“_Now Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth_”--
There were mad shouts upon the beach. A score of iron hands held
to the line; and fifty men said to their souls: “That is a hero’s
deed.” Some one flung the rest of the pailful of tar upon the fire,
and it blazed up. The swimmer saw the yellow color touch the comber
that broke above his head. The rope tightened like the hand of
death upon his chest. Caught, perhaps? Ah, there! It has grazed
the reef, and the teeth of the rock are gnawing at it; so a mastiff
gnaws at the tether of his chained foe, to have the fight out
unimpeded.
“If it cuts through, I am gone,” thought Bayard.--“_And Jesus
Christ Thy Son, our Lord and Saviour._”--
“Haul in! Haul in, I say! Quick! Haul ’em in for life’s sake,
boys!--She tautens to the weight of two. _The parson’s got him!_”
The old captain jumped up and down on the pebbles like a boy. Wet
and glittering, through hands of steel, the line sped in.
“Does she hold? Is she cut? Haul in, haul in, haul in!”
The men broke into one of their sudden, natural choruses, moving
rhythmically to the measure of their song:--
“Pull for the shore, sailor,
Pull for the shore!”
As he felt his feet touch bottom, Bayard’s strength gave way. Men
ran out as far as they could stand in the undertow, and seized and
held and dragged--some the rescuer, some the rescued; and so they
all came dripping up the beach.
The rope dropped upon the pebbles--cut to a single strand.
Bayard was with difficulty persuaded to release his rigid clutch
from the shoulder of the fisherman, who fell in a shapeless mass at
his preserver’s feet. The light of the tar fire flared on the man’s
bloated face. It was Job Slip.
“Where’s the other?” asked Bayard faintly. “There were two.”
He dimly saw through streams of water, that something else had
happened; that men were running over the rocks and collecting in a
cleft, and stooping down to look, and that most of them turned away
as soon as they had looked.
The old woman’s was the only quiet figure of them all. She had not
left her place upon the cliff, but stood bent and stiff, staring
straight ahead. He thought he heard a girl’s voice say:--
“Hush! Don’t talk so loud. She doesn’t know--it’s Johnny; and he’s
been battered to jelly on the rocks.”
* * * * *
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” said Job, who had crawled up and got as far as
his knees, “I wasn’t wuth it.”
“That’s so,” said a candid bystander with an oath.
“Then _be_ worth it!” said Bayard in a loud voice. He seemed to
have thrown all that remained to him of soul and body into those
four words; as he spoke them, he lifted his dripping arms high
above his head, as if he appealed from the drunkard to the sky;
then he sank.
The gentlest hands in the crowd caught him, and the kindest hearts
on the coast throbbed when the old captain called:--
“Boys! Stand back! Stir up the fire! Where’s the dry blankets?
There’s plenty to ’tend to Johnny. Dead folks can bury their dead
folks. Hurry up them dry clo’es an’ that there Jamaiky ginger! This
here’s a livin’ man. Just a drop, sir--here. I’ll hold ye kinder
easy. Can’t? _What?_--Sho!... Boys, the parson’s hurt.”
At that moment a sound solemn and sinister reverberated from the
tower of the lighthouse. The iron lips of the fog bell opened and
spoke.