AFTER THE STORMS.
It was very pleasant on the third day that followed the gale; the sky
once more took its steel-grey shade, the sharp breezes stole over gentle
rollers and covered each sad-coloured bulge with fleeting ripples. That
blessed breeze, so pure, so crisp, so potently shot through with magic
savours of iodine and ozone, exhilarates the spirits until the most
staid of men break at times into schoolboy fun. Do you imagine that
religious people are dull, or dowie, as the Scotch say? Not a bit of it.
They are the most cheerful and wholesome of mortals, and I only wish my
own companions all my life had been as genial and merry. How often and
often have I been in companies where men had been feeding--we won't say
"dining," because that implies something delicate and rational. The
swilling began, and soon the laughter of certain people sounded like the
crackling of thorns under a pot, and we were all jolly--so jolly. The
table was an arena surrounded by flushed persons with codfishy eyes, and
all the diners congratulated themselves on being the most jovial fellows
under the moon. But what about next morning? At that time your
thoroughly jovial fellow who despises saintly milksops is usually a
dull, morose, objectionable person who should be put in a field by
himself. Give me the man who is in a calmly genial mood at six in the
morning.
That was the case with all our saintly milksops on board the yacht. At
six Blair and Tom were astir; soon afterwards came the ladies and the
other men, and the company chatted harmlessly until the merry breakfast
hour was over; their palates were pure; their thoughts were gentle,
and, although a Cape buffalo may be counted as rather an unobtrusive
vocalist in comparison with Mr. Lennard, yet, on the whole, the
conversation was profitable, and generally refined. Tom's roars perhaps
gave soft emphasis to the quieter talkers.
In the middle of the bright, sharp morning the whole of our passengers
gathered in a clump aft, and desultory chat went on. Said Blair, "I
notice that the professor's been rather reticent since we mariners
rescued him."
"I am not quite a hero, and that last night on the _Haughty Belle_ isn't
the kind of thing that makes a man talkative. Then that poor silly soul
down below gave me a good deal to think about. He must have suffered
enough to make the rack seem gentle, and yet the good blockhead only
thought of telling us to leave him alone in case the vessel went. Did
you ever know, Miss Dearsley, of a man doing such a thing before? And
you see he hasn't said anything since he came aboard, except that he
never knowed what a real bed was afore. These things take me. We spend
hundreds of thousands on the merest wastrels in the slums, and the
finest class that we've got are left neglected. I would rather see every
racecourse loafer from Whitechapel and Southwark blotted out of the
world than I would lose ten men like that fellow Withers."
Marion Dearsley said, "I don't think the neglect is really blameworthy.
For instance, I'm sure that my uncle knows nothing about what we have
seen in the last few days. He is charitable on system, and he weighs and
balances things so much that we tease him. He never gives a sixpence
unless he knows all the facts of the case, and I'm sure when I tell him
he'll be willing to assist Mr. Fullerton. Then I'm as ignorant as my
uncle. I can guess a great deal, of course, but really I've only seen
about half a dozen men, after all. It's terrible to watch the ships in
bad weather, but for our purpose--I mean Mr. Fullerton's purpose--we
might as well have been looking at Stanfield's pictures." "Never mind.
You fahscinate your uncle, Miss Dearsley, and we'll show you what we can
do. What do you think, Miss Ranken?"
Miss Lena Ranken, Mr. Blair's niece, creased her brow in pert little
wrinkles: "I'm not sure that I know anything; Marion there studies
questions of all sorts, but an ordinary girl has to do without
knowledge. I know that when auntie and I were wishing you would drop us
over into the water, I thought of the men who use the same damp bed for
two months instead of having changes and all that."
"What is your idea now, Ferrier, about the business? I'm not asking you
for a gratis lecture, but I want to see how far you would go."
"Well, frankly, at present I think that Fullerton's the best guide for
all of us. I should be a mock-modest puppy if I pretended not to know a
good deal about books, because books are my stock-in-trade; but I've
just seen a new corner of life, and I've learned how little I really
know. Head is all well in its way; a good head may administer, but
great thoughts spring from the heart."
"Very good, Professor. Oh, bee-yootiful! Great thoughts spring from the
heart."
Fullerton broke in with dreamy distinctness, "I think the doctor will
agree with me that you must never frame a theory from a small number of
instances. I never even ventured to hint what I should like to any of
our friends until I had been at sea here for a long time. I'm convinced
now that there is much misery all over the fishing banks, and I have a
conviction that I shall help to remove it. I am called to make the
effort, but I never listen to sentiment without also hearing what common
sense has to say. Perhaps we should all see the everyday life of the
men, and see a good deal of it before we begin theorizing. Look at that
smack away on our port bow. I'll be bound one or two are hurt in some
way there. That's one of 120 sail that we saw; multiply 120 by 20, and
then you have the number of vessels that we must attend under this
crackbrained scheme of ours. All the ledger and daybook men say we are
crackbrained. Now, if we can go on doing just a little with our ordinary
dispensaries, is it wise to risk playing at magnificence? You see I am
taking the side of Mr. Commonsense against my own ideas."
"I certainly think you may succeed," said Miss Dearsley.
"So do I; and now you see my point. We want to persuade other people as
quickly as possible to think as we do. To persuade, we must back all our
talkee-talkee by facts, and to get facts we must work and endure in
patience. You see what an amazingly clear political economist I am. Wait
till we run into the fleet; we shall be sure to catch them before the
trawls go down for the night, and, unless I'm mistaken, some of us will
be astonished. I never go into a new fleet without seeing what a little
weir we have at present to check a Niagara of affliction."
Mrs. Walton had much to do with many philanthropic movements, and men
were always glad to hear her judgments--mainly because she was not a
platform woman. She turned an amused look on Fullerton, and said, "Of
course a woman can't deal with logic and common sense and all those
dreadful things, and I know what a terribly rigid logician Mr. Fullerton
is. I think, even without seeing any more misery and broken bones and
things, that we have no very great difficulty before us. The case is as
simple as can be--to a woman. There is an enormous fund set aside by the
public for charity, and everybody wants to see a fair distribution. If a
slater comes off a roof and breaks a limb, there is a hospital for him
within half an hour's drive in most towns. If one of our men here breaks
his arm, there is no hospital within less than two days' steam. We don't
want the public to think the fisher is a more deserving man than the
slater; we want both men to have a fair chance. Charitable men can see
the slater, so they help him; they can't see the fisher without running
the chance of being bruised and drenched, so they don't help him--at
present. They don't want good feeling; they want eyes, and we must act
as eyes for them. Women can only be useful on shore; you gentlemen must
do everything that is needed out here. I'm very glad I've seen the North
Sea in a fury, but I should not care to be a mere coddled amateur, nor
would any one else that I work with."
"Quite right, madam," said the professor, nodding his head with the
gravity of all Cambridge; "and I should like to see women taking part in
the management of our sea hospitals if the scheme is ever to be any more
than a dream. The talking women are like the talking men: they squabble,
they recriminate, they screech and air their vanity, and they mess up
every business they touch. But if you have committee work to do, and
want economy and expedition, then give me one or two lady members to
assist."
Then Blair called, "Come along, skipper; she's going easy. Bring up one
or two of the men and we'll have some singing."
Now the ordinary sailor sings songs with the merriest or most blackguard
words to the most dirge-like tunes; but our fishermen sing religious
words to the liveliest tunes they can learn. I notice they are fonder of
waltz rhythms than of any others. The merchant sailor will drawl the
blackguard "I'll go no more a-roving" to an air like a prolonged wail;
the fisherman sings "Home, beautiful home" as a lovely waltz. Blair
always encouraged the men to sing a great deal, and therein he showed
the same discretion as good merchant mates.
I cannot describe Freeman's ecstasies, and I wish I could only give an
idea of the helmsman's musical method. This latter worthy had easy
steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang
some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the
gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you
expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his
voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling bass growl,
which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the
silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was
entranced with the sweetness and power of his own performance, and the
passengers were more than amused, so every one was satisfied.
The gentlemen who vary my slumbers by howling "The Rollicking Rams" in
eight different keys at four in the morning would call the ship's
company of that schooner soft. There are opinions and opinions. At any
rate the hours passed softly away until the yacht ran clean into the
thick of the fleet, and the merry, eldritch exchange of salutes began.
The second breeze had been worse than the first, and many men had gone;
but the smacksmen, by a special mercy, have no time for morbid brooding.
They will risk their lives with the most incredible dauntlessness to
save a comrade. The Albert Medal is, I make bold to say, deserved by a
score of men in the North Sea every year. The fellows will talk with
grave pity about Jim or Jack, who were lost twenty years ago; they
remember all his ways, his last words, his very relatives; but, when a
breeze is over, they make no moan over the lost ones until they gather
in prayer-meetings.
"Watch now, and you'll soon see something," said Blair to Ferrier.
The boats began to flit round on the quiet sea, and the lines of them
converged towards the schooner or towards a certain smart smack, which
Fullerton eyed with a queer sort of paternal and proprietary interest.
The men knew that the yacht was free to them as a dispensary, and the
care they took to avoid doing unnecessary damage was touching. When you
are wearing a pair of boots weighing jointly about three stone, you
cannot tread like a fairy. Blair knew this, and, though his boat was
scrupulously clean, he did not care for the lady's boudoir and oak floor
business.
Lewis had his hands full--so full that the ladies went below. The great
scholar's mind was almost paralyzed by the phenomena before him. Could
it be possible that, in wealthy, Christian England there ever was a
time when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of
affairs? The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after
the fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow,
drizzle of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's
nerves. The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were
other accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to
fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through such a battle
without risks. There were no malingerers; the bald, brutal facts of
crushed bones, or flayed scalp, or broken leg, or poisoned hand were
there in evidence, and the men used no extra words after they had
modestly described the time and circumstances under which they met with
their trouble. Ferrier worked as long as he could, and then joined the
others at tea--that most pleasant of all meetings on the sombre North
Sea. The young man was glum in face, and he could not shake off his
abstraction. At last he burst out, in answer to Fullerton, "I feel like
a criminal. I haven't seen fifty per cent of the men who came, and I've
sent back at least half a dozen who have no more right to be working
than they have to be in penal servitude. It is ghastly, and yet what can
we do? I have no mawkish sentiment, but I could have cried over one
fellow. His finger was broken, and then blood-poisoning set in. Up to
the collar-bone his arm is discoloured, and the glands are blackish-blue
here and there. He smiled as he put out his hand, and he said, 'He du
hurt, sir. I've had hardly an hour's sleep since the first breeze, and,
when I du get over, I fare to feel as if cats and dogs and fish and
things was bitin'.' Then I asked him if he had stuck to work. Yes; he
had helped to haul as late as this last midnight. Now he's gone back,
and I must see him, at any price, to-morrow, or I cannot save that arm.
I couldn't hurry like a butcher, and so there will be many a man in pain
this night."
Marion Dearsley was deeply stirred. "I wish I could go round with you
to-morrow and search out any bad cases."
"I must tell you that, so far as I can see, almost every conceivable
kind of accident happens during a violent gale--everything, from death
to a black eye. But, all the same, I wish you _could_ come with me."
Blair burst into his jolly laugh; he was such a droll dog was Blair, and
he _would_ have his joke, and he _would_ set up sometimes, as a sly
rascal, don't you know--though he was the tenderest and kindest of
beings.
"This is what your fine scheme has come to, is it? Oh! I see a grand
chance for the novel-writers."
Oh, Blair was indeed a knowing customer. He made Ferrier look a little
foolish; but the ladies knew him, Tom Lennard adored him, and the grand,
calm Marion smiled gently on him. In the case of any other man it would
have seemed like sacrilege to talk of a sentimental flirtation before
that young woman; but then she sometimes called him Uncle John and
sometimes Mr. Blair, according to the company they were in; so what
would you have?
After tea came the men's time for smoking; the bitter night was thick
with stars; the rime lay on the bulwarks, and, when the moon came out,
the vessel was like a ghostly fabric. Ferrier took charge of the two
girls, and Tom entertained the elder ladies with voluminous oratory.
The surgeon was uneasy; the sudden splendour of the moon was lost on
him, and he only thought of her as he might of a street lamp.
"I'm glad the moon has come, Miss Dearsley. If there is no chance of her
clouding over, I shall ask the skipper to slip us into the thick of the
fleet, and I'll take the boat."
"You are very good to take the risk after that dreadful time."
"I'm afraid I only follow a professional instinct. One thing is certain,
I shall stay out here for the winter and do what I can."
Girls are tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in
fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of
laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion
Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but she said
enough.
"I'm not sure that you will not be better here than spending time in
society--that is, if you have no pressing ambition, as most men have. I
mean ambition for personal success and praise, and position. My brother
always spoke of Parliament, and I suppose you would aim at the Royal
Society. Girls have little scope, but I should imagine you must suffer."
"Maisie, you're the dearest old preacher in the world. Why don't you
persuade Mr. Ferrier to be a great man on shore instead of coming out
here to be bruised, and drowned, and sent home, and all that kind of
thing?"
Then Miss Lena thoughtfully added, as in soliloquy--
"But he might come to be like old Professor Blabbs who makes a noise
with his soup, or Sir James Brennan with the ounce of snuff round his
studs. No. Perhaps Maisie's right." "I have plenty of ambition--I am
burning with it, and I have an intuition that this is one of the widest
and finest fields in the world--for impersonal ambition, that is,
ambition above money, and so forth."
Then Ferrier, with a touch of pride quite unusual in him, said--
"I'm not persuaded that I've done so badly in the ambitious way up to
now. This should be a fair change."
Then they stopped and watched the shadowy vessels stealing away into the
luminous gloom. I hope they loved the sight; the thought of it makes all
Beethoven sing over my nerves. The water was lightly crisped, and every
large sigh of the low wind seemed to blow a sheet of diamonds over the
quivering path of the moon; the light clouds were fleeting, fleeting;
the shadows were fleeting, fleeting; and, ah me! the hours of youth were
fleeting, fleeting to the gulf. The girls never spoke; but Ferrier
thought of one of them that her fateful silence was more full of
eloquence than any spoken words could be. She seemed to draw solemn
music from every nerve of his body. Oh, droll John Blair! Did those
placid, good blue eyes see anything? The deep contralto note of Marion
Dearsley's voice broke the entranced silence.
"It seems a waste of one's chances to leave this, but we must go. Lena
and I must trouble you to help us, though I'm sure I don't know why. I
shall never forget that sight."
"Nor I," thought Ferrier; but he was not an accomplished lady's man, so
he did not speak his thought.
Then Lewis and Mr. Blair fell into one of their desultory conversations,
with Tom as explanatory chorus, and Fullerton brooding alongside in
profound reverie. The breeze was enough to send the schooner past the
trawlers, but her foresail had been put against her so that she kept
line. An hour before the trawls were hauled Ferrier suggested that the
yacht should be allowed to sail, just to see if a case could be picked
up. Said the enthusiast Tom--
"I'll go with you. I can step into the boat now, but when you have
sixteen stone to drop on the top of a tholepin, I assure you it makes
you cautious. In my wild days I should have used terms, sir--oh,
distressing! oh, harrowing! To-night I'm ready for a thingumbob on 'the
blue, the fresh, the ever free.' Ah! entrancing! Oh-h-h! bewitching!"
Freeman sailed his craft and threaded the lines of the dragging trawlers
with stealthy speed. A hail came at last.
"Yacht ahoy! Have you still got the doctor aboard?"
The weird answer rang amid the shrill treble of the gaffs.
"Then come aboard of us if you can. It's bad."
Two men were down in the boat in a moment, and the yacht edged her way
toward the smack. When Lewis and Tom went down below, the burly
comedian's true character soon became apparent. A handsome young fellow
was twisting and gasping on the floor in pain cruel to see.
"He've eat somethin's disagreed with him, sir. We've tried Gregory,
what my mate had, and we give him some pills what I had, would a'most
done for me. 'Tisn't a morsel o' good."
Tom Lennard picked the poor fellow off the floor--so gently, so very
gently; he eased him up and put the man's head against his breast. A
slight swing of the vessel followed, and the lad shrieked and gasped.
Instantly Ferrier saw what had happened.
"Help me to take his clothes off, Lennard."
They stripped the patient to the skin; then Ferrier glanced once,
touched just lightly enough to make the young man draw breath with a
whistling sound, then the deft, steady fingers ran carefully down, and
Lewis said--
"Tom, keep him as easy as you can till I come back from the yacht.
Skipper, you didn't think to strip him."
"No, sir; why?"
"Well, he has three ribs broken, that is all."
"Eh! he said he had a tumble agin the anchor in the breeze." "Yes, and
I cannot tell how his lung has escaped."
When Lewis returned he strapped the sufferer up like an artist, and then
said--
"Now, skipper, you must run home as soon as the trawl is up."
"Home! An' lose my woyage maybe?"
"Can't help that. You have no place for him here. See, he's off to sleep
now his pain's gone, but where will he be if the sea rises?"
The skipper groaned; it seemed hard. Lewis thought a little and said--
"Will you let me take him aboard of us now while it's smooth, and I'll
see if we can find you a man? If Larmor of the _Haughty Belle_ will
come, can you work with him?"
"Like a shot."
Larmor's jaw was better, and he said--
"I'd be a bad 'un if I wouldn't oblige you, sir, anyway. My jaw's main
sore, but I can do little things."
"You see, Lennard," quietly observed Lewis, after Larmor had gone, "I'm
making an experiment. If that lad had been left without such a mattress
as ours, he would have died, surely. And now I'll guarantee that I send
him back able to steer and do light work in ten days."
"That's where the hospital would come in. Well, you'll soon teach us
instead of us teaching you. Oh! surprising! oh-h-h! paralyzing! oh-h-h!
majestic! majestic!"
Tom was right in his exclamatory way, as we shall see by and by.