THE OLD MANOR HOUSE.—THE RESCUE.—VARNEY’S DESPAIR.
At about ten o’clock on that same night on which Varney the Vampyre
plunged into the sea with hopes of getting rid of the world of troubles
that oppressed him, a small fishing boat might have been seen a
distance of about twenty-five miles from the Suffolk coast, trying to
make for land, and baffled continually by the wind that blew off shore.
In this boat were two young men, and from their appearance they
evidently belonged to the wealthier class of society. They were
brothers.
From their conversation we shall gather the circumstances that threw
them into such situation, not by any means divested of peril as it was.
“Well, Edwin,” said one, “here we have been beating about for five
hours, trying to get in shore, and all our little bark permits us to do
is I think not materially to increase our distance from home.”
“That is about the truth, Charles,” said the other, “and it was my
fault.”
“Come, Edwin, don’t talk in that way. There is no fault in the matter;
how could you know that the wind would stiffen into such a breeze as it
has, so that we cannot fight out against it; or if there be fault, of
course it’s as much mine as yours, for am not I here, and do I not know
full well what an amount of consternation there will be at the Grange?”
“There will indeed!”
“Well, their joy when we get back will be all the greater.”
“Shall we get back?”
“Can you ask? Look at our little boat, is she not sea-worthy? Does she
not dance on the waves merrily? It is only the wind after all that
baffles us, if it would drop a little, we could, I think make head
against it with the oars.
The brothers were silent now for a few moments, for they were each
looking at the weather. At length Edwin spoke, saying,—
“We shall have the moon up, and that may make a change.”
“Very likely—very likely. There is not, I think, quite so much sea as
there was; suppose we try the oars again?”
The other assented, and the two young men exerted themselves very much
to decrease their distance from the Suffolk coast by pulling away right
manfully, but it was quite evident to them that they did no good, and
that they had just as well dropped westward as they had been doing, by
keeping the sail set, and steering as near as possible to the wind.
“Why, if this goes on, Charles, where shall we get to by the morning?”
“To Northumberland, perhaps.”
“Or further.”
“Well, if we go far enough, what say you to attempting the _vexata
questio_ of the north-west passage?”
“Nay, I cannot jest—it’s a sad thing this—more sad a good deal for
those who are at home, than for us. To-morrow is Clara’s wedding day,
and what a damper it will be upon all to suppose that we have perished
at sea.”
“They will never suppose that we would do anything so ridiculous. Why,
at the worst, you know, we could go before the wind and run on to
Holland.”
“Yes, if no storm arises or such a gale as might founder our boat.
There, there is the moon.”
“Yes, and she will soon be overtaken by yon bank of clouds that seem to
be scudding after her in the blue heavens. Ha! a sail, by Jove!”
“Where? where?”
“Not I think above four miles there to the east, by our little compass
which it is a thousand mercies we have with us. Look, you may see her
sails against that light cloud—there.”
“I see her. Think you she will see us?”
“There is every chance, for her swell of canvass will be all the other
way. Fire your fowling-piece and the sound may reach her, the wind is
good for carrying it.”
Charles took a fowling-piece from the bottom of the boat. The brothers
had merely gone out at sunset or a little before it, to shoot gulls,
and he tried to discharge the piece, but several seas that they had
shipped, while they were thinking of other things than keeping the gun
dry, had, for the time being, most effectively prevented it from being
discharged.
“Ah!” said Edwin as he heard the click of the lock, “that hope is lost.”
“It is indeed, and to my thinking the ship is distancing us rapidly.
You see our mast and sail, will, at even this distance, lie so low in
the horizon that they will hardly see us unless they are sweeping the
sky with a night glass.”
“And that is not likely.”
“Certainly not, so we have nothing for it but to hold on our way. I am
getting hungry if you are not.”
“I certainly am not getting hungry, for I have felt half famished these
last two hours; but I suppose we may hold out against the fiend hunger
some hours yet. What are you looking at so earnestly, eh?”
“I hardly know.”
“You hardly know? Let me see—why—why what is it?”
“There seems to me to be something now and that much darker than the
waves, tiding on their tops; there, do you not see it? There it is
again. There!”
“Yes, yes.”
“What on earth can it be?”
“A dead body.”
“Indeed! ah! it drifts towards us. There is some current hereabouts,
for you see it comes to us against the wind.”
“Don’t deceive yourself, brother. It is we who are going with the wind
towards it, and now you can see there is no doubt about what it is.
Some poor fellow, who has been drowned. Get out the boat-hook, get it
out.”
“Why, you would not take in such a cargo, Edwin.”
“God forbid! but I feel some curiosity to see who and what sort of a
personage it is. Here we have him. What a length he is to be sure.”
The body was nearly alongside the boat, and one of the brothers
detained it with a boat-hook, while they both looked earnestly at it.
It was the body of a man, remarkably well dressed, and had no
appearance of having been under the water long. The features, as far as
they could see them, were calm and composed. The hands were clenched,
and some costly looking rings glittered on the fingers through the salt
spray that foamed and curled around the insensible form.
“Charles,” said Edwin; “what we shall do?”
Edwin shook his head.
“I—I don’t like.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t like to cast it adrift again, and not take it ashore, where it
can rest in an honest man’s grown if he be one. Fancy it being one of
us, would it not be a consolation to those who love us to know that we
rested in peace among our ancestors, in preference to rotting in the
sea, tossed and mangled by every storm that blows. I do not like to
cast the body adrift again.”
“It’s a ghastly passenger.”
“It is, but that ghastliness is only an idea, and we should remember
that we ourselves——”
“Stop, brother, stop. Do not fancy that I oppose your wish to convey
this body to the shore, and place it in some sanctified spot. What I
expressed concerning it was merely the natural feeling that must arise
on such an occasion, nothing more.”
“Then you are willing?”
“I am.”
The two brothers now, without further doubts or remarks upon the
subject, got the body into the boat, and laid it carefully down. Then
Edwin folded and tied a handkerchief over the face, for as he truly
enough said,—
“There is no occasion to have to encounter that dead face each moment
that one turns one’s eyes in that direction; it is sufficient that we
have, by taking the body in at all done, all that humanity can dictate
to us.”
To this Charles agreed, and it was remarked by them both as a strange
thing that from the moment of their taking in the dead body to the
boat, the wind dropped, and finally there was almost a calm, after
which there came soft gentle air from the south-east, which enabled
them with scarcely any exertion on their own parts to make great
progress towards their own home, from which they found they had not by
any means been driven so far northward as they had at first thought.
The brothers looked at each other, and it was Edwin who broke the
silence, and put into words what both thought, by saying,—
“Charles, there is something more in this whole affair than what lies
just upon its surface.”
“Yes, it seems as if we were driven out to sea by some special
providence to do this piece of work, and that having done it, the winds
and the waves obeyed the hand of their mighty Master, and allowed of
our return.”
“It does seem so,” said the other.