along the streets, rendered his voice inaudible. The congregation
rose, and hurrying one upon another, they rushed from the church. The
exhortations of the preacher to depart calmly were unheard and unheeded.
Every seat was deserted, all rushed to the shore, and Agnes Crawford and
her children ran, also, in terror, with the multitude.
The wrecks of nearly two hundred boats were drifting among the rocks.
The dead were strewed along the beach, and amongst them, wailing widows
sought their husbands, children their fathers, mothers their sons, and
all their kindred; and ever and anon an additional scream of grief
arose, as the lifeless body of one or other such relation was found. A
few of the lifeless bodies of the hardy crews were seen tossing to and
fro; but the cry for help was hushed, and the yell of death was heard no
more.
It was, in truth, a fearful day--a day of lamentation, of warning, and
of judgment. In one hour, and within sight of the beach, a hundred and
ninety boats and their crews were whelmed in the mighty deep; and,
dwelling on the shore between Spittal and North Berwick, two hundred and
eighty widows wept their husbands lost.
The spectators were busied carrying the dead, as they were driven on
shore, beyond the reach of tide-mark. They had continued their
melancholy task for near an hour, when a voice exclaimed--"See!
see!--one still lives, and struggles to make the shore!"
All rushed to the spot from whence the voice proceeded, and a young
man was perceived, with more than mortal strength, yet labouring in the
whirling waves. His countenance was black with despair. His heart panted
with suffocating pangs. His limbs buffeted the billows in the strong
agony of death, and he strained, with desperate eagerness, towards the
projecting point of a black rock. It was now within his grasp, but,
in its stead, he clutched the deceitful wave that laughed at his
deliverance. He was whirled around it, dashed on it with violence, and
again swept back by the relentless surge. He threw out his arms at
random, and his deep groans and panting breath were heard through the
sea's hoarse voice. He again reached the rock--he grasped, he clung to
its tangled sides. A murmur moaned through the multitude. They gazed one
upon another. His glazed eyes frowned darkly upon them. Supplication and
scorn were mingled in his look. His lips moved, but his tongue uttered
no sound. He only gasped to speak--to implore assistance. His strength
gave way--the waters rushed around the rock as a whirlpool. He was again
uplifted upon the white bosom of the foam, and tossed within a few yards
of the wailing but unavailing crowd.
"It is John Crawford!" exclaimed those who were enabled to recognise his
features. A loud shriek followed the mention of his name--a female
rushed through the crowd, and the next moment the delicate form of Agnes
Crawford was seen floating on the wild sea. In an instant, a hundred
plunged to her rescue; but, before the scream of horror and surprise
raised by the spectators when they beheld her devoted but desperate
purpose, had subsided, she was beyond the reach of all who feared death.
Although no feminine amusement, Agnes, from a child, had delighted in
buffeting the waters as though she felt at home upon their bosom; and
now the strength of inspiration seemed to thrill through her frame. She
was hidden from the gaze of the marvelling spectators, and a deep groan
crept along the shore. She again appeared, and her fair hand grasped the
shoulder of the drowning man! A shout of wild joy rang back on the
deserted town. Her father, who was amongst the multitude, fell upon his
knees. He clasped his hands together--"Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed,
"Thou who stillest the tempest, and holdest the waters in the hollow of
thy hand, protect--protect my child!"
The waters rioted with redoubled fury. Her strength seemed failing,
but a smile of hope still lighted up her features, and her hand yet
grasped her apparently lifeless burden. Despair again brooded on the
countenances of her friends. For a moment, she disappeared amongst the
waves; but the next, Agnes Crawford lay senseless on the beach, her arm
resting on the bosom of him she had snatched from a watery grave--on
the bosom of her husband.
They were borne to their own house, where, in a few minutes, she
recovered; but her husband manifested no sign of vitality. All the means
within their power, and that they knew, were resorted to, in order to
effect his resuscitation. Long and anxiously she wept over him, rubbing
his temples and his bosom, and, at length, beneath her hand his breast
first began to heave with the returning pulsation of his heart.
"He lives!--he breathes!" she exclaimed; and she sank back in a state of
unconsciousness, and was carried from the room. The preacher attended by
the bedside, where the unconscious fisherman lay, directing and
assisting in the operations necessary for restoring animation.
In a few hours the fisherman awoke from his troubled sleep, which many
expected would have been the sleep of death. He raised himself in the
bed--he looked around wistfully. Agnes, who had recovered, and returned
to the room, fell upon his bosom. "My Agnes!--my poor Agnes!" he cried,
gazing wistfully in her face--"but, where--where am I?--and my bairnies,
where are they?"
"Here, faither, here!" cried the children, stretching out their little
arms to embrace him.
Again he looked anxiously around. A recollection of the past, and a
consciousness of the present, fell upon his mind. "Thank God!" he
exclaimed, and burst into tears; and when his troubled soul and his
agitated bosom had found in them relief, he inquired, eagerly--"But, oh,
tell me, how was I saved?"
"John," said the aged elder, the father of Agnes, "ye was saved by the
merciful and sustaining power o' that Providence which ye this morning
set at nought. But I rejoice to find that your heart is not hardened,
and that the awful visitation which has this day filled our coast with
widows and with orphans, has not fallen upon you in vain; for ye
acknowledge your guilt, and are grateful for your deliverance. Your
being saved is naething short o' a miracle. We a' beheld how long and
how desperately ye struggled wi' the raging waves. A scream burst
upon my ear--a woman rushed through the crowd--and then, John!--oh,
then!"---- But here the feelings of the old man overpowered him. He
sobbed aloud, and pausing for a few moments, added--"Tell him, some o'
ye."
The preacher took up the tale. "Hearken unto me, John Crawford," said
he. "Ye have reason, this day, to sorrow, and to rejoice, and to be
grateful beyond measure. In the morning, ye mocked my counsel and set
at nought my reproof; and as ye sowed so have ye reaped. But, as your
faither-in-law has told ye, when your face was recognised from the
shore, and your name mentioned, a woman screamed--she rushed through the
multitude--she plunged into the boiling sea, and in an instant she was
beyond the reach of help!"
"Speak!--speak on!" cried the fisherman eagerly; and he placed his hands
on his heaving bosom, and gazed anxiously, now towards the preacher, and
again towards his Agnes, who wept upon his shoulder.
"The Providence that had till then sustained you, while your fellow
creatures perished around you," added the clergyman, "supported her. She
reached you--she grasped your arm. After long struggling, she brought
you within a few yards of the shore; a wave overwhelmed you both and
cast you upon the beach, with her arm--the arm of your wife that saved
you--upon your bosom!"
"Gracious Heaven!" exclaimed the fisherman, pressing his wife to his
bosom--"my ain Agnes!--was it you?--was it you?--my wife!--my saviour!"
And he wept aloud, and his children wept also.
But the feelings of the wife and the mother were too strong for words.
I will not dwell upon the joy and gratitude of the family to whom the
husband and the father had been restored as from the dead. It found a
sorrowful contrast in the voice of lamentation and of mourning, which
echoed along the coast like the peal of an alarm-bell. The dead were
laid in heaps upon the beach, and, on the following day, widows,
orphans, parents, and brothers, came from all the fishing towns along
the coast, to seek their dead amongst the drowned that had been gathered
together; or, if they found them not, they wandered along the shore to
seek for them where the sea might have cast them forth. Such is the tale
of the Sabbath wrecks--of the lost drave of Dunbar.
END OF VOL. VI.