“There’s the cap’n! There’s Joe Salt, cap’n of the Clara Em! He’s
acrosst the bowsprit signalin’! He’s tryin’ to communicate!”
“We haven’t seen another living figure moving across that vessel,”
said Bayard, whose inexperience was as much perplexed as his
humanity was distressed and thwarted by the situation. “I see one
man--on the bows--yes. But where are the rest? You don’t suppose
they’re washed overboard already?--Oh, this is horrible!” he cried.
He was overwhelmed at the comparative, almost indifferent calmness
of his fellow-townsmen.
The light-keeper and the old captain had run out upon the reef.
They held both hands to their ears. The shouts from the vessel
continued. Every man held his breath. The whirling blast, like the
cone of a mighty phonograph, bore a faint articulation from the
wreck.
“Oh!” cried the young minister. “He says they’re all sunk!”
He was shocked to hear a laugh issue from the lips of Captain Hap,
and to see, in the light of the fire, something like a smile upon
the keeper’s face.
“You don’t understand, sir,” said one of the fishermen
respectfully. “He says they’re all--”
“May as well out with it, Bob,” said another. “The parson’s got to
get his initiation someways. Cap’n Salt says they’re drunk, sir.
The crew of the Clara Em is all drunk.”
At this moment a terrible shriek rang above the roar of the storm.
It came from the old woman on the top of the cliff.
Her eyes had been the first, but they were not the only ones now,
to perceive the signs of arousing life upon the wreck.
A second man was seen to climb across the bows, to pause for an
instant, and then to plunge. He went out of sight in a moment.
The inrolling surf glittered in the blaze of the bonfires like a
cataract of flame. The swimmer reappeared, struggled, threw up his
arms and disappeared.
“I have stood this as long as I can,” said Bayard in a low, firm
voice. “Give me a rope! Tie it around me, some of you, and hold on!
I’m going to try to save that man.”
“I’ll go, myself,” said one of the fishermen slowly.
“Bob,” replied the minister, “how many children have you?”
“Eleven, sir.”
“Stay where you are, then,” said Bayard. “Such things are for
lonely men.”
“Bring the rope!” he commanded. “Tie it yourselves--you know
how--in one of your sailor’s knots; something that will hold. I’m a
good swimmer. I saved a man once on a yachting trip. Quick, there!
Faster!”
“There’s another!” cried the light-keeper. “There’s a second
feller jumped overboard--swimming for his life! Look, look, look!
He’s sunk--no he ain’t, he ain’t! He’s bearing down against the
rocks--My God! Look at him, look, look, look!”
Busy hands were at the rope about the minister’s waist; they worked
slowly, from sheer reluctance to do the deed. Bayard stamped the
beach with divine impatience. His head whirled with such exaltation
that he scarcely knew who touched him; he made out to perceive that
Ben Trawl was one of the men who offered to tie the bow-line; he
heard the old captain say, shortly:--
“I’ll do it myself!”
He thought he heard little Jane Granite cry out; and that she
begged him not to go, “for his people’s sake,” and that Ben Trawl
roughly silenced her. Strangely, the words that he had been
reading--what ages since!--in the hall in Angel Alley spun through
his mind.
“‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered. ‘And his wife and child.
Hush. Yes!’”
* * * * *
So! This is the “terrible sea!” This is what drowning means; this
mortal chill, this crashing weight upon the lungs, the heart, this
fighting for a man’s breath,--this asphyxia--this conflict with
wind and water, night and might--this being hurled out into chaos,
gaining a foot, and losing three--this sight of something human
yonder hurtling towards you on the billow which bears you back from
it--this struggling on again, and sweeping back, and battling out!
Blessing on the “gentleman’s muscle,” trained in college days to do
man’s work! Thanks to the waters of old Charles River and of merry
Newport for their unforgotten lessons! Thank God for that wasted
liberal education,--yes, and liberal recreation,--if it teach the
arm, and fire the nerve, and educate the soul to save a drunken
sailor now.
But save? Can human power save that sodden creature--only wit
enough left in him to keep afloat and drift, dashing inward on the
rocks? He swirls like a chip. But his cry is the mortal cry of
flesh and blood.