing lightly without shaking a drop of water
over the edge of her pail, you could see how she had come by her erect
carriage. When the boats came in, she went to the beach and helped to
carry the baskets of fish to the cart. She was then dressed in a sort of
thick flannel blouse and a singular quantity of brief petticoats. Her
head was bare, and she looked far better than in her Sunday clothes. If
the morning were fine she sat out in the sun and baited the lines, all
the while lilting old country songs in her guttural dialect. In the
evening she would spend some time chatting with other lasses in the Row;
but she never had a very long spell of that pastime, for she had to be
at work winter and summer by about five or six in the morning. The
fisher-folk do not waste many candles by keeping late hours. She was
very healthy and powerful, very ignorant, and very modest. Had she lived
by one of the big harbours, where fleets of boats come in, she might
have been as rough and brazen as the girls often are in those places.
But in her secluded little village the ways of the people were
old-fashioned and decorous; and girls were very restrained in their
manners. No one would have taken her to be anything more than an
ordinary country girl had not a chance enabled her to show herself full
of bravery and resource.
Every boat in the village went away North one evening, and not a man
remained in the Row excepting three very old fellows, who were long past
work of any kind. When a fisherman grows helpless with age he is kept by
his own people, and his days are passed in quietly smoking on the
kitchen settle or in looking dimly out over the sea from the bench at
the door. But a man must be sorely "failed" before he is reduced to
idleness, and able to do nothing that needs strength. A southerly gale,
with a southerly sea, came away in the night, and the boats could not
beat down from the northward. By daylight they were all safe in a
harbour about eighteen miles north of the village. The sea grew worse
and worse, till the usual clouds of foam flew against the houses or
skimmed away into the fields beyond. When the wind reached its height
the sounds it made in the hollows were like distant firing of
small-arms, and the waves in the hollow rocks seemed to shake the ground
over the cliffs. A little schooner came round the point, running before
the sea. She might have got clear away, because it was easy enough for
her, had she clawed a short way out, risking the beam sea, to have made
the harbour where the fishers were. But the skipper kept her close in,
and presently she struck on a long tongue of rocks that trended far out
eastward. The tops of her masts seemed nearly to meet, so it appeared as
if she had broken her back. The seas flew sheer over her, and the men
had to climb into the rigging. All the women were watching and waiting
to see her go to pieces. There was no chance of getting a boat out, so
the helpless villagers waited to see the men drown; and the women cried
in their shrill, piteous manner. Dorothy said, "Will she break up in an
hour? If I thowt she could hing there, I would be away for the
lifeboat." But the old men said, "You can never cross the burn." Four
miles south, behind the point, there was a village where a lifeboat was
kept; but just half-way a stream ran into the sea, and across this stream
there was only a plank bridge. Half a mile below the bridge the water
spread far over the broad sand and became very shallow and wide. Dorothy
spoke no more, except to say "I'll away." She ran across the moor for a
mile, and then scrambled down to the sand so that the tearing wind might
not impede her. It was dangerous work for the next mile. Every yard of
the way she had to splash through the foam, because the great waves were
rolling up very nearly to the foot of the cliffs. An extra strong sea
might have caught her off her feet, but she did not think of that; she
only thought of saving her breath by escaping the direct onslaught of
the wind. When she came to the mouth of the burn her heart failed her
for a little. There was three-quarters of a mile of water covered with
creamy foam, and she did not know but what she might be taken out of her
depth. Yet she determined to risk it, and plunged in at a run. The sand
was hard under foot, but, as she said, when the piled foam came softly
up to her waist she "felt gey funny." Half-way across she stumbled into
a hole caused by a swirling eddy, and she thought all was over; but her
nerve never failed her, and she struggled till she got a footing again.
When she reached the hard ground she was wet to the neck, and her hair
was sodden with her one plunge "overhead." Her clothes troubled her with
their weight in crossing the moor; so she put off all she did not need
and pressed forward again. Presently she reached the house where the
coxswain of the lifeboat lived. She gasped out, "The schooner! On the
Letch! Norrad."
The coxswain, who had seen the schooner go past, knew what was the
matter. He said, "Here, wife, look after the lass," and ran out. The
"lass" needed looking after, for she had fainted. But her work was well
done; the lifeboat went round the point, ran north, and took six men
ashore from the schooner. The captain had been washed overboard, but the
others were saved by Dorothy's daring and endurance.