There was but little depth of snow upon the downs and cliffs, but
such as remained served to reflect and to magnify all possible
sources of light. These were few enough and sorely needed. The
Windover Light, a revolving lantern of the second power, is red
and strong. It flashed rapidly, now blood-red and now lamp-black.
Bayard thought of the pillar of fire and cloud that led the ancient
people. There should have been by rights a moon; and breaks in
battalions of clouds, at rare intervals, let through a shimmer
paler than darkness, though darker than light. Such a reduction
of the black tone of the night had mercifully befallen, when the
staggering wagons clattered and stopped upon the large, oval
pebbles of the beach.
The fog, which is shy of a gale, especially at that season of the
year, had not yet come in, and the vessel could be clearly seen.
She lay upon the reef, broadside to the breakers; she did not
pitch, but, to a nautical eye, her air of repose was the bad thing
about her. She was plainly held fast. Her red port-light, still
burning, showed as each wave went down, and the gray outlines of
her rigging could be discerned. Her foremast had broken off about
five feet from the deck, and the spar, held by the rigging, was
ramming the sides of the vessel.
The astonishing rumor was literally true. The Clara Em--one of the
famous fishermen of which Windover was too proud to be vain; the
Clara Em, newly-built and nobly furnished, none of your old-time
schooners, clumsy of hulk and rotten of timbers, but the fastest
runner on the coast, the stanchest keel that cleft the harbor,
fine in her lines as a yacht, and firm in her beams as an ocean
steamer--the Clara Em, fearing neither gods nor men nor weather,
and bound for Georges’ on a three weeks’ fresh-fishing trip, had
deliberately weighed anchor in the teeth of a March southeaster,
and had flung all her clean, green-white sails to the gale. As
nearly as could be made out from the shore, she had every stitch
up, and not a reef to her face, and she lay over against the
rock like a great eagle whose wings were broken. Even a landsman
could comprehend the nature of this dare-devil act; and Bayard,
running to lend a hand to slide the dory from the wagon, uttered an
exclamation of indignant horror.
“How did this happen? Were they mad?”
“Full,” replied the old captain laconically.
“Yes, I see she’s under full sail. But why?” he persisted
innocently.
The old captain, with a curious expression, flashed a lantern in
the young minister’s face, but made no reply.
Cries could now be heard from the vessel; for the wind, being dead
off, bore sounds from sea to shore which could by no means travel
from shore to sea. Ragged Rock was a rough spot in the kindest
weather; and in that gale, and with the wind in that direction, the
roar and power of the surf were great. But it should be remembered
that the blow had not been of long duration; hence the sea was not
what it would be in a few hours if the gale should hold. In this
fact lay the only possible chance of extending rescue in any form
to the shipwrecked crew.
“Clara Em! Aho--oy--oy!” yelled a dozen voices. But the united
throats of all Windover could not have made themselves articulate
to the straining ears upon the schooner.
“Where’s yer crew? Show up, there! Can’t ye do _nothin’_ for
yerselves? Where’s yer dories? Hey? What? Clara Em! Aho--oy--oy!”
“They’re deef as the two years’ drownded,” said the old captain.
“An’ they ain’t two hundred feet from shore.”
“Why, then, surely we can save them!” cried Bayard joyfully. But no
man assented to the cheerful words.
The dory, a strong specimen of its kind, was now out of the wagon,
and a score of arms dragged it over the pebbles. The surf dashed
far up the beach, splashing men, boat, wagon, horses. Against the
cliff the spray rose a hundred feet, hissing, into the air. The old
captain eyed the sea and measured the incoming rollers with his
deep-set eye.
“Ye cayn’t do it,” he pronounced. “There ain’t a dory in Windover
can live in _that_”--he pointed his gaunt arm at the breakers.
“Anyhow, we’ll try!” rang out a strong voice. Cries from the wreck
arose again. Some of the younger men pushed the dory off. Bayard
sprang to join them.
“I can row!” he cried with boyish eagerness; “I was stroke at
Harvard!”
“This ain’t Charles River,” replied one of the men; “better stand
back, Parson.”
They kindly withstood him, and leaped in without him, four of
them, seamen born and bred. They ran the dory out into the surf.
He held his lantern high to light them. In their wet oil-skins
their rough, wild outlines looked like divers, or like myths of the
deep. They leaped in and seized the oars with one of the wild cries
of the sailor who goes to his duty, his dinner, or his death, by
the rhythm of a song or the thrill of a shout. The dory rose on a
tremendous comber, trembled, turned, whirled, and sank from sight.
Then came yells, and a crash.
“There!” howled Captain Hap, stamping his foot, “I told ye so!”
“She’s over!”
“She’s busted!”
“She’s smashed to kindlin’ wood!”
“Here they be! Here they come! Haul ’em in!”
The others ran out into the surf and helped the brave fellows,
soaked and discomfited, up the beach. They were badly bruised, and
one of them was bleeding.
The pedestrians from the town had now come up; groups of men, and
the few women; and a useless crowd stood staring at the vessel. A
big third wave rolled over and smashed the port light.
“It’s been going on all these ages,” thought Bayard,--“the helpless
shore against the almighty sea.”
“Only two hundred feet away!” he cried; “I _can’t_ see why
_something_ can’t be done! I say, something _shall_!--Where are
your ropes? Where are your wits? Where is all your education to
this kind of thing? Are you going to let them drown before your
eyes?”
“There ain’t no need of goin’ so far’s that,” said the old captain
with the aggravating serenity of his class. “If she holds till it
ebbs they can clomber ashore, every man-jack of ’em. Ragged Rock
ain’t an island except at flood. It’s a long, pinted tongue o’rock
runnin’ along,--so. You don’t onderstand it, Parson. Why, they
could eeny most _walk_ ashore, come mornin’, if she holds.”
“It’s a good pull from now till sun-up,” objected a fisherman. “And
it’s the question if she don’t break up.”
“Anyhow, I’m going to try,” insisted Bayard. A rope ran out through
his hands,--shot high into the air,--fell into the wind, and
dropped into the breakers. It had carried about ten feet. For the
gale had taken the stout cable between its teeth, and tossed it, as
a dog does a skein of silk, played with it, shook it to and fro,
and hurled it away. The black lips of the clouds closing over the
moon, seemed to open and grin as the old captain said:--
“You ken keep on tryin’ long’s you hev the inclination. Mebbe the
women-folks will feel better for’t; but you cay--n’t do it.”
“Can’t get a rope to a boat two hundred feet away?” demanded Bayard.
“Not without apparatus,--no, sir! Not in a blow like this here.”
The old seaman raised his voice to a bellow to make himself audible
twelve feet away. “Why, it’s reelly quite a breeze o’ wind,” he
said.
“Then what _can_ we do?” persisted Bayard, facing the beach in
great agitation. “What are we here for, anyhow?”
“We ken watch for ’em to come ashore,” replied the captain grimly.
Turning, in a ferment half of anger, half of horror, to the younger
men, Bayard saw that some one was trying to start a bonfire.
Driftwood had been collected from dry spots in the rocks--or had
a bucket of coal-tar been brought by some thoughtful hand? And in
a little cave at the foot of the cliff, a woman, upon her knees
in the shallow snow, was sheltering a tiny blaze within her two
hands. It was the girl Lena. She wore a woolen cap, of the fashion
called a Tam o’ Shanter, and a coarse fur shoulder cape. Her rude
face showed suddenly in the flaming light. It was full of anxious
kindliness. He heard her say:--
“It’ll hearten ’em anyhow. It’ll show ’em they ain’t deserted of
God and men-folks too.”
“Where’s my old lady?” added the girl, looking about. “I want to
get her up to this fire. She’s freezing somewheres.”
“Look alive, Lena! Here she is!” called one of the fishermen. He
pointed to the cliff that hung over Ragged Rock. The old woman
stood on the summit and on the edge. How she had climbed there,
Heaven knew; no one had seen or aided her; she stood, bent and
rigid, with her blanket shawl about her head. Her gray hair blew
back from her forehead in two lean locks. Black against the
darkness, stone carved out from stone, immovable, dumb, a statue
of the storm, she stared out straight before her. She seemed a
spirit of the wind and wet, a solemn figure-head, an anathema,
or a prayer; symbol of a thousand watchers frozen on a thousand
shores:--woman as the sea has made her.
The girl had clambered up the cliff like a cat, and could be seen
putting her arms around the old woman, and pleading with her. Lena
did indeed succeed so far as to persuade her down to the fire,
where she chafed the poor old creature’s hands, and held to her
shrunken lips a bottle of Jamaica ginger that some fisherman’s wife
had brought. But the old woman refused.
“Keep it for Johnny,” she said, “till he gets ashore.” It was the
only thing she had been heard to say that night.
She pushed the ginger away, and crawled back to her solitary
station on the cliff. Some one said: “Let be! Let her be!”