A WRECKER WRECKED.
Near the gate I met Evan Thomas, the master of the house himself, at
length astir, but still three-parts drunk, and--if I may say so with due
compassion for the trouble then before him--in a very awkward state of
mind. It happened so that the surliness of his liquor and of his nature
mingled at this moment with a certain exultation, a sense of good-luck,
and a strong desire to talk and be told again of it. And this is the
nature of all Welshmen; directly they have any luck, they must begin to
brag of it. You will find the same in me perhaps, or, at any rate, think
you do, although I try to exclude it, having to deal with Englishmen,
who make nothing of all the great deeds they have done until you begin
to agree with them. And then, my goodness, they do come out! But the
object of my writing is to make them understand us, which they never yet
have done, being unlike somehow in nature, although we are much of their
fathers.
Having been almost equally among both these nations, and speaking
English better perhaps than my native tongue of the Cymry--of which
anybody can judge who sees the manner in which I do it--it is against my
wish to say what Evan Thomas looked like. His dark face, overhung with
hair, and slouched with a night of drinking, was beginning to burn up,
from paleness and from weariness, into a fury of plunder. Scarcely did I
know the man, although I had so many recollections of evil against him.
A big, strong, clumsy fellow at all times, far more ready to smite than
smile, and wholly void of that pleasant humour, which among almost all
my neighbours--though never yet could I find out why--creates a pleasing
eagerness for my humble society as punctual as my pension-day.
But now his reeling staggering manner of coming along towards us, and
the hunching of his shoulders, and the swagging of his head, and, most
of all, the great gun he carried, were enough to make good quiet people
who had been to church get behind a sandhill. However, for that it was
too late. I was bound to face him. Bardie dropped her eyes under my
beard, and Bunny crept closer behind my leg. For my part, although the
way was narrow, and the lift of the storm gave out some light, it would
have moved no resentment in me if he had seen (as rich men do) unfit to
see a poor man.
However, there was no such luck. He carried his loaded gun with its
muzzle representing a point of view the very last I could have
desired--namely, at my midships; and he carried it so that I longed to
have said a little word about carefulness. But I durst not, with his
coal-black eyes fixed upon me as they were, and so I pulled up suddenly.
For he had given me an imperious nod, as good as ordering me to stop.
"Wreck ashore!" he cried out in Welsh, having scarce a word of
English--"wreck ashore! I smell her, Dyo. Don't tell me no lies, my boy.
I smelled her all the afternoon. And high time to have one."
"There is a wreck ashore," I answered, looking with some disgust at him,
as a man who has been wrecked himself must do at a cruel wrecker; "but
the ebb most likely will draw her off and drift her into the
quicksands."
"Great God! speak not like that, my boy. The worst you are of
everything. If those two children came ashore, there must have been
something better." And he peered at the children as if to search for any
gold upon them.
"Neither child came from that wreck. One is my granddaughter Bunny.
Bunny, show yourself to black Evan." But the child shrank closer behind
me. "Evan black, you know her well. And the other is a little thing I
picked up on the coast last night."
"Ha, ha! you pick up children where you put them, I suppose. But take
them indoors and be done with them. Cubs to come with a wreck ashore, a
noble wreck ashore, I say! But come you down again, fisherman Dyo." He
used the word "fisherman" with a peculiar stress, and a glance of
suspicion at my pockets. "Come you down again, Dyo dear. I shall want
you to help me against those thieves from Kenfig. Bring my other gun
from the clock-case, and tell the boys to run down with their
bando-sticks. I'll warrant we'll clear the shore between us; and then,
good Dyo, honest Dyo, you shall have some--you shall, you dog.
Fair-play, Dyo; fair share and share, though every stick is mine of
right. Ah, Dyo, Dyo, you cunning sheep's head, you love a keg of rum,
you dog."
This I knew to be true enough, but only within the bounds of both
honesty and sobriety. But so much talking had made his brain, in its
present condition, go round again; and while I was thinking how far it
might be safe and right to come into his views, his loaded gun began
wagging about in a manner so highly dangerous, that for the sake of the
two poor children I was obliged to get out of his way, and, looking back
from a safer distance, there I beheld him flourishing with his arms on
the top of a sandhill, and waving his hat on the top of his gun, for
his sons to come over the warren.
Moxy Thomas was very kind; she never could help being so, and therefore
never got any thanks. She stripped the two wet children at once, and put
them in bed together to keep each other warm. But first she had them
snugly simmering in a milk-pan of hot water with a little milk for the
sake of their skins. Bunny was heavy and sleepy therein, and did nothing
but yawn and stretch out her arms. Bardie, on the other hand, was ready
to boil over with delight and liveliness, flashing about like a little
dab-chick.
"Old Davy," she said, as I came to see her at her own invitation, and
she sate quite over Bunny, "'Ill 'a have a ickle dop?" With the water up
to her neck, she put one mite of a transparent finger to my grizzled
mouth, and popped a large drop in, and laughed, until I could have
worshipped her.
Now, having seen these two little dears fast asleep and warmly
compassed, I began, according to Evan's orders, to ask about the boys,
not having seen any sign of them. Moxy said that Watkin went out to look
for his five brothers about an hour after I had left, and in spite of
the rain and lightning. She had tried in vain to stop him: something was
on his mind, it seemed; and when she went up to attend on his father, he
took the opportunity to slip out of the kitchen.
Now Moxy having been in the house, and the house away from the worst of
the storm, being moreover a woman, and therefore wholly abroad about
weather, it was natural that she should not have even the least idea of
the jeopardy encountered by her five great sons in the warren. Enough
for her that they were not at sea. Danger from weather upon dry land was
out of her comprehension.
It wanted perhaps half an hour of dusk, and had given over raining, but
was blowing a good reef-topsail gale, when I started to search for the
sons of Sker. Of course I said nothing to make their mother at all
uneasy about them, but took from the clock-case the loaded gun (as Evan
had commanded me), and set forth upon the track of young Watkin, better
foot foremost. For he was likely to know best what part of the warren
his five great brothers had chosen for their sport that day; and in the
wet sand it was easy to follow the course the boy had taken.
The whirlwinds had ceased before he went forth, and the deluge of rain
was now soaked in, through the drought so long abiding. But the wind was
wailing pitifully, and the rushes swaying wearily; and the yellow
baldness, here and there, of higher sandhills, caught the light. Ragged
clouds ran over all, and streamers of the sunset; and the sky was like a
school let loose, with the joy of wind and rain again. It is not much of
me that swears, when circumstances force me; only a piece, perhaps, of
custom, and a piece of honesty. These two lead one astray sometimes; and
then comes disappointment. For I had let some anger vex me at the
rudeness of black Evan, and the ungodliness of his sons, which forced me
thus to come abroad, when full of wet and weariness. In spite of this,
I was grieved and frightened, and angry with no one but myself, when I
chanced upon boy Watkin, fallen into a tuft of rushes, with his blue
eyes running torrents. There he lay, like a heap of trouble, as young
folk do ere they learn the world; and I put him on his legs three times,
but he managed to go down again. At last I got his knees to stick; but
even so he turned away, and put his head between his hands, and could
not say a word to me. And by the way his shoulders went, I knew that he
was sobbing. I asked him what the matter was, and what he was taking so
much to heart; and, not to be too long over a trifle, at last I got this
out of him:--
"Oh, good Mr Llewellyn, dear, I never shall see nothing more of my great
brothers five, so long as ever I do live. And when they kicked me out of
bed every Sunday morning, and spread the basins over me, it was not that
they meant to harm--I do feel it, I do feel it; and perhaps my knees ran
into them. Under the sands, the sands, they are; and never to kick me
again no more! Of sorrow it is more than ever I can tell."
"Watty," said I, "why talk you so? Your brothers know every crick and
corner of this warren, miles and miles; and could carry a sandhill
among them. They are snug enough somewhere with their game, and perhaps
gone to sleep, like the little ones."
Of the babies' adventures he knew nothing, and only stared at me; so I
asked him what had scared him so.
"Under the sands, the sands, they are, so sure as ever I do live. Or the
rabbit-bag would not be here, and Dutch, who never, never leaves them,
howling at the rabbit-bag!"
Looking further through the tussocks, I saw that it was even so. Dutch,
the mongrel collie, crouched beside a bag of something, with her tail
curled out of sight, and her ears laid flat and listless, and her jowl
along the ground. And every now and then she gave a low but very
grievous howl.
"Now, boy, don't be a fool," I said, with the desire to encourage him;
"soon we shall find your brothers five, with another great sack of
rabbits. They left the bitch yonder to watch the sack, while they went
on for more, you see."
"It is the sack; the sack it is! And no other sack along of them. Oh, Mr
Llewellyn, dear, here is the bag, and there is Dutch, and never no sign
at all of them!"
At this I began to fear indeed that the matter was past helping--that
an accident and a grief had happened worse than the drowning of all the
negroes, which it has ever pleased Providence (in a darkness of mood) to
create for us. But my main desire was to get poor Watty away at once,
lest he should encounter things too dreadful for a boy like him.
"Go home," I said, "with the bag of rabbits, and give poor Dutch her
supper. Your father is down on the shore of the sea, and no doubt the
boys are with him. They are gone to meet a great shipwreck, worth all
the rabbits all the way from Dunraven to Giant's Grave."
"But little Dutch, it is little Dutch! They never would leave her, if
wreck there was. She can fetch out of the water so good almost as any
dog."
I left him to his own devices, being now tired of arguing. For by this
time it was growing dark; and a heavy sea was roaring; and the wreck was
sure to be breaking up, unless she had been swallowed up. And the
common-sense of our village, and parish, would go very hard against me
for not being on the spot to keep the adjacent parish from stealing. For
Kenfig and Newton are full of each other, with a fine old ancient
hatred. So we climbed over the crest of high sand, where the rushes lay
weltering after the wind; and then with a plunge of long strides down
hill, and plucking our feet out hastily, on the watered marge we stood,
to which the sea was striving.
Among the rocks black Evan leaped, with white foam rushing under him,
and sallies of the stormy tide volleying to engulf him. Strong liquor
still was in his brain, and made him scorn his danger, and thereby saved
him from it. One timid step, and the churning waters would have made a
curd of him. The fury of his visage showed that somebody had wronged
him, after whom he rushed with vengeance, and his great gun swinging.
"Sons of dogs!" he cried in Welsh, alighting on the pebbles; "may the
devil feed their fathers with a melting bowl!"
"What's the rumpus now?" I asked; "what have your sons been doing?"
For he always swore at his sons as freely as at anybody's, and at
himself for begetting them.
"My sons!" he cried, with a stamp of rage; "if my sons had been here,
what man would have dared to do on the top of my head this thing? Where
are they? I sent you for them."
"I have sought for them high and low," I answered; "here is the only one
I could find."
"Watkin! What use of Watkin? A boy like a girl or a baby! I want my five
tall bully-boys to help their poor father's livelihood. There's little
Tom tailor gone over the sandhills with a keg of something; and Teddy
shoemaker with a spar; and I only shot between them! Cursed fool! what
shall I come to, not to be able to shoot a man?"
He had fired his gun, and was vexed, no doubt, at wasting a charge so
randomly; then spying his other gun on my shoulder, with the flint and
the priming set, he laid his heavy hand on it. I scarce knew what to do,
but feared any accident in the struggle; and after all, he was not so
drunk that the law would deny him his own gun.
"Ha, ha!" with a pat of the breech, he cried; "for this I owe thee a
good turn, Dyo. Thou art loaded with rocks, my darling, as the other was
with cowries. Twenty to the pound of lead for any long-shore robbers. I
see a lot more sneaking down. Dyo, now for sport, my boy."
I saw some people, dark in the distance, under the brow of a sandhill;
and before I could speak or think, black Evan was off to run at them. I
too set my feet for speed, but the strings of my legs hung backward; and
Watty, who could run like a hare, seemed to lag behind me. And behind
him there was little Dutch, crawling with her belly down, and her eyes
turned up at us, as if we were dragging her to be hanged.
Until we heard a shout of people, through the roar of wind and sea, in
front of where black Evan strode; and making towards it, we beheld, in
glimmering dusk of shore and sky, something we knew nothing of.
A heavy sandhill hung above them, with its brow come over; and long
roots of rushes naked in the shrillness of the wind. Under this were men
at work, as we work for lives of men; and their Sunday shirt-sleeves
flashed, white like ghosts, and gone again. Up to them strode Evan
black, over the marge of the wild March tides; and grounded his gun and
looked at them. They for a breath gazed up at him, and seemed to think
and wonder; and then, as though they had not seen him, fell again
a-digging.
"What means this?" he roared at them, with his great eyes flashing fire,
and his long gun levelled. But they neither left their work nor lifted
head to answer him. The yellow sand came sliding down, in wedge-shaped
runnels, over them, and their feet sank out of sight; but still they
kept on working.
"Come away, then, Evan great; come away and seek for wreck," I shouted,
while he seemed to stand in heaviness of wonder. "This is not a place
for you. Come away, my man, my boy."
Thus I spoke, in Welsh of course, and threw my whole weight on his arm,
to make him come away with me. But he set his feet in sand, and spread
his legs, and looked at me; and the strongest man that was ever born
could not have torn him from his hold, with those eyes upon him.
"Dyo, I am out of dreaming. Dyo, I must see this wreck; only take the
gun from me."
This I would have done right gladly, but he changed his mind about it,
falling back to a savage mood.
"You down there, who gave you leave to come and dig my sandhills?
Answer, or have skins of lead."
Two or three of the men looked up, and wanted to say something. But the
head-man from the mines, who understood the whole of them, nodded, and
they held their tongues. Either they were brave men all (which never is
without discipline), or else the sense of human death confused and
overpowered them. Whatever they meant, they went on digging.
"Some damned sailor under there," cried Evan, losing patience; "little
mustard-spoons of sand. Can't you throw it faster? Fine young fellows
three of them, in the hole their own ship made, last March tide, it must
have been. Let us see this new batch come. They always seem to have
spent their wages before they learn to drown themselves."
He laughed and laid his gun aside, and asked me for tobacco, and, trying
to be sober, sang "the rising of the lark." I, for my part, shrunk away,
and my flesh crawled over me.
"Work away, my lads, work away. You are all of a mind to warm
yourselves. Let me know when you have done. And all you find belongs to
me. I can sit and see it out, and make a list of everything. Ear-rings
gold, and foreign pieces, and the trinkets they have worn. Out with
them! I know them all. Fools! what use of skulking? You are on soft
stuff, I see. Have out every one of them."
So they did; and laid before him, in the order of their birth, the
carcases of his five sons. Evan first, his eldest born; Thomas next, and
Rees, and Hopkin, and then (with the sigh of death still in him) Jenkin,
newly turned fifteen.