IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA
BY
S. BARING-GOULD
AUTHOR OF
"THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS," "URITH," ETC.
NEW YORK
NATIONAL BOOK COMPANY
6 MISSION PLACE
Copyright, 1891,
BY
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY.
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OVER AND DONE 5
II. A PASSAGE OF ARMS 12
III. CAPTAIN CRUEL 20
IV. HOP-O'-MY-THUMB 24
V. THE BUTTONS 31
VI. UNCLE ZACHIE 39
VII. A VISIT 45
VIII. A PATCHED PEACE 52
IX. C. C. 60
X. EGO ET REGINA MEA 67
XI. JESSAMINE 75
XII. THE CAVE 85
XIII. IN THE DUSK 93
XIV. WARNING OF DANGER 100
XV. CHAINED 109
XVI. ON THE SHINGLE 114
XVII. FOR LIFE OR DEATH 122
XVIII. UNA 128
XIX. A GOLDFISH 136
XX. BOUGHT AND SOLD 144
XXI. OTHELLO COTTAGE 151
XXII. JAMIE'S RIDE 158
XXIII. ALL IS FOR THE BEST IN THE BEST OF WORLDS 166
XXIV. A NIGHT EXCURSION 175
XXV. FOUND 182
XXVI. AN UNWILLING PRISONER 189
XXVII. A RESCUE 195
XXVIII. AN EXAMINATION 203
XXIX. ON A PEACOCK'S FEATHER 211
XXX. THROUGH THE TAMARISKS 221
XXXI. AMONG THE SAND-HEAPS 229
XXXII. A DANGEROUS GIFT 237
XXXIII. HALF A MARRIAGE 244
XXXIV. A BREAKFAST 252
XXXV. JACK O' LANTERN 259
XXXVI. THE SEA-WOLVES 269
XXXVII. BRUISED NOT BROKEN 275
XXXVIII. A CHANGE OF WIND 282
XXXIX. A FIRST LIE 290
XL. THE DIAMOND BUTTERFLY 297
XLI. A DEAD-LOCK 306
XLII. TWO LETTERS 313
XLIII. THE SECOND TIME 320
XLIV. THE WHIP FALLS 327
XLV. GONE FROM ITS PLACE 334
XLVI. A SECOND LIE 341
XLVII. FAST IN HIS HANDS 349
XLVIII. TWO ALTERNATIVES 357
XLIX. NOTHING LIKE GROG 364
L. PLAYING FORFEITS 372
LI. SURRENDER 380
LII. TO JUDITH 387
LIII. IN THE SMOKE 395
LIV. SQUAB PIE 403
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA.
CHAPTER I.
OVER AND DONE.
Sitting in the parsonage garden, in a white frock, with a pale green
sash about her waist, leaning back against the red-brick wall, her
glowing copper hair lit by the evening sun, was Judith Trevisa.
She was tossing guelder-roses into the air; some dozens were strewn
about her feet on the gravel, but one remained of the many she had
plucked and thrown and caught, and thrown and caught again for a sunny
afternoon hour. As each greenish-white ball of flowers went up into
the air it diffused a faint but pleasant fragrance.
"When I have done with you, my beauty, I have done altogether," said
Judith.
"With what?"
Her father spoke. He had come up unperceived by the girl, burdened
with a shovel in one hand and a bucket in the other, looking pale,
weary, and worn.
"Papa, you nearly spoiled my game. Let me finish, and I will speak."
"Is it a very serious matter, Judith, and engrossing?"
"Engrossing, but not serious, _Je m'amuse_."
The old rector seated himself on the bench beside her, and he also
leaned back against the red-brick, gold-and-gray-lichen-spotted wall,
and looked into the distance before him, waiting till his daughter was
ready to speak, not, perhaps, sorry to have a little rest first, for
he was overtired. Had Judith not been absorbed in her ball-play with
the guelder-rose bunch she would have noticed his haggard appearance,
the green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the beaded brow. But
she was counting the rebounds of her ball, bent on sustaining her play
as long as was possible to her.
She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and had the old man not
been overtired, he would have thought so with a throb of parental
pride.
She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in bone, with face
and hands of porcelain transparency and whiteness, with, moreover,
that incomparable complexion only seen in the British Isles, and then
only with red-gold hair.
Her bronze-leather shoes were the hue of some large flies that basked
and frisked on the warm wall, only slightly disturbed by the girl's
play, to return again and run and preen themselves again, and glitter
jewel-like as studs on that sun-baked, lichen-enamelled wall. Her
eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these flies, iridescent
with the changing lights of the declining sun, and the changed
direction of her glance following the dancing ball of guelder-rose.
Her long fingers might have been of china, but that when raised so
that the sun struck their backs they were turned to a translucent
rose. There was no color in her cheek, only the faintest suffusion of
pink on the temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves of
luminous molten copper dashing against the brick wall.
"I have done my work," said the rector.
"And I my play," responded the girl, letting the ball drop into her
lap and rock there from one knee to the other. "Papa, this fellow is
the conqueror; I have made him dance thirty-five great leaps, and he
has not yet fallen--wilfully. I let him go down and get breath just
now. There lie all my dancers dead about me. They failed very
speedily."
"You cannot be forever playing, Ju."
"That is why I play now, papa. When playtime is over I shall be in
earnest indeed."
"Indeed?" the old man sighed.
Judith looked round, and was shocked to see how ill her father
appeared to be.
"Are you very tired, darling papa?"
"Yes--overtired."
"Have you been at your usual task?"
"Yes, Ju--an unprofitable task."
"Oh, papa!"
"Yes, unprofitable. The next wind from the sea that blows--one will
blow in an hour--and all my work is undone."
"But, my dear papa!" Judith stooped and looked into the bucket.
"Why!--what has made you bring a load of sand up here? We want none in
the garden. And such a distance too!--from the church. No wonder you
are tired."
"Have I brought it?" he asked, without looking at the bucket.
"You have, indeed. That, if you please, is unprofitable work, not the
digging of the church out of the sand-heaps that swallow it."
"My dear, I did not know that I had not emptied the pail outside the
church-yard gate. I am very tired; perhaps that explains it."
"No doubt about it, papa. It was work quite as unprofitable but much
more exhausting than my ball-play. Now, papa, while you have been
digging your church out of the sand, which will blow over it again
to-night, you say, I have been pitching and tossing guelder-roses. We
have been both wasting time, one as much as the other."
"One as much as the other," repeated the old man. "Yes, dear, one as
much as the other, and I have been doing it all my time here--morally,
spiritually, as well as materially, digging the church out of the
smothering sands, and all in vain--all profitless work. You are right,
Ju."
"Papa," said Judith hastily, seeing his discouragement and knowing his
tendency to depression, "papa, do you hear the sea how it roars? I
have stood on the bench, more than once, to look out seaward, and find
a reason for it; but there is none--all blue, blue as a larkspur; and
not a cloud in the sky--all blue, blue there too. No wind either, and
that is why I have done well with my ball-play. Do you hear the roar
of the sea, papa?" she repeated.
"Yes, Ju. There will be a storm shortly. The sea is thrown into great
swells of rollers, a sure token that something is coming. Before night
a gale will be on us."
Then ensued silence. Judith with one finger trifled with the
guelder-rose bunch in her lap musingly, not desirous to resume her
play with it. Something in her father's manner was unusual, and made
her uneasy.
"My dear!" he began, after a pause, "one must look out to sea--into
the vast mysterious sea of the future--and prepare for what is coming
from it. Just now the air is still, and we sit in this sweet, sunny
garden, and lean our backs against the warm wall, and smell the
fragrance of the flowers; but we hear the beating of the sea, and know
that a mighty tempest, with clouds and darkness, is coming. So in
other matters we must look out and be ready--count the time till it
comes. My dear, when I am gone----"
"Papa!"
"We were looking out to sea and listening. That must come at some
time--it may come sooner than you anticipate." He paused, heaved a
sigh, and said, "Oh, Jamie! What are we to do about Jamie?"
"Papa, I will always take care of Jamie."
"But who will take care of you?"
"Of me? Oh, papa, surely I can take care of myself!"
He shook his head doubtfully.
"Papa, you know how strong I am in will--how firm I can be with
Jamie."
"But all mankind are not Jamies. It is not for you I fear, as much as
for you and him together. He is a trouble and a difficulty."
"Jamie is not so silly and troublesome as you think. All he needs is
application. He cannot screw his mind down to his books--to any
serious occupation. But that will come. I have heard say that the
stupidest children make the sharpest men. Little by little it will
come, but it will come certainly. I will set myself as my task to make
Jamie apply his mind and become a useful man, and I shall succeed,
papa." She caught her father's hand between hers, and slapped it
joyously, confidently. "How cold your hand is, papa! and yet you look
warm."
"You were always Jamie's champion," said her father, not noticing her
remark relative to himself.
"He is my twin brother, so of course I am his champion. Who else would
be that, were not I?"
"No--no one else. He is mischievous and troublesome--poor, poor
fellow. You will always be to Jamie what you are now, Ju--his
protector or champion? He is weak and foolish, and if he were to fall
into bad hands--I shudder to think what might become of him."
"Rely on me, dearest father."
Then he lifted the hand of his daughter, and looked at it with a faint
smile. "It is very small, it is very weak, to fight for self alone,
let alone yourself encumbered with Jamie."
"I will do it, papa, do not fear."
"Judith, I must talk very gravely with you, for the future is very
dark to me; and I am unable with hand or brain to provide anything
against the evil day. Numbness is on me, and I have been hampered on
every side. For one thing, the living has been so poor, and my
parishioners so difficult to deal with, that I have been able to lay
by but a trifle. I believe I have not a relative in the world--none,
at all events, near enough and known to me that I dare ask him to care
for you----"
"Papa, there is Aunt Dionysia."
"Aunt Dionysia," he repeated, with a hesitating voice. "Yes; but Aunt
Dionysia is--is not herself capable of taking charge of you. She has
nothing but what she earns, and then--Aunt Dionysia is--is--well--Aunt
Dionysia. I don't think you could be happy with her, even if, in the
event of my departure, she were able to take care of you. Then--and
that chiefly--she has chosen, against my express wishes--I may say, in
defiance of me--to go as housekeeper into the service of the man, of
all others, who has been a thorn in my side, a hinderer of God's work,
a--But I will say no more."
"What! Cruel Coppinger?"
"Yes, Cruel Coppinger. I might have been the means of doing a little
good in this place, God knows! I only _think_ I might; but I have been
thwarted, defied, insulted by that man. As I have striven to dig my
buried church out of the overwhelming sands, so have I striven to lift
the souls of my poor parishioners out of the dead engulfing sands of
savagery, brutality, very heathenism of their mode of life, and I have
been frustrated. The winds have blown the sands back with every gale
over my work with spade, and that stormblast Coppinger has devastated
every trace of good that I have done, or tried to do, in spiritual
matters. The Lord reward him according to his works."
Judith felt her father's hand tremble in hers.
"Never mind Coppinger now," she said, soothingly.
"I must mind him," said the old man, with severe vehemence. "And--that
my own sister should go, go--out of defiance, into his house and serve
him! That was too much. I might well say, I have none to whom to look
as your protector." He paused awhile, and wiped his brow. His pale
lips were quivering. "I do not mean to say," said he, "that I acted
with judgment, when first I came to S. Enodoc, when I spoke against
smuggling. I did not understand it then. I thought with the thoughts
of an inlander. Here--the sands sweep over the fields, and agriculture
is in a measure impossible. The bays and creeks seem to
invite--well--I leave it an open question. But with regard to
wrecking--" His voice, which had quavered in feebleness, according
with the feebleness of his judgment relative to smuggling, now gained
sonorousness. "Wrecking, deliberate wrecking, is quite another matter.
I do not say that our people are not justified in gathering the
harvest the sea casts up. There always must be, there will be wrecks
on this terrible coast; but there has been--I know there has been,
though I have not been able to prove it--deliberate provocation of
wrecks, and that is the sin of Cain. Had I been able to prove----"
"Never mind that now, dear papa. Neither I nor Jamie are, or will be,
wreckers. Talk of something else. You over-excite yourself."
Judith was accustomed to hear her father talk in an open manner to
her. She had been his sole companion for several years, since his
wife's death, and she had become the _confidante_ of his inmost
thoughts, his vacillations, his discouragements, not of his hopes--for
he had none, nor of his schemes--for he formed none.
"I do not think I have been of any use in this world," said the old
parson, relapsing into his tone of discouragement, the temporary flame
of anger having died away. "My sowing has produced no harvest. I have
brought light, help, strength to none. I have dug all day in the
vineyard, and not a vine is the better for it; all cankered and
fruitless."
"Papa--and me! Have you done nothing for me!"
"You!"
He had not thought of his child.
"Papa! Do you think that I have gained naught from you? No strength,
no resolution from seeing you toil on in your thankless work, without
apparent results? If I have any energy and principle to carry me
through I owe it to you."
He was moved, and raised his trembling hand and laid it on her golden
head.
He said no more, and was very still.
Presently she spoke. His hands weighed heavily on her head.
"Papa, you are listening to the roar of the sea?"
He made no reply.
"Papa, I felt a cold breath; and see, the sun has a film over it.
Surely the sea is roaring louder!"
His hand slipped from her head and struck her shoulder--roughly, she
thought. She turned, startled, and looked at him. His eyes were open,
he was leaning back, almost fallen against the wall, and was deadly
pale.
"Papa, you are listening to the roar?"
Then a thought struck her like a bullet in the heart.
"Papa! Papa! My papa!--speak--speak!"
She sprang from the bench--was before him. Her left guelder-rose had
rolled, had bounded from her lap, and had fallen on the sand the old
man had listlessly brought up from the church. His work, her play,
were forever over.