ENTER THE KING’S POSTMAN.
A faint south wind murmured beneath the eaves. It died away, and for
an hour there was peace on the towans. Then the sands began to
trickle again, and the rushes to whisper and bend away from the sea,
toward the high moors over which the gulls had flown yesterday and
disappeared. By-and-by a spit or two of rain came flying out of the
black north-west. The drops fell in the path of the sand, but the
sand drove over and covered them, racing faster and faster.
Day rose, and Taffy awoke. The house walls were shaking. With each
blow the wind ran up a scale of notes and ended with a howl.
He looked out. Sea and sky had melted into one; only now and then
white surf line heaved into sight, and melted back into grey.
After breakfast he and his father started to battle their way to
Tredinnis House, while Humility barricaded the door behind them.
Taffy wore a suit of oilers, of which he was mightily proud.
They made their way under the lee of the towans to escape the
stinging sand. Within Tredinnis Gates they found a couple of
pine-trees blown down across the road, and scrambled over their
trunks. Before lessons, Taffy boasted a lot of his journey to
Honoria, and almost forgot to be sorry that George did not appear,
though it was Wednesday.
They had no trouble in reaching home. The gale hurled them along.
Taffy, leaning his back against it, could scarcely feel his feet
touching ground. Humility unfastened the door, looking white and
anxious. Before they could close it again, the wind swept a big dish
off the dresser with a crash.
Taffy slept soundly that night. He did not hear a knocking which
sounded on the house-door, soon after eleven o’clock. The man who
knocked came from Tresedder, one of the moor farms. “Oh, sir! did
’ee see the rockets go up over Innis? There’ll be dead men down ’pon
the Island rocks.”
Taffy slept on. When he came downstairs next morning there was a
stranger in the kitchen--a little old man, huddled in a blanket
before the great fireplace, where a line of clothes hung drying.
Humility was stooping to wedge a sand-bag under the door. She looked
up at Taffy with a wan little smile.
“There has been a wreck,” she said.
“Glory be!” exclaimed the stranger from the fire-place.
Taffy glanced at him, but could see little more than the back of a
bald head above the blankets.
“Where’s the ship?” he asked.
“Gone,” answered the Vicar, coming at that moment from the inner room
where his books were. “She must have broken up in less than ten
minutes after she struck the Island--parted and gone down in six
fathoms of water.”
“And the men? Was father there?” It bewildered Taffy that all this
should have happened while he was sleeping.
“There was no time to fix the rocket apparatus. She was late in
making her distress signals. But I doubt if anything could have been
done. She went down too quickly.”
“But--” Taffy’s gaze wandered to the bald head.
“He was washed clean over the ridge where she struck, and swept into
Innis Pool--one big wave carried him into safety--one man out of
six.”
“Hallelujah!” cried the rescued man facing round in his chair.
“Might ha’ been scat like an egg-shell, and here I be shoutin’
praises!” Taffy saw that he was a clean-shaven little fellow, with
puckered cheeks and two wisps of grey hair curling forward from his
ears.
Mr. Raymond frowned. “I am sure,” said he, “you ought not to be
talking so much.”
“I will sing and give praise, sir, beggin’ you pardon, with the best
member that I have. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended
and I burn not? Hallelujah! A-men!”
He took his basin of bread and milk from Humility’s hand, and ate by
the fire. She had wrung his clothes through fresh water, and as soon
as they were thoroughly dry he retired upstairs to change. He came
back to his seat by the fire.
“Now, I be like ’Possel Paul,” he said, rubbing his hands, and
stretching them out to the blaze. “After his shipwreck, you know,
when the folks ’pon the island showed en kindness. This is the
Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in your eyes.
“‘Not fearing nor doubting,
With Christ by my side,
I hopes to die shouting,
The Lord will provide!’”
Humility thought that for certain the shipwreck had turned his head.
“But where do you come from?” she asked.
“They call me Jacky Pascoe, ma’am; but I calls myself the King’s
Postman--
“‘Jacky Pascoe is my name,
Wendron is my nation,
Nowhere is my dwelling-place,
For Christ is my salvation--’
“I was brought to a miner, over to Wheal Jewel, in Illogan Parish;
but got conversion fifteen years since, an’ now I go about praising
the Name. I’ve been miner, cafender, cooper, mason, seaman,
scissor-grinder, umbrella-mender, holli-bubber, all by turns.
I sticks my hands in my pockets, an’ waits on the Lord; an’ what he
tells me to do, I do. This day week I was up to Fowey, working on
the tip.[2] There was a little schooner there, the _Garibaldi_, of
Newport, discharging coal. The Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go in that
there schooner!’ I sought out the skipper, and said, ‘Where be bound
for next?’ ‘Back to Newport,’ says he. ‘That’ll suit me,’ I says,
an’ persuaded en to take me. But the Lord knew where she were bound
better’n the skipper; and here I be!”
It seemed to his hearers that this man took little thought of his
drowned shipmates. Mr. Raymond looked up as he strapped his books
together.
“You were not the only man in that schooner,” he said, rather
severely.
“Glory be! Who be I, to question the Lord’s ways? One day I picked
up a map, an’ seed a place on it called ‘Little Sins.’ ‘Little Sins
wants great Deliverance,’ says I, an’ I started clane off an’ walked
to the place, though I’d never so much as heard of it till then.
’Twas harvest-time there, an’ I danced into the field, shouting
‘Glory, glory. The harvest is plenty, but the labourers be few!’
The farmer was moved to give me a job ’pon the spot. I bided there
two year, an’ built them a chapel an’ preached the Word in it.
They offered me money to stop an’ preach; and I laid it before the
Lord. But He said, ‘You’re the King’s Postman. Keep moving, keep on
moving!’ I’ve built two more chapels since then.”
Late that afternoon three bodies were recovered from the sea--the
captain, the mate, and a boy of about sixteen; and were buried in the
churchyard next day, as soon as the inquest was over. Pascoe
followed the coffins, and pointed the service at the grave-side with
interjaculations of his own. “Glory be!” “A-men!” “Hallelujah!”
“Great Redemption!” To the Vicar’s surprise the small crowd after a
minute began to follow the man’s lead, until at length he could
scarcely read for these interruptions.
At supper that night Pascoe sprang a question on the Vicar.
“Be you convarted?” he asked, looking up with his mouth full of bread
and cheese.
“I hope so.”
“Aw, you _hopes!_ ’Tis a bad case with ’ee, then. When a man’s
convarted, he _knows_. Seemin’ to me, you baint. You don’t show
enough of the bright side. Now, as I go along, my very toes keep
ticking salvation. Down goes one foot, ‘Glory be!’ Down goes the
other, ‘A-men!’ Aw! I must dance for joy!”
He got up and danced around the kitchen.
“I wish the man would go,” Humility thought to herself.
His very next words answered her wish. “I’ll be leavin’ to-morrow,
friends. I’ve got a room down to the village, an’ I’ve borreyed a
razor. I’m goin’ to tramp round the mines at the back here, an’
shave the miners at a ha’penny a chin. That’ll pay my way. There’s
a new preacher planned to the Bible Christians, down to Innis, an’
I’m goin’ to help he. My dears, don’t ’ee tell me the Lord didn’
know what He was about when He cast the _Garibaldi_ ashore!”
He left the Parsonage next day. “Ma’am,” he said to Humility on
leaving, “I salute this here house. Peace be on this here house, for
it is worthy. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet
shall receive a prophet’s reward.”
Two mornings later, Taffy, looking out from his bedroom window soon
after daybreak, saw the prophet trudging along the road. He had a
clean white bag slung across his shoulder; it carried his soap and
razors, no doubt. And every now and then he waved his walking-stick
and skipped as he went.
[2] Loading vessels from the jetties.