THE WRECK OF THE “SAMARITAN.”
Taffy stood for a moment listening. He judged the wreck to be
somewhere on the near side of the light-house, between it and the
mouth of the creek; that was, if she had already struck. If not, the
gale and the set of the tide together would be sweeping her eastward,
perhaps right across the mouth of the creek. And if he could
discover this his course would be to run back, intercept the
coast-guard, and send him around by the upper bridge.
He waited for a second signal to guide him--a flare or a rocket: but
none came. The beach lay in the lew of the weather, deep in the
hills’ hollow and trebly land-locked by the windings of the creek,
but above him the sky kept its screaming as though the bare ridges of
the headland were being shelled by artillery.
He resolved to keep along the lower slopes and search his way down to
the creek’s mouth, when he would have sight of any signal shown along
the coast for a mile or two to the east and north-east. The night
was now as black as a wolf’s throat, but he knew every path and
fence. So he scrambled up the low cliff and began to run, following
the line of stunted oaks and tamarisks which fenced it, and on the
ridges--where the blown hail took him in the face--crouching and
scuttling like a crab sideways, moving his legs only from the knees
down.
In this way he had covered half a mile and more when his right foot
plunged in a rabbit hole and he was pitched headlong into the
tamarisks below. Their boughs bent under his weight, but they were
tough, and he caught at them, and just saved himself from rolling
over into the black water. He picked himself up and began to rub his
twisted ankle. And at that instant, in a lull between two gusts, his
ear caught the sound of splashing, yet a sound so unlike the lapping
of the driven tide that he peered over and down between the tamarisk
boughs.
“Hullo there!”
“Hullo!” a voice answered. “Is that someone alive? Here, mate--for
Christ’s sake!”
“Hold on! Whereabouts are you?”
“Down in this here cruel water.” The words ended in a shuddering
cough.
“Right--hold on for a moment!” Taffy’s ankle pained him, but the
wrench was not serious. The cliff shelved easily. He slid down,
clutching at the tamarisk boughs which whipped his face. “Where are
you? I can’t see.”
“Here!” The voice was not a dozen yards away.
“Swimming?”
“No--I’ve got a water-breaker--can’t hold on much longer.”
“I believe you can touch bottom there.”
“Hey? I can’t hear.”
“Try to touch bottom. It’s firm sand hereabouts.”
“So I can.” The splashing and coughing came nearer, came close.
Taffy stretched out a hand. A hand, icy-cold, fumbled and gripped it
in the darkness.
“Christ! Where’s a place to lie down?”
“Here, on this rock.” They peered at each other, but could not see.
The man’s teeth chattered close to Taffy’s ear.
“Warm my hands, mate--there’s a good chap.” He lay on the rock and
panted. Taffy took his hands and began to rub them briskly.
“Where’s the ship?”
“Where’s the ship?” He seemed to turn over the question in his mind,
and then stretched himself with a sigh. “How the hell should I
know?”
“What’s her name?” Taffy had to ask the question twice.
“The _Samaritan_, of Newport, brigantine. Coals she carried.
Ha’n’t you such a thing as a match? It seems funny to me, talkin’
here like this, and me not knowin’ you from Adam.”
He panted between the words, and when he had finished lay back and
panted again.
“Hurt?” asked Taffy after a while.
The man sat up and began to feel his limbs, quite as though they
belonged to some other body. “No, I reckon not.”
“Then we’d best be starting. The tide’s rising. My house is just
above here.”
He led the way along the slippery foreshore until he found what he
sought, a foot-track slanting up the cliff. Here he gave the sailor
a hand and they mounted together. On the grass slope above they met
the gale and were forced to drop on their hands and knees and crawl,
Taffy leading and shouting instructions, the sailor answering each
with “Ay, ay, mate!” to show that he understood.
But about half-way up these answers ceased, and Taffy, looking round
and calling, found himself alone. He groped his way back for twenty
yards, and found the man stretched on his face and moaning.
“I can’t... I can’t! My poor brother! I can’t!”
Taffy knelt beside him on the soaking turf. “Your brother? Had you
a brother on board?”
The man bowed his face again upon the turf. Taffy, upright on both
knees, heard him sobbing like a child in the roaring darkness.
“Come,” he coaxed, and putting out a hand, touched his wet hair.
“Come.” They crept forward again, but still as he followed the
sailor cried for his drowned brother, up the long slope to the ridge
of the headland, where, with the light-house and warm cottage windows
in view, all speech and hearing were drowned by stinging hail and the
blown grit of the causeway.
Humility opened the door to them.
“Taffy! Where have you been?”
“There has been a wreck.”
“Yes, yes--the coast-guard is down by the light-house. The men there
saw her before she struck. They kept signalling till it fell dark.
They had sent off before that.”
She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on
the stranger. Taffy turned and stared too. The man’s face was
running with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that they
also were scarlet.
He helped the poor wretch to a chair.
“Bandages: can you manage?” She nodded, and stepped to a cupboard.
The sailor began to wail again like an infant.
“See--above the temple here: the cut isn’t serious.” Taffy took down
a lantern and lit it. The candle shone red through the smears his
fingers left on the horn panes. “I must go and help, if you can
manage.”
“I can manage,” she answered quietly.
He strode out, and closing the door behind him with an effort, faced
the gale again. Down in the lee of the light-house the lamps of the
coast-guard carriage gleamed foggily through the rain. The men were
there discussing, George among them. He had just galloped up.
The Chief Officer went off to question the survivor, while the rest
began their search. They searched all that night; they burned flares
and shouted; their torches dotted the cliffs. After an hour the Chief
Officer returned. He could make nothing of the sailor, who had fallen
silly from exhaustion or the blow on his head; but he divided his men
into three parties, and they began to hunt more systematically. Taffy
was told off to help the westernmost gang and search the rocks below
the light-house. Once or twice he and his comrades paused in their
work, hearing, as they thought, a cry for help. But when they listened,
it was only one of the other parties hailing.
The gale began to abate soon after midnight, and before dawn had blown
itself out. Day came, filtered slowly through the wrack of it to the
south-east; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on the cliff
above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat, with an arm
thrown out and pointing eastward. He turned and galloped off in that
direction.
They scrambled up and followed. To their astonishment, after following
the cliffs for a few hundred yards, he headed inland, down and across
the very slope up which Taffy had crawled with the sailor.
They lost sight of his red coat among the ridges. Two or three-- Taffy
amongst them--ran along the upper ground for a better view.
“Well, this beats all!” panted the foremost.
Below them George came into view again, heading now at full gallop for
a group of men gathered by the shore of the creek, a good half-mile
from its mouth. And beyond--midway across the sandy bed where the
river wound--lay the hull of a vessel, high and dry; her deck, naked
of wheelhouse and hatches, canted toward them as if to cover from the
morning the long wounds ripped by her uprooted masts.
The men beside him shouted and ran on, but Taffy stood still. It was
monstrous--a thing inconceivable--that the seas should have lifted
a vessel of three hundred tons and carried her half a mile up that
shallow creek. Yet there she lay. A horrible thought seized him. Could
she have been there last night when he had drawn the sailor ashore? And
had he left four or five others to drown close by, in the darkness? No,
the tide at that hour had scarcely passed half-flood. He thanked God
for that.
Well, there she lay, high and dry, with plenty to attend to her. It was
time for him to discover the damage done to the light-house plant and
machinery, perhaps to the building itself. In half an hour the workmen
would be arriving.
He walked slowly back to the house, and found Humility preparing
breakfast.
“Where is he?” Taffy asked, meaning the sailor. “In bed?”
“Didn’t you meet him? He went out five minutes ago--I couldn’t keep
him--to look for his brother, he said.”
Taffy drank a cupful of tea, took up a crust, and made for the door.
“Go to bed, dear,” his mother pleaded. “You must be worn out.”
“I must see how the works have stood it.”
On the whole, they had stood it well. The gale, indeed, had torn away
the wire table and cage, and thus cut off for the time all access
to the outer rock; for while the sea ran at its present height the
scramble out along the ridge could not be attempted even at low water.
But from the cliff he could see the worst. The waves had washed over
the building, tearing off the temporary covers, and churning all
within. Planks, scaffolding--everything floatable--had gone, and
strewed the rock with matchwood; and--a marvel to see--one of his two
heaviest winches had been lifted from inside, hurled clean over the
wall, and lay collapsed in the wreckage of its cast-iron frame. But,
so far as he could see, the dovetailed masonry stood intact. A voice
hailed him.
“What a night! What a night!”
It was old Pezzack, aloft on the gallery of the light-house in his
yellow oilers, already polishing the lantern panes.
Taffy’s workmen came straggling and gathered about him. They discussed
the damage together but without addressing Taffy; until a little
pock-marked fellow, the wag of the gang, nudged a mate slily and said
aloud--
“By God, Bill, we _can_ build a bit--you and me and the boss!”
All the men laughed; and Taffy laughed too, blushing. Yes; this had
been in his mind. He had measured his work against the sea in its fury,
and the sea had not beaten him.
A cry broke in upon their laughter. It came from the base of the cliff
to the right: a cry so insistent that they ran toward it in a body.
Far below them, on the edge of a great boulder which rose from the
broken water and seemed to overhang it, stood the rescued sailor. He
was pointing.
Taffy was the first to reach him!
“It’s my brother! It’s my brother Sam!”
Taffy flung himself full length on the rock and peered over. A tangle
of ore-weed awash rose and fell about its base; and from under this, as
the frothy waves drew back, he saw a man’s ankle protruding, and a foot
still wearing a shoe.
“It’s my brother!” wailed the sailor again. “I can swear to the shoe of
en!”