cat's-paw to wrinkle its shining face; a morning warm, genial, windless,
reminiscent of fairest summer, such a day as landsmen rejoice in,
feeling that it is good to be alive. But the glass came tumbling down,
the sea heaved sullenly in the oily calm, seething around the bared
fangs of jagged rocks, drawing back with threatening snarl or snatching
irritably at the trailing sea-weed; and high aloft the gulls wheeled,
clamouring. Old men amongst the fishers looked askance. Why did they not
take warning? Alas! The year had been a lean year; the weather latterly
had been bad, and for near on a week the boats had been unable to go
out. The fish were there for the taking. Prices now were good. And "men
must work" even if "women must weep." So it befell that boat after boat
put out from harbour and headed over the windless sea, dragged,
galley-like, by the clumsy sweeps, till, clear of the land, the fanning
of a light air from the south-west gave her gentle steerage way. Soon
not a boat was left in port; even those whose weather-wise "skeely" old
skippers had counselled caution, at length, against their will and
better judgment, were shamed into starting. After all, it was no great
distance they were going; with ordinary luck they might be back before
much wind came. And if the worst came to the worst and they were caught
out at sea, why, the boats were weatherly craft, manned by the best of
seamen, and an hour or two at the most would see them fight their way
back to port. It was all in the day's work. Nothing venture, nothing
win. If one may take a risk, so may another. It does not do to stand
idle in the background whilst one's neighbour by superior daring secures
the prize we also sorely need.
So by 9 A.M. the last boat of the five and forty had got to sea. Before
midday all had made an offing of eight or ten miles, and had started to
shoot their lines. Folk who had watched them creep out of the harbour
now gave no further heed, save perhaps that wives may chance to have
cast anxious looks seaward now and again. But none dreamt of evil.
Then of a sudden, as the morning passed, some on shore became aware of a
strange, death-like stillness that had fallen over all things, a feeling
of gloom and oppression in the air. The sun indeed still shone unclouded
over the land, but away out at sea to the north-east there was a
horrible canker of blackness that was eating up the sky, and that
already had hid from sight, as by a wall, those boats that lay farthest
from the land, whilst those still visible could be seen hurriedly
letting everything go by the run. Then the blackness shut down over all,
and men could but guess what was going on behind that terrible veil.
Over the town, as people deserted their houses and hurried to cliff or
sea wall, or wherever there seemed possibility of gaining sight or
knowledge of the fleet, the same horror of darkness came rushing; wind
raved and screamed, and already a sea, indescribable in its appalling
fury, was raging into the bay, the crests, cut off as with a knife,
flying through the air like densest smoke. Rain scourged and blinded,
the driving spray lashed beyond bearing the faces of those who, dread in
their souls, peered through their sheltering hands, trying vainly to
penetrate the smother to windward. A few hundred yards of raging water,
a blurred vision of rushing, tumbling seas; tumultuous, deafening roar
of surf, the tortured scream of wind; and that was all. It was as if one
might try to gaze into the mouth of hell.
Then through this Hades of waters, rolling, tumbling, pitching, buried
almost in the breaking seas, into the bay came rushing three yawls,
manned by crab-fishers from St. Abb's, past the Hurcar Rock, and round
safely into the harbour; then a large Eyemouth fishing-boat, and
another, and another, and then a pause of sickening suspense, and two
more large boats from St. Abb's fought their way to safety. Men began
faintly to pluck up heart. If these had come out of the jaws of death,
why not the others? But now again they hoped with ever sinking hearts,
for minutes passed and there came no more. Then, even as they strained
their eyes despairingly, there came one into the bay that failed to get
far enough to windward. Down on the rock behind the breakwater she
drove, helpless, and went to pieces. Another took the same road, and
smashed to atoms almost at the pierhead, so near, and yet so far from
human aid, that the voices of both crews could be heard by the helpless,
distracted spectators--white-lipped men, wailing women, who clustered
there by the rocks in impotent agony. One struggling drowning man fought
hard--it is said that the outermost of a chain of rescuers once even
touched his hand. But no help was possible, no human power could have
drawn those helpless men from that raging cauldron; against such wind no
rocket could fly, near these rocks no lifeboat could live. Even if she
could have lived, there was no crew to man her; all were away with the
fleet.
It was near low water now, and into the bay came driving a big boat that
rushed on the rocks at Fort Point, pounded there a brief second, and was
hurled by the following sea on to the beach, so nearly high and dry that
her crew, by the aid of lines, were readily saved. And then into view
through the welter came staggering a new boat, one whose first trip it
was, sore battered, but battling gallantly for life, and making
wonderful weather of it. Yet, even as hope told the flattering tale of
her certain safety, there came racing up astern a sea, gigantic even in
that giant sea, raced her, caught her, and, as it passed ahead, so
tilted her bows that the ballast slid aft, and down she sank by the
stern, so near to safety that betwixt ship and shore wife might
recognise husband and husband wife.
As at Eyemouth, so it was all down the coast. At Burnmouth, at Berwick
(though no boat belonging to Berwick that day was out), at Goswick Bay,
and elsewhere, boat after boat, driven before the fury of the gale, was
forced over by wind and sea, and sunk with all her crew, or was dashed
to pieces on the shore.
Night fell on Eyemouth; and, God, what a night! "In Rama was there a
voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel
weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are
not."
By little and little, by ones and twos, boats, battered and with sails
torn to ribbons, with crews exhausted and distraught, kept arriving
during the Saturday and Sunday, bringing men, as it were, back from the
dead. One or two, under bare poles, had ridden the gale out at sea,
lying up into the wind as near as might be, threshing through those
awful seas hour after hour, buried almost, sometimes, in the seething
cauldron, or struck by tons of solid water when some huge mountain of a
wave, toppling to its fall, rushed at her out of the blackness. From
minute to minute the men never knew but that the next roaring billow
would engulf them also, as already they had seen it roll over and
swallow up their neighbours.
It was the skipper of the _White Star_ that told afterwards how, before
the tornado burst--as some said, "like a clap of thunder"--the first
thing to take his attention from the shooting of his lines was boats on
the weather side of him hurriedly shortening sail, or letting all run.
To the nor'ard, from horizon almost to zenith, already the sky was black
as ink, the sea beneath white with flying spume. Then like magic the sea
got up, and the _White Star_ turned to run for Eyemouth, with the
_Myrtle_ in company. But darkness and the fierce turmoil of waters
forced them to lay to in order to make certain of their position. As
they lay, pitching fearfully and many times almost on their beam ends
from the violence of the wind, a foaming mountain of water came
thundering down on the _White Star_, so that for a brief moment all
thought that she was gone; and almost as she shook herself free, just
such another tremendous wave struck the _Myrtle_, and rolled her over
like a walnut-shell skiff, a child's plaything. As the _White Star_ rose
on successive waves, her crew twice afterwards saw the _Myrtle_ heave up
her side for a second ere she went to the bottom, but of her seven
hands no man was ever seen again. Head-reaching into the wind, the
_White Star_ gradually made her perilous way, presently passing yet
another boat floating bottom up, her rigging trailing in the water
around her, but no bodies visible anywhere. Of the rest of the fleet, no
sign. Four and forty hours later the _White Star_ reached safety at
North Shields. Other boats that also headed for the open sea were even
longer in coming to port, but all, as they drew farther and farther from
land, found weather less terrible, a sea less dangerous, than that from
which by the skin of their teeth they had escaped. Some of the smitten
craft drove far to the south before the wind, and after escapes many and
incredible, reached a haven of safety, with men worn and dazed, but not
all with crews complete; too many paid toll to the sea with one or more
lives. For as long as a day and a half, there were skippers who sat,
unrelieved, at the tiller of their boat, an awful weight of
responsibility on their shoulders, human lives depending on their nerve
and skill. Some of these men had to be carried ashore, when at length
they reached safety; the legs of one were found to be so twisted and
wedged in beneath his seat, that it was only with the greatest
difficulty and pain that he was got out of the boat.
There was one boat that found refuge at Shields on the Sunday. She
arrived too late to permit of a telegram being sent announcing her
safety, but in time to allow her crew--or what was left of it--to catch
a late train to the north, and the solemn, echoing tramp of their heavy
feet at midnight in the silent street of Eyemouth brought the stricken
people from their beds with a start, and with vague apprehension of
fresh disaster. But their dread was turned to rejoicing, except for the
family of that man who came home never again. In all, on that Sunday
night it was known that sixty-four of the men of Eyemouth had perished,
and seventy-one were still missing. Of these but a handful ever
returned. Eyemouth alone lost one hundred and twenty-nine--the men of
whole families, almost of clans, swept away. Truly to her that day was
as of old had been Flodden Field to Scotland. The total number of men
who perished along this coast in that hurricane was one hundred and
eighty-nine.
Will the terror of that time ever be forgotten, or its horror wiped out
from the town of Eyemouth? In the face of disaster such as that, smaller
happenings appear for the time almost insignificant. Yet it was but the
other year that another great gale on that coast brought disaster most
pitiful. A Danish steamer, feeling her way to the Firth of Forth in
weather thick with fog and with a great gale blowing, mistaking her
position, came creeping in the darkness close in to the little village
of St. Abb's. Nearer and nearer to the people, snug in their warm,
well-lit houses, came the roar of her fog-horn. And then, from the
neighbourhood of a treacherous rock--awash at low water--and little more
than a stone's throw from the village houses, there rushed up a rocket,
and a flare was seen dimly burning. In the heavy sea, the steamer had
brought her bows with a mighty crash on to that sunken rock, and there
she lay, the great seas sweeping her from stem to stern. Rockets from
the cliff that overlooked the wreck could not reach her in that fierce
wind; the life-boat, when it arrived from Berwick, could not live in the
broken water near to her. All was done that man could do to rescue the
perishing men in that hapless vessel; but that "all" in the end amounted
to just nothing. Helpless, the watchers listened with sick hearts to the
cries of her doomed crew and to the deep baying of a great hound that
was on board the doomed ship; helpless, they gazed in impotent agony at
the despairing signals made. In the morning she was still there, but the
cries were fainter, the faces seen fewer, the vessel more often buried
under breaking seas. Then the cries ceased. And when daylight came a
second time, where the hull had been there was now but white, raging
water, and seas that spouted high in air from a black rock that showed
its cruel head at intervals. And of the crew there was found no sign.
Only to and fro on the shore there ran a great white dog, that would let
no man approach it, that would take no food from strange hands. Day and
night, like a lost spirit, to and fro between Eyemouth and St. Abb's
Head trotted the great white hound, never resting. And ever when a sail
hove in sight, or a steamship passed near in, he would run hurriedly to
the farthest projecting point, and throwing back his head, wail
piteously for the drowned sailors, his friends.
GRISELL HOME, A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HEROINE
The Merse has given many a gallant man to the mother-country, oftentimes
a fighter, now and again a martyr, but no fairer flower has ever
blossomed in that stretch of land that has the North Sea for one of its
boundaries, and looks across fertile plains to the long, blue line of
Cheviots in the south, than one whose name must ever find a sure place
in the hearts of those whom courage and fortitude, sweetness and merry
humour, exquisite unselfishness, and gay uncomplainingness in the face
of dire emergency are things to be honoured and held dear.
Grisell Home was the eldest of eighteen children, two of whom died in
infancy. She was born at Redbraes Castle--now Marchmont--on December 25,
1665. There is a belief that Christmas babies always have an extra large
share of the nature of Him who was born on Christmas Day; and truly
Grisell Home was one of those who never seemed to know the meaning of
Self. Her father, Sir Patrick Home, a man of strong character and large
fortune, was known to be a rigid Presbyterian, no friend to the house of
Stuart, and he was regarded by the Government of his day as "a factious
person." His great friendship with his neighbour, Robert Baillie of
Jerviswoode, in no way increased the favour with which either of those
good men was regarded in high places. Jerviswoode and Home were
"suspects," and being known as close allies, where one was supposed to
be plotting, the other was always expected to be at his back.
To be the eldest of so large a brood must have been a sobering thing for
any little girl, but Grisell shouldered her responsibilities with a
happy heart, and united with that happy, child-like heart the wisdom and
discretion of a woman. She was only twelve when she was chosen as
messenger from her father to his friend Mr. Baillie, who was then in
prison in Edinburgh. Over lonely Soutra Hill (where highway robbery and
murder were things not unknown), it was no easy or pleasant ride from
Marchmont to the Port of Edinburgh; and here the bleaching skulls of
martyred covenanters gave to those who entered the town grim warning of
the risks of nonconformity. Doubtless little Grisell had been provided
by her parents with a suitable escort, but, even so, her heart must have
beat faster as she went up the High Street to where the "Heart of
Midlothian" then stood, and asked to see Mr. Robert Baillie, her
father's friend. The bright-eyed, slim little maid, with her chestnut
hair and exquisite complexion, must have been as unexpected a sight in
that gloomy place as a wild rose in a desert. None could suspect her of
meddling with affairs of State, or of tampering with the prisoners of
his gracious Majesty. Thus Grisell Home was able successfully to carry a
letter of advice and information, and to bring back to her father in the
Merse tidings of a blameless martyr.
With his father in prison that day was Baillie's son, George, a boy one
year older than Grisell. He had been, as were many of the well-born lads
of his time, at his studies in Holland, reading law, when his father was
put in prison, but hastened home on hearing the news. Boys wore swords,
and not Eton jackets, in George Baillie's day. He had, as his daughter
afterwards wrote of him, "a rough, manly countenance"; and from that day
until the day of her death that face, which she knew first as a boy's,
was more beautiful to Grisell Home than any other face on earth. Several
times afterwards was Grisell sent as bearer of important letters from
her father to him whose son, in days still long to come, was to be her
husband, and never once was the douce little messenger suspected.
Not many months later her own father was a prisoner in Dumbarton Castle,
and during the fifteen months in which he lay there, Grisell was still
the messenger, not only to him, but to his friends in various parts. Her
early childhood may have been unharassed, but Grisell Home's girlhood
was a careful and anxious one. On the discovery of the Rye House Plot,
Baillie of Jerviswoode and Home of Polwarth, innocent men both, were
denounced as traitors to their King. Baillie was taken, and after
several months of imprisonment in London, so heavily loaded with chains
that his health completely broke down, he was brought by sea to
Edinburgh in stormy November weather which kept the ship a fortnight on
its way. A dying man when he was put in the Tolbooth, he yet had to
undergo many exhausting examinations and a farcical trial, with "Bluidy
Mackenzie" for chief inquisitor, and on Christmas Eve, 1684, he
gallantly and cheerfully met a martyr's death at the Market Cross of
Edinburgh.
Sir Patrick Home's denunciation was longer in coming than that of his
friend, and not until November 1684 was the warrant for his apprehension
issued. He, good man, had no desire for martyrdom; moreover, at that
time he already possessed ten children, whose future as orphans was
likely to be wretched, and so Sir Patrick sought concealment from the
hounds of the law. Foiled in laying hold of him, the law seized his
eldest son, Patrick, and cast him into prison. Two days after
Jerviswoode's death, the lad petitioned the Privy Council for release.
He was but "a poor afflicted young boy," he said, loyal to his
principles and with a hatred of plots, and only craved liberty that he
might "see to some livelihood for himself" and "be in some condition" to
help and serve his disconsolate mother and the rest of his father's ten
starving children. Most grudgingly was the boon bestowed, and not until
the boy had obtained security for his good behaviour to the extent of
two thousand pounds sterling was he allowed to return to the Merse.
Meantime Redbraes Castle was constantly kept under supervision. Scarcely
a week passed without a party of redcoats clattering up the drive,
interrogating the servants, tramping through all the rooms, hunting
round the policies, and doing everything in their power to make things
unpleasant for the wife and children of this attainted rebel. To only
two people in the house, and to one out of it, was the secret of Sir
Patrick Home's hiding-place known. With the help of a faithful friend
and retainer, Jamie Winter, the carpenter, Lady Home and her daughter
Grisell had one dark night carried bed and bedclothes to the
burying-place of the Homes, a vault under Polwarth Church, a mile from
Redbraes. A black walnut folding-bed, exactly underneath the pulpit from
which the minister of Polwarth preached every Sunday, was the fugitive's
resting-place at night, while for a month he saw no more daylight than
was able to reach him from a slit at one end of the vault. The ashes of
his ancestors were scarcely lively company, but Sir Patrick found "great
comfort and constant entertainment" by repeating to himself Buchanan's
Latin Version of the Psalms. Each night, too, the prisoner was cheered
by a visit from his daughter Grisell. Through an open glen by the
Swindon Burn, down what is called The Lady's Walk, Grisell nightly came
to the vault with her little store of provisions. She was an
imaginative, poetic little maid, and the whisper of the wind in the lime
trees that grew on either hand would make her shiver, and yet more
loudly would her heart thump when in the darkness she stumbled over the
graves in the kirkyard, and remembered all the tales she had ever heard
of bogles and of ghosts. That lonely walk in the night must always have
been full of terrors, yet Grisell's love for her father was so great
that she steadfastly braved them all. One fear only she had--that of the
soldiers. The wind moaning through the trees or rustling the long grass,
the sound of a rabbit or some other wild thing in the bracken, the
sudden bark of a dog,--all these made her sure that some spy had found
out her secret, and sent her running as fast as her little legs could
carry her to try to save her father from his captors. The first night
she went was the worst, for the minister kept dogs, and the manse was
near the church, and even her light footfall was sufficient to set every
one of them a-barking. But Lady Home sent for the minister next day, and
upon the pretence of one of them being mad, persuaded their owner to
hang them all. Grisell and her father had the same sunny nature, and
both dearly loved a joke, and each amusing little incident of the day
was saved up by the former to be told while the prisoner made a meal on
the food which she brought with her. Many a hearty laugh they had
together in that dark, dismal place, and often Grisell stayed so late
that she had to run up the glen, so as to get home before day dawned.
The difficulties she encountered in securing food enough for her father
without arousing the suspicion of the servants was always a subject for
jest, for, more often than not, the only possible means of getting the
food was by surreptitiously conveying it, during a meal, from her own
plate into her lap. Her amazing appetite was bound to be commented upon,
but never did she surprise her brothers and sisters more than on a day
when the chief dish at dinner was her father's favourite one--sheep's
head. While the younger members of the family were very busy over their
broth, Grisell conveyed to her lap the greater part of the head. Her
brother Sandy, afterwards Lord Marchmont, dispatched his plateful first,
looked up, and gave a shout of amazement.
"Mother!" he cried, "will ye look at Grisell! while we have been eating
our broth, she has eaten up the whole sheep's heid!"
"Sandy must have an extra share of the next sheep's heid," said the
laughing father when he heard the tale.
During the month that Sir Patrick Home lay hid in the vault, it was not
only by collecting food for him by day, and by taking it to him by
night, that his young daughter gave proof of her devotion. In a room of
which Grisell kept the key, on the ground floor at Redbraes Castle, she
and Jamie Winter worked in the small hours, making a hiding-place for
the fugitive. Underneath a bed which drew out they lifted up the boards,
and with their hands, scraped and burrowed in the earth to make a hole
large enough for a man to lie in. To prevent making a noise they used no
tools, and as they dug out the earth it was packed in a sheet, put on
Jamie's back, and carried, Grisell helping, out at the window into the
garden. Not a nail was left upon her fingers when the task was
completed, and a sorely unslept little maid she must have looked at the
end of a month's foraging by day and hard work by night, with that
nerve-tearing walk as a beginning to her nightly labours. The hole being
ready, Jamie Winter conveyed to it a large deep wooden box which he had
made at home, with air-holes in the lid, and furnished with mattress and
bedding, and this was fitted into the place made for it. It was then
Grisell's duty to examine it daily, and to keep the air-holes clean
picked, and when it had for some weeks stood trial of no water coming
into it from its being sunk so low in the ground, Sir Patrick one night
came home. For a couple of weeks only was Redbraes his sanctuary, for,
on Christmas Day, upon Grisell lifting the boards as usual to see that
all was well with the lair that her father was to retire to in case of a
sudden surprise, the mattress bounced to the top, the box being full of
water. The poor child nearly fainted from horror, but Sir Patrick
remained quite calm.