RETRIBUTION.
Smarting still with the blows those ruffians had given me, I thought
of all the evil fortune had wrought me, and burned for vengeance; and
terribly I had it, ere the morning sun rose from the sea.
The sound of a strange voice--a woman's voice, too!--was now heard.
A woman in that sequestered lighthouse! From whence, and how had she
come? I heard also the ribald fun and coarse laughter of the two
beacon-keepers. Slipping off my shoes, I crept down the ladder, and
peeping through the hatch in the ceiling of the lower apartment, saw
the Messieurs Dick Knuckleduster and Broken-nosed Bill seated near a
table, drinking and smoking with a woman of repulsive aspect, but
with whom they seemed on somewhat intimate terms.
Sinewy, bony, and gaunt, she had the hooked-nose, large keen black
eyes, and thick animal mouth of a Jewess of the lowest class. She
seemed to be about forty years of age, and was clad in a dirty cap,
over which a red handkerchief was tied; a sailor's pea-jacket
enveloped the upper part of her person, a short red linsey-wolsey
skirt shrouded the lower; while her large feet, which in size bore a
due proportion to her dingy, clumsy hands, were encased in a pair of
old military boots. Her visage, which was as yellow as an old
drumhead, was seamed by a hundred dirty wrinkles; and her mouth had
certain hirsute appendages, of a hue so dark as to render her sex
almost doubtful, and her aspect diabolical. She wore large gold
ear-rings, and had in her mouth a short black pipe, which was only
removed to make way for a battered tin mug, from which she was
imbibing gin-and-water, hot.
By the number of bottles upon the table, she seemed to have brought
to the beacon an ample supply of alcohol under cloud of night; and,
from the tenor of the conversation that was in progress, I gathered
that this fair daughter of Judah was not an unfrequent visitor.
My attention was next attracted by several jewels and trinkets which
the worthy officials of this Pharos were offering her for sale. She
seemed a bumboat woman, or slopseller, such as one may find keeping a
shop of the humblest class in the meaner alleys of a seaport town;
and they addressed her by the euphonious name of "Mother Snatchblock."
"This gold watch and ring ain't worth much," said she; "but where did
they come from?"
"The sea," growled Bill.
"The sea is mighty productive hereabout; did they bite your
jiggerhook, when fishing?"
"They came in the usual way, Mother Snatchblock; so, if you must
know, we had 'em from a gentleman, _as_ escaped from the wreck of the
Dutch galley that foundered in the last gale on the tail of the bank."
"Did he swim from there to the Sandridge?"
"Ay--every fathom of the way; in a rough, wild sea, too, to the steps
of the beacon."
"A strong fellow he must have been!"
"Strong--damn him! I should think so. Look at the knock on the head
he gave me, when I took his dainty ring from him," said Bill,
exhibiting an ugly and half-healed gash, which his red knitted cap
had hitherto concealed.
"The ring was't worth it, Bill, my boy."
"Come now, old woman--don't cry stinking fish; the stone is a
waluable stone."
"A bit of green glass."
"A real emerald, if I know aught about it."
"Which you don't," said the Jewess, placing the ring, which was of
great beauty, on the tip of one of her thick dirty fingers; "but you
should have waited till the gent was asleep, and then----"
"Then--what?"
She passed a finger significantly across her throat, a motion at
which the ruffian laughed, and the other said,--
"Sleep--confound his bones, he sleeps sound enough now, lashed to an
old kedge anchor. Do you see the round hole in the timber there?"
"Yes."
"The ball we sent through his brains lodged _there_; but pass the
bottle o'stingo over here, and let us say no more about it; for
sometimes I think he rises out o' the water o' nights, with the
anchor on his back, and knocks at the door--and faith, I shall quit
this place when I can!"
The reader may imagine the horror and repugnance with which I
listened to these terrible details of the inner life of the
inhabitants of this solitary beacon. After they had drunk and smoked
for a time, during which the woman gave them all the shore gossip,
squared accounts to their satisfaction, and concealed the jewellery
and trinkets about her person, she said,--
"And now about this boy that you have on board--I mean above stairs?"
"Well, and wot about him?" asked Bill surlily.
"Didn't we cotch the young varmint making signals to a foreign
schooner?" added Knuckleduster, with a sonorous expletive.
"How did you know her to be foreign?" asked Mother Snatchblock.
"By the swabs that hung over her side, and the lubberly way she lay
to and then hauled her wind again, when filling her foreyard and
standing off. She nearly lost her rudder on the shoal, so that
youngster's signal might have cost her dear if the wind had
freshened."
"You've been feeding this young biscuit-nibbler too well," said the
kind Mrs. Snatchblock; "starve him, Bill--for starvation is the best
tamer I know of."
"Now that you speak out, I think we shall."
"And a little starving, or saving, its the same thing, will increase
the profit o' wot we makes on him, by giving him up to government, so
pass the bottle of Old Tom over 'for a last pull.'"
"I'm blessed if it is ever out of your hand, Mother Snatchblock."
"I means the water mug."
"You've had so much of both, old woman, that you don't know one from
tother; fire away, if you will--take the stuff stark naked--but if
you get one more sheet in the wind, you'll find it troublesome work
to fetch the cove of Compton Rennel to-night in that punt of yours."
"For this young powder-monkey as will be," resumed this hideous and
now half-tipsy woman, "we shall get about one pound one, from the
lufftenant of the press-gang at Compton Kennel, and we must go shares
in that."
"Shares, in course, mother--but what! only one pound one, when the
bounty is so high, and the North Sea fleet on the pint o' starting
for the Texel?"
"Only a guinea, I tell you," responded the Jewess doggedly, with an
oath; "if I arrange all about them jewels, you may well chuck this
boy--what's his name----"
"Holliver Hellis," said Broken-nosed Bill.
"Into the bargain."
"Well, be it so," said the ruffians together.
"Now for another whiff, and then for the shore," said Mother
Snatchblock, buttoning up her pea-jacket, and tightening the scarlet
bandanna under her chin.
A sudden thought--a wild hope of escape now seized me.
This woman must have come off to us in some way. Could this have
been by the schooner I had signalled? That was unlikely by the
remarks I had heard--besides, she spoke of leaving _immediately_.
I put my shoes in my pocket, slipped softly up to the gallery again,
and looking round, saw a little punt moored to the steps of the
beacon, and tossing like a cockle-shell on the rollers that came in
succession over the ridge, about thirty feet below me.
"What shall I do?" I asked myself; "wait till she has pushed
off--then leap into the sea and swim after her, in the hope of moving
her sympathy?"
The revelations I had just heard, and the character of the wretch,
alike forbade the hope of such a result; so my resolution was taken
at once.
A lightning rod, which ascended from the water to the roof of the
lighthouse, was close by me, and bolted securely to its side by iron
cramps. I grasped it, swung myself over, and aided alike by my
agility, by hope, and rage, at all I had undergone, I came down hand
over hand with ease, my feet being firmly planted at every step, on
the planked, and sloping side of the edifice.
On beginning my descent, I observed that one of the beacon lamps had
been carelessly trimmed, and hung over to one side, by which the
flame already reached the woodwork, and had set the joists _on fire_.
To repair this neglect was still in my power; but to reascend might
cost me liberty--perhaps life. My bones were yet aching from the
brutality I had endured.
"Bah!" said I, "let them swim if they can," and continued my descent.
Easily reaching the steps, I sprang into the punt--untied the
painter, mechanically, and with the celerity of one in a dream,
pushed off vigorously from the accursed spot.
"Thank God! thank God!" I exclaimed, with a hurrah of joy, and
shipping a pair of sculls that were lashed to the thwart, rowed away,
I cared not in what direction, so that I placed the deep blue water
between myself and the beacon, the door of which at that moment
opened, and its two inmates appeared on the slimy iron steps,
lighting down their fair visitor by means of a horn lantern.
The tipsy Jewess uttered an imprecation on discovering that her boat
was gone; but I was only eight or ten yards from the beacon, and the
broad glare of its triple lights, each blazing within a huge round
reflector, shone full upon me.
I uttered a loud and exulting laugh. They saw me in an instant, and
all shouted at once a volley of hoarse oaths, and orders "to come
back," with threats of being shot if I disobeyed. But I laughed
louder still, and pulled more vigorously away, quitting the line of
light, however, lest they might actually put their threat in
execution.
While the baffled Jewess screamed, stamped herself into a frenzy at
the door of the beacon, the two men disappeared and hurried up
stairs, I doubted not, to procure a couple of government muskets
which they possessed, for the purpose of having a shot at me from the
upper gallery; but the flames, which I saw already filling all the
second story of the building, must have barred their way, for I soon
saw them again at the door gesticulating violently, while their dark
figures were strongly defined in black outline against the red and
lurid light within.
But still I shouted exultingly, and pulled breathlessly away.
A strong odour of burning wood was soon wafted over the water, for
the whole beacon was built of timber, which was old, dry, and being
yearly pitched and painted, it burned with all the fierce rapidity of
an ignited tar-barrel. Within, the entire edifice seemed filled with
light and flame, like the cone of a furnace; suddenly there was a
crash, as the red-hot machinery, with all its wheels, lamps,
reflectors, and iron-work, vanished with the descending roof, and a
pyramid of red and roaring fire shot upward into the dark midnight
sky, diffusing a light in every direction, even to the far horizon of
the German Sea, and all along the low flat shore. Every wave that
broke above the desolate Sandridge, as it raised its crested head,
seemed for the moment a wave of fire, for the whole sea became, as it
were, a sheet of reflected flame.
This sudden spectacle and terrible catastrophe arrested my exertions;
for a few minutes I gazed in wonder and bewilderment. Then moved by
pity, I put the punt about, and, animated by an emotion of
generosity, of which the objects were totally unworthy, sculled with
all my strength towards the spot, to aid the three wretches who
merited so little at my hands.
The iron gallery and the slender lightning-rod were distinctly
visible against the dark sky, for both were glowing and red-hot; but
the former fell, hissing into the sea, and the latter, after waving
to and fro, bent over, willow-like, in the form of a slender arch,
above the flames, which, as there was not a breath of wind, and the
night was exceedingly calm, roared steadily upward, and with a
terrible sound. The beacon was soon reduced to a mere skeleton, amid
the charred timbers of which, the flames began to sink and die; thus,
in less than half-an-hour, not a vestige of it remained, save the
scorched heads of the wooden piles which had upheld it above the sea.
As the latter again became dark, and I heard no sounds but the lonely
booming of the surf and the beating of my own heart, shudderingly I
put the boat about, and pulled shoreward in the direction of a little
red spark that seemed to indicate a habitation; and seeking the while
to avoid the numerous boats which (now that the beacon was fairly
burned down) put off rapidly, with all their crews, intent on
rendering assistance when too late.
I had now no feeling either of vengeance or of anger at the three
miserable creatures who must have perished in the wooden beacon; and,
though in no way to blame for the dreadful catastrophe, their hideous
visages seemed to pursue me as I pulled towards the shore, which rose
rapidly as I approached it. I beached the punt upon a shelving slope
of land, and sprang ashore with a shout of joy, although alike
ignorant of where I was or what might next befall me.
The night was warm and the air was balmy, for it came from fields of
ripening corn. I sought the shelter of a coppice that grew close to
the sandy beach, and stretching my limbs at full length on the long
thick grass, in my danger and solitude, there made many good and wise
mental resolutions, now, when far, far from my mother's once happy
home, never to say or do aught of which she could not approve, to
remember all her instructions and precepts, and her love for me, as a
restraint from the paths of temptation and vice. In these good
resolutions I found a consolation in my loneliness, sorrow, and
remorse, and so, after a time, I fell into a disturbed and uneasy
sleep.