CLOSE TO PORT
The short June night drew to its close, and still the weather continued
fair. The sky was full of stars, a solitary lambent planet quivered in
the east. By the time the moon had sunk, with pale metallic glow, above
the motionless Channel, a welcome point of fire was visible over the
starboard bow of the vessel--the beacon of Castle Cornet lighthouse.
A little flutter ran through the groups of expectant people keeping
watch together upon the deck of the _Princess_. It was well to have got
back safely, and without fog. And still, whispered the younger ones
regretfully, the most delightful picnic in the world had come to an
end, all too soon! Even Mrs. Verschoyle, emerging with salts-bottle,
with chattering teeth, from the cabin, conceded that, for a yachting
expedition, and although L’Ancresse Common would have been a thousand
times more reasonable, their misadventures had been few. How
comforting, murmured the poor lady, with a shudder, if it were not for
the cold--this curiously increasing cold--to keep one’s eyes on the
familiar harbour light, to realise that in another hour-and-a-half at
latest, they would be all warm and asleep in their beds!
But the cold increased still, and, for a midsummer night, was,
undoubtedly, no common cold. It found its way through plaids and
waterproofs, it got down throats, it caused fingers to become numbed.
The mate was seen to button up his pilot jacket as he made his way with
precipitate haste to the men on watch, the skipper moved from one foot
to the other as he stood consulting his compass. Both skipper and mate
glanced anxiously ahead, towards the west, where no horizon showed.
‘One would, scarcely have expected the stars to set so suddenly,’
observed Mrs. Verschoyle. In this lady’s youth it is probable that
schoolgirls did not, as now, learn the exact sciences. ‘But depend upon
it, the captain knows his way. The sailors are taking precautions, I
heard the steward say so downstairs, by using the lead. And I remarked
that they were seeing most attentively to the small boats. Besides, I
have heard more than one gun fired. No sound so reassuring at sea as
the report of a gun! A skilled old mariner like Ozanne would not be
dependent on anything so chancy as the stars.’
‘But, mamma, the harbour lighthouse has set, too,’ cried Rosie
Verschoyle, who stood shivering at her mother’s side. ‘Everything is
setting. I don’t see our own funnel. I don’t see the flower in your
bonnet as clearly as I did two minutes ago.’
‘I wish you would talk soberly, child. You know how much I dislike
this kind of ill-timed chaff. Who ever heard of a lighthouse setting?’
observed Mrs. Verschoyle, with melancholy commonsense, ‘and why does
the _Princess_ go so slow? The skipper, no doubt, has his reasons,
still he might remember we are not all as fond of the sea as he is.
I was never less nervous in my life, and--Sailor! Sailor!’ Mrs.
Verschoyle flung herself before a figure, wrapped up in tarpaulin,
crowned by a sou’-wester which loomed with gigantic proportions through
the thick air. ‘Would you say, if you please, why the steamer goes so
slow? And are we in danger--off our track or anything? And why does
one seem all at once to lose sight of Castle Cornet lighthouse?’
The sailor was a weatherbeaten old Guernseyman, possessing about twelve
words of Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary. Mrs. Verschoyle, however,
in her agonised desire for truth, stretched her arms forth in the
direction of the vanished red light. She also articulated the words
Castle Cornet with tolerable distinctness. Her meaning had made itself
clear.
The answer, proceeding from the depths of a gruff, tobaccoey throat,
was incisive:
‘_Brouillard!_’
And _brouillard_ it proved, clammy, ice-cold, yellow, after the
manner of all mid-Channel fogs. At first every one affected to take
this reverse of fortune as a jest, the little bit of mock danger that
was needed to point a moral to the preceding day’s enjoyment. So
providential, said the ladies, in pious but quavering chorus, that the
_Princess_ lay close on shore before the fog grew thick. The skipper’s
duty, clearly, was to make straight for St. Peter’s harbour and land
them. Only, why lose time? Why steam so slowly? What object could
Captain Ozanne have in exposing them to this mortal cold a moment
longer than was needful?
Mrs. Verschoyle, after a few minutes’ suspense, voted for independent
action. She had, indeed, broached a project of creeping up to the men
at the wheel and imploring them to ‘turn faster,’ when there came a
general stir among the crew, followed by a rattling sound which most
of the party had sufficient sea-going experience to recognise. The
_Princess_ was about to cast her anchor.
Just at this juncture appeared Lord Rex, fresh from hurried
consultations with Ozanne and the boatswain. A suspicious unconcern was
on Lord Rex Basire’s face, a note of forced cheerfulness in his tone.
‘Lucky we have got so near home, is it not, Mrs. Verschoyle? We are
about two miles from shore, they say,--Ozanne, of course, knows every
yard of water,--just within or without the _Grunes_, whatever the
_Grunes_ may mean. We shall only have to ride half an hour or so at
anchor--awfully jolly sensation, I can tell you, with a south-west
swell. And then, as the mist rises, we shall steam clean into
Petersport.’
But this show of jauntiness misled no one. The De Carterets, Cassandra
Tighe, Marjorie Bartrand, all understood their position better than did
Lord Rex. And it was a position of the utmost gravity. The _Princess_
was lying in dense fog, surrounded by shoals, across the very highway
of the Channel night steamers. For an old and wary seaman like Ozanne
to have been forced to anchor at such a strait did but render the fact
of his helplessness more pointed.
‘What does it all mean? Are we not close to port, madam?’
The ladies were pressing together in groups. Dinah whispered the
question across Cassandra Tighe’s shoulder.
‘Close to port--of one kind or another,’ answered Cassandra, vaguely
unorthodox to the last. ‘As long as nothing runs into us we may do well
enough. And dawn is at hand. At sunrise the fog may lift. Your husband
ought to be here with you,’ she added, misinterpreting a certain
vibration of Dinah’s voice.
‘I thank God that he is not! Alone, there is nothing to be frightened
about. I thank God that Gaston is safe--warmly housed, away in
Alderney!’
And, in truth, a reasonless, half-pleasurable excitement, the reaction
after so much dull pain, had arisen in Dinah’s heart.
That a dark ‘Perhaps’ lay straight and immediately before them, became
at each moment more plain. The continued firing of guns gave token
that other vessels were in the same plight as the _Princess_--once,
indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they could see the faint
reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the beating of her gong. The
dreary sound of the fog-horn, the muffled tramp of the men on watch,
the lights burning aloft in the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered
boats, the solemn faces of the skipper and the crew, all combined into
one unspoken word--Danger.