Taffy stood for a moment listening. He judged the wreck to be somewhere
on the near side of the light-house, between it and the mouth of the
creek; that was, if she had already struck. If not, the gale and the
set of the tide together would be sweeping her eastward, perhaps right
across the mouth of the creek. And if he could discover this, his course
would be to run back, intercept the coast-guard and send them around by
the upper bridge.
He waited for a second signal to guide him—a flare or a rocket; but none
came. The beach lay in the lew of the weather, deep in the hills' hollow
and trebly landlocked by the windings of the creek; but above him the
sky kept its screaming as though the bare ridges of the headland were
being shelled by artillery.
He resolved to keep along the lower slopes and search his way down to
the creek's mouth, when he would have sight of any signal shown along
the coast for a mile or two to the east and northeast. The night was
now as black as a wolf's throat; but he knew every path and fence. So
he scrambled up the low cliff and began to run, following the line of
stunted oaks and tamarisks which fenced it; and on the ridges—where the
blown hail took him in the face—crouching and scuttling like a crab,
sideways, moving his legs only from the knees down.
In this way he had covered half a mile and more when his right foot
plunged in a rabbit hole and he was pitched headlong into the tamarisks
below. Their boughs bent under his weight; but they were tough, and he
caught at them and just saved himself from rolling over into the black
water. He picked himself up and began to rub his twisted ankle. And at
that instant, in a lull between two gusts, his ear caught the sound of
splashing—yet a sound so unlike the lapping of the driven tide that he
peered over and down between the tamarisk boughs.
"Hullo there!"
"Hullo!" a voice answered. "Is that someone alive? Here, mate—for
Christ's sake!"
"Hold on! Whereabouts are you?"
"Down in this here cruel water." The words ended in a shuddering cough.
"Right—hold on a moment!" Taffy's ankle pained him, but the wrench was
not serious. The cliff shelved easily. He slid down, clutching at the
tamarisk boughs which whipped his face. "Where are you? I can't see."
"Here!" The voice was not a dozen yards away.
"Swimming?"
"No—I've got a water-breaker—can't hold on much longer."
"I believe you can touch bottom there."
"Hey? I can't hear."
"Try to touch bottom. It's firm sand hereabouts."
"So I can." The splashing and coughing came nearer, came close. Taffy
stretched out a hand. A hand, icy-cold, fumbled and gripped it in the
darkness.
"Christ! Where's a place to lie down?"
"Here, on this rock." They peered at each other, but could not see. The
man's teeth chattered close to Taffy's ear.
"Warm my hands, mate—there's a good chap." He lay on the rock and
panted. Taffy took his hands and began to rub them briskly.
"Where's the ship?"
"Where's the ship?" He seemed to turn over the question in his mind,
and then stretched himself with a sigh. "How the hell should I know?"
"What's her name?" Taffy had to ask the question twice.
"The Samaritan of Newport, brigantine. Coals she carried. Ha'n't you
such a thing as a match? It seems funny to me, talkin' here like this,
and me not knowin' you from Adam."
He panted between the words, and when he had finished, lay back and
panted again.
"Hurt?" asked Taffy, after a while.
The man sat up and began to feel his limbs, quite as though they
belonged to some other body. "No, I reckon not."
"Then we'd best be starting. The tide's rising. My house is just above
here."
He led the way along the slippery foreshore until he found what he
sought, a foot-track slanting up the cliff. Here he gave the sailor a
hand and they mounted together. On the grass slope above they met the
gale and were forced to drop on their hands and knees and crawl, Taffy
leading and shouting instructions, the sailor answering each with "Ay,
ay, mate!" to show that he understood.
But about half way up, these answers ceased, and Taffy, looking round
and calling, found himself alone. He groped his way back for twenty
yards, and found the man stretched on his face and moaning.
"I can't ... I can't! My poor brother! I can't!"
Taffy knelt beside him on the soaking turf. "Your brother? Had you a
brother on board?"
The man bowed his face again upon the turf. Taffy, upright on both
knees, heard him sobbing like a child in the roaring darkness.
"Come," he coaxed; and putting out a hand touched his wet hair.
"Come—." They crept forward again; but still as he followed, the sailor
cried for his drowned brother; up the long slope to the ridge of the
headland where, with the light-house and warm cottage windows in view,
all speech and hearing were drowned by stinging hail and the blown grit
of the causeway.
Humility opened the door to them.
"Taffy! Where have you been?"
"There has been a wreck."
"Yes, yes—the coast-guard is down by the light-house. The men there saw
her before she struck. They kept signalling till it fell dark. They had
sent off before that."
She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on
the stranger. Taffy turned and stared, too. The man's face was running
with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that they also were
scarlet.
He helped the poor wretch to a chair.
"Bandages—can you manage?" She nodded, and stepped to a cupboard. The
sailor began to wail like an infant.
"See—above the temple here: the cut isn't serious." Taffy took down a
lantern and lit it. The candle shone red through the smears his fingers
left on the horn panes. "I must go and help, if you can manage."
"I can manage," she answered, quietly.
He strode out, and closing the door behind him with an effort, faced
the gale again. Down in the lee of the light-house the lamps of the
coast-guard carriage gleamed foggily through the rain. The men were
there discussing, and George among them. He had just galloped up.
The Chief Officer went off to question the survivor, while the rest
began their search. They searched all that night; they burned flares
and shouted; their torches dotted the cliffs. After an hour the Chief
Officer returned. He could make nothing of the sailor, who had fallen
silly from exhaustion or the blow on his head; but he divided his men
into three parties, and they began to hunt more systematically. Taffy
was told off to help the westernmost gang and search the rocks below the
light-house. Once or twice he and his comrades paused in their work,
hearing, as they thought, a cry for help. But when they listened, it
was only one of the other parties hailing.
The gale began to abate soon after midnight, and before dawn had blown
itself out. Day came filtered slowly through the wrack of it to the
southeast; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on the cliff
above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat, with an arm
thrown out and pointing eastward. He turned and galloped off in that
direction.
They scrambled up and followed. To their astonishment, after following
the cliffs for a few hundred yards, he headed inland, down and across
the very slope up which Taffy had crawled with the sailor.
They lost sight of his red coat among the ridges. Two or three—Taffy
amongst them—ran along the upper ground for a better view.
"Well, this beats all!" panted the foremost.
Below them George came into view again, heading now at full gallop for
a group of men gathered by the shore of the creek, a good half-mile
from its mouth. And beyond—midway across the sandy bed where the
river wound—lay the hull of a vessel, high and dry; her deck, naked
of wheel-house and hatches, canted toward them as if to cover from the
morning the long wounds ripped by her uprooted masts.
The men beside him shouted and ran on, but Taffy stood still. It was
monstrous—a thing inconceivable—that the seas should have lifted a
vessel of three hundred tons and carried her half a mile up that shallow
creek. Yet there she lay. A horrible thought seized him. Could she have
been there last night when he had drawn the sailor ashore? And had he
left four or five others to drown close by, in the darkness? No, the
tide at that hour had scarcely passed half-flood. He thanked God for
that.
Well, there she lay, high and dry, with plenty to attend to her. It was
time for him to discover the damage done to the light-house plant and
machinery, perhaps to the building itself. In half an hour the workmen
would be arriving.
He walked slowly back to the house, and found Humility preparing
breakfast.
"Where is he?" Taffy asked, meaning the sailor. "In bed?"
"Didn't you meet him? He went out five minutes ago—I couldn't keep
him—to look for his brother, he said."
Taffy drank a cupful of tea, took up a crust, and made for the door.
"Go to bed, dear," his mother pleaded. "You must be worn out."
"I must see how the works have stood it."
On the whole, they had stood it well. The gale, indeed, had torn away
the wire cable and cage, and thus cut off for the time all access to the
outer rock; for while the sea ran at its present height the scramble out
along the ridge could not be attempted even at low water. But from the
cliff he could see the worst. The waves had washed over the building,
tearing off the temporary covers, and churning all within. Planks,
scaffolding—everything floatable—had gone, and strewed the rock with
match-wood; and—a marvel to see—one of his two heaviest winches had been
lifted from inside, hurled clean over the wall, and lay collapsed in
the wreckage of its cast-iron frame. But, so far as he could see, the
dove-tailed masonry stood intact. A voice hailed him.
"What a night! What a night!"
It was old Pezzack, aloft on the gallery of the light-house in his
yellow oilers, already polishing the lantern-panes.
Taffy's workmen came straggling and gathered about him. They discussed
the damage together but without addressing Taffy; until a little
pock-marked fellow, the wag of the gang, nudged a mate slyly and said
aloud:
"By God, Bill, we _can_ build a bit—you and me and the boss!"
All the men laughed; and Taffy laughed, too, blushing. Yes; this had
been in his mind. He had measured his work against the sea in its fury,
and the sea had not beaten him.
A cry broke in upon their laughter. It came from the base of the cliff
to the right—a cry so insistent that they ran toward it in a body.
Far below them, on the edge of a great bowlder which rose from the
broken water and seemed to overhang it, stood the rescued sailor. He
was pointing.
Taffy was the first to reach him.
"It's my brother! It's my brother Sam!"
Taffy flung himself full length on the rock and peered over. A tangle
of ore-weed awash rose and fell about its base; and from under this, as
the frothy waves drew back, he saw a man's ankle protruding, and a foot
still wearing a shoe.
"It's my brother!" wailed the sailor again. "I can swear to the shoe of
en!"