IT was a touch of the old wilfulness in Ronald, which cost him dear, and
saddened all his future life.
A windy storm-swept sky, though the wind was only playing with the sea as
yet. Still, it met us, as we went down to the shore, with a drift of
sand that stung the face like pin-pricks—trying, one might easily fancy,
to warn us back from our foolhardy enterprise.
A painter would have needed only his blends of grey to paint the scene,
till we came upon it, and added, I suppose, a patch of colour. Wiser
people than ourselves kept quietly indoors; and the sand, the sea, the
gulls, and the hurrying scud could all have been rendered in varying
shades of grey. It is, to me, the most fascinating hue that the
changeful sea can wear. One great artist, whose sketches are the glory
of Girton College, knew it well. With an unerring eye for this sad unity
of tone, she admits no faintest touch of colour into her cold grey wastes
of sea and sky.
It was a risky and foolhardy attempt on the part of Ronald, and one that
he has bitterly repented of, to launch a boat that afternoon. I can
never quite forgive him for the sorrow it was to bring on us. But his
wife would have it so. It was her greatest enjoyment to put out to sea
on such a day. A calm aimless drift, in life or on the sea, was out of
harmony with her bright and nerve-wrought soul.
Where Ronald was still more at fault was in the choice of our third hand.
True, we had a fair amount of experience between us. But, with a strong
south-wester to fight against, weight and strength are the two things
needed, and will often win through a gale when experience is powerless.
Ronald, however, was in one of his obstinate moods. He would take Oswald
or no one, and his wife said ditto. Now Oswald was a lad of eighteen: a
good seaman, I grant, but quite unequal to the work we had in view.
However, he was the son of Ronald’s favourite gardener, and had been his
wife’s pet scholar at her Sunday school, since which time he had been her
devoted slave, making himself useful about the house, and looking after
her specialities in the garden and conservatory.
“Isn’t that boat too big for us, Oswald? Remember, there are only two of
us to handle it, for Ronald’s ill, and can’t be reckoned on for much.
Unless I’m mistaken, it intends to blow harder than this before it’s
done.”
“Yes, sir. You’re right in a way. But we’ve got the winch to lower and
haul her up with. And once at sea she’ll be a deal safer and stauncher
than that one,” pointing to a lean, wall-sided thing that was our only
alternative. “Besides, we’ll set very little canvas; indeed, to all
appearance we shan’t want much.”
What a sail we had that afternoon! I think that I, who had countenanced
it least, enjoyed it most. For Ronald was only just recovering from
influenza, and certainly not up to a rough and tumble experience of this
sort. And Oswald, too, for a lad of his spirits, was strangely
depressed. “Never felt like it before,” he said, “and I shall be
thankful when we’re safe on shore again. Our old people at home would
say that I was walking over my grave, or some folly of the kind. But
that can’t be out here,” he added, with a poor attempt to laugh it off.
First of all we took her along under the lee of the shore, where we were
able to carry a fair amount of sail, and when we had worked her well
round the bay we put her head straight for the south-east, and, with the
wind on our beam, raced out into the open sea.
It was a longer and heavier business to work her back again, with the
wind right in our teeth, and freshening steadily as the evening wore on.
Fortunately for us it had only blown fitfully, and without much weight in
it till now. It was still “making up its mind,” as sailors say, whether
it would blow or not. But as we were beaching her in a deep sandy cove
it had finished apparently with indecision, and began to blow in earnest.
Just as we had landed, and Oswald was preparing to follow us, a terrific
squall burst full upon the boat, which lay beam on to it. Relieved of
her last weight, as Oswald stepped on shore, she yielded to the pressure,
and, heeling over on her side, pinned him to the ground. In a moment the
horror of it broke upon us. What could we do, the two of us, even if
Ronald hadn’t been shorn of half his strength? It would have taken ten
men to pull her over in the face of the gale that was blowing. And the
tide was rising rapidly. It was idle to look for help. We had beached
her in a quiet sequestered cove, used only by ourselves. But it was
closer to Thorpe Hill than the regular landing stage, and, after a hard
day’s work, saved us a tedious beat along the coast when the wind was
blowing from its present quarter. The high land above us was private
property, with no right of way, and on a day like this, for it was
beginning to rain, would be lonely as a desert.
Our first thought was of the winch. We had had one fitted up under the
cliff in order to save labour in launching and beaching the boat. But,
even if it were possible, we had no time nor knowledge how to alter the
gear so as to utilise the leverage for righting her. No doubt the
incoming tide would help us later on, but its help, when it did come,
would come too late. Yet to do anything was better than to do nothing.
So we took the balers out of the boat, and, kneeling down beside Oswald,
attempted the hopeless task of freeing him by scooping out the sand on
either side, till he begged us to desist, as the boat only fell over more
heavily, and imprisoned him still deeper in the yielding sand.
And all the time that we were working, Kingsley’s “cruel, crawling foam”
beat persistently upon my brain, maddening me with its ghastly congruity.
And yet “cruel and crawling” it was not. Quicker it could scarcely have
been, and its quickest was (I saw) its kindliest. Already it was playing
with the lad’s hair, though his mistress, careless of the risk she ran,
knelt down beside him and supported his head in her arms.
“Pray for me,” he said.
She whispered the words in his ear, though if she had shouted them with
all her strength they would not have reached us on the other side of the
boat, where, with a hope that was hopeless now, we were straining
ourselves to no purpose in the attempt to right her.
But Oswald was satisfied. A look of repose and even comfort settled upon
his face before the last words came.
“Thank you,” he said, “you have made death easy for me. And you have
done so at the risk of your own life. Tell them at home I was not
afraid.”
She bent down and kissed his forehead.
“And now—cover my face.”