THE WRECK OF THE 'CUMBERLAND.'
That next half-hour seemed to be the longest for Antony that ever he had
passed in his lifetime. That is what he said to his sister Aggie when he
wrote and told her all about the events of this fearful night. He first
went back towards his caravan, closely followed by Wallace, who appeared
to watch his every movement, certain in his canine mind that Antony
would do something to find his mistress. For a master stands in the
place of a god to his faithful dog, and the latter believes him
omnipotent. Hardly knowing what he did, he lit the great lamps, and
through their dark-crimson shades their light streamed like blood across
the sand and on the surf.
For long minutes he sat beside Wallace, the dog giving vent occasionally
to that long, sad sigh that shows every one who knows and understands
such an animal that he is in grief--the dog sighing, the man chafing at
his own helplessness.
Presently he got up, and descended the steps. He met Mary bustling
around, and told her his fears.
All she answered was, 'Then God help our bonny bairn this dread and
awful night!'
No comfort in that quarter.
'I fear the worst, Mary,' he said.
'Let us hope for the best, then,' said Mary.
Then he set himself to walking rapidly up and down the beach as if to
work away his awful anxiety. And thus a good half-hour was passed. 'Had
she succeeded in reaching the doomed ship,' he told himself, 'there
would have been some sign ere now. Hallo!'
Another flash, another report, and almost immediately after the
meteor-track of a splendid rocket rising high in air, turned a little
towards the west, then bursting with a dull sound into brightest flame.
'Thank God!' cried Antony, 'the daring child has got safely on board.'
Something cold and damp touched his hand, and he found Wallace by his
side; and the gentle touch gave him both comfort and hope. But just at
that moment Antony made a strange discovery, which he put into words,
though these were not spoken aloud, but to his heart, as it were.
'I love that child,' he told himself with the frankness of youth, 'more
than is good for my peace of mind, more than is good for my future
happiness or probably hers; for if she is spared this sad night to get
safely on shore, soon now the parting must come, and I go away on my
road in life and Lotty on hers. Heaven help the child and me!'
Just as he was communing with himself, the dark o' the neap was riven
once more by a rocket's gleam that swayed and rose and burst as before.
It will be better to go back a little and follow the gipsy lass's
movements as she went sweeping down the river that night and headed
straight for that boiling sea. Surely she had more than the strength and
skill of any two man-o'-war's men, and more than the daring of a Grace
Darling to venture forth on such a forlorn hope.
But she had reasoned thus with herself: 'Even if I fail to reach the
ship, I can, I think, sweep my light skiff quickly round and go rushing
back to the river on the scud of the furious sea, and if I miss that the
surf will rush me right up upon the beach, and I will not lose either my
life nor Antony's _Jenny Wren_.'
Both wind and waves tossed the little boat about, but bravely did Lotty
keep her head to the mountain seas. So high and wild were some of the
breakers that they lifted the bows high in air and almost sank the skiff
stern first. The first quarter of an hour's pull was the worst. After
this, though the waves were higher, they did not break so much. Ah! but
Lotty soon saw that they were sweeping high and horrible right over the
stranded vessel, and for quite a long time she hovered near, hesitating
how and when to approach.
At last she said to herself, 'It must be now or never.'
So high on a wavetop was she as the boat went dashing on from windward
that the brave girl could see right down on to the wave-washed deck.
Perhaps it was well for Lotty that the bark was so firmly, so
steadfastly fixed on the rocks; bad for the ship, it is true, for from
this position never could she move except in staves and broken timbers.
The sailors had seen the coming skiff, and three of them, at imminent
peril, rushed to the side and seized it in time; and next moment Lotty,
safe for the time being, was on the slippery upper deck of the bark, and
even the _Jenny Wren_ was hauled on board. Right aft in the skiff was a
little locker, and it was in this Lotty had stowed the rockets.
On the beach, about an hour after this, shapeless black things were
driven up by the spume and the rush of the waves, and these were quickly
seized by the hands of the ready fishermen who had been attracted to the
spot. Antony himself was there, in fear and trembling lest one of the
bodies washed in might be--oh, terrible!--Lotty's own.
* * * * *
Bob Stevens was a hard, rosy-faced man, bold and blue-eyed, strong in
muscle, without one superfluous ounce of fat. Those eyes of his had
peered into the darkness overcanopying many a stormy sea, those hard
brown hands were at home with either tiller or oar, and more than at
home with tack or sheet; a fisherman by trade, a sailor bold as ever
trod a slippery deck, and master of the B---- lifeboat. Bob had gone
quietly into the bar-parlour of the 'Lovat Arms' on that evening, with
three of his pals, all life-boatmen, and they were smoking and enjoying
modest glass and yarn when a man in oilskins rushed hurriedly in.
'Bob, you'll be wanted,' he said. 'There's a ship on the Partan Rocks.'
'God help her if she's there to-night!' said one of Bob's crew.
'Up with your drams, lads, and we'll get the _Maiden_ out at once.'
In an almost incredibly short space of time, and just as the second red
rocket cleft the darkness of the sky, the _Maiden_ was launched and
standing out to sea. So quickly had they gone that the men's wives knew
nothing of their going until they had made good their offing and were
swallowed up in the dark o' the neap. The _Maiden_ could sail as close
to the wind as any boat on the coast; but it needed all her
seaworthiness and all Bob's skill to-night to battle with these fierce
and seething seas.
Never in this world will all the brave deeds done by our British
lifeboats' crews be recorded. Perhaps--_quien sabe?_--their stories may
be told on the shores of the Heavenly Canaan, where it is to be hoped we
shall all meet.
But now, through the darkness, the ocean lit up by the white of the
curling waves, the _Maiden_ toils on, up the watery hills, down with a
rush into the vales between, hit, buffeted, overwhelmed, and shivering,
but still striving on and on and on.
Will she be in time?
Perhaps hardly not, for the last rocket has been fired, and out of the
goodly crew of seventeen men and a boy that left London but two weeks
ago only nine are now alive. The rest have been swept away into the
black, yawning seas, and washed shorewards to death on the turn of the
tide.
Lotty is down below, for here is the captain's wife and baby, whom the
little gipsy lass is doing her best to comfort. And she is thus engaged
when her quick ear is sensible of knocking and scraping along the
leeside bulwarks, and presently she cries aloud with joy, her eyes
sparkling, her face sweetly flushed in the light of the lamp in gimbals.
'Saved, dear lady, saved!' she says to the skipper's wife. For she has
heard strange voices on the deck, manly voices shouting strange orders
high above the wail of wind and dash of raging sea.
She and her companions are soon lifted by some of the rescuers and
carried as if babies in the strong arms of the rough but kindly men; and
in a few minutes all are on board the lifeboat, the last man to throw
himself in being the brave skipper himself.
Bob Stevens presently feels a tug at his arm, and a young girl's voice
says in his ear, 'Do not try to beach her; the sea is high and the
bottom is rock. Up the Burn o' Bogie with her. I'm going forward,'
continued the voice; and Bob said, many a time after this, it sounded to
him like the voice of a seraph--'I'm going forward with my flashlight,
and will guide you safe up the burn.'
It is needless to say that the voice was Lotty's, and next minute she
was as far forward as one could get in a boat like this, with the light
in her hand. She could see the fearful, roaring white of the seas that
dashed on shore; but there were hills with their black heads yonder too,
and it was by these she kept the course, till, with boiling waves high
and threatening on both sides of her, the lifeboat glided into the
still, deep waters of the Burn o' Bogie.
It was Antony himself who lifted Lotty from the bows and landed her safe
on shore; and in all the vast crowd, that had gathered from every part
of the country, hardly was there a dry eye or a heart that did not throb
with joy in thinking of the brave deed done this night by the little
gipsy lass.
* * * * *
'And to think, my dear,' said Mrs Oak the skipper's wife of the lost
bark _Cumberland_, as she was leaving for the south two or three weeks
after this, 'that I may never have a chance of doing you a favour for
all your brave kindness to us! Oh surely,' she added as she pressed
Lotty's hand, and would not let it go, 'the King himself will hear of
your gallantry and pluck, and thank you. Good-bye, Lotty, oh good-bye,
and God be with you aye!--Kiss the child, James,' she said to her
husband; 'kiss the darling that saved our lives.'
Big, brown-bearded James did as he was told. And Lotty was made to
promise that if ever she came to Shepherd's Bush she would pay Capstan
Cottage a visit, where she, this burly skipper's wife, lived when her
husband was far at sea.
But as she made this promise, little did Lotty think how soon she would
meet this kindly woman once again.
* * * * *
They say it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The storm that caused
the sad and awful wreck of the good bark _Cumberland_ had been by no
means an ill-wind to the showman Biffins Lee. No one knew better than he
did how to take advantage of a windfall. Immediately after the disaster
his people had all to work extra time. No extra pay--that was quite
another matter. But the Queerest Show had to be got into full swing, for
hundreds of people from all directions flocked towards it, not only to
see the scene of the wreck and to pick up souvenirs thereof on the
beach, but to see Lotty the heroine, or to listen to the story of her
daring and courage from the lips of Biffins Lee; for the girl herself
was far too modest and shy to say one word concerning it. In fact, she
thought very little about the matter, and could not have been made to
believe that she had given evidence of any extra courage in doing what
she had done. She knew from the first that in her _Jenny Wren_ there
would be no great difficulty in taking out a few rockets to the stranded
ship, and she did so. Of course, it had been a little awkward getting
alongside, and all that; but then--well, she was successful, and that
perhaps as much by chance, she thought, as her own good management.
She shrank instinctively, therefore, from being made a hero of, and
lionised; and when she saw newspapers effulgent with flowery language
descriptive of her deed of daring, and calling her the second Grace
Darling, and all that, she could have torn the pages out and burned
them. Indeed, that is precisely what she would have done, only the
papers belonged to the show and not to her.
But Biffins Lee had extracts made from these articles, printed in big,
attractive capitals, and posted up near to the show, and great posters
here and there at roadsides, with big black hands and pointing fingers
on them:
THIS WAY TO THE QUEEREST SHOW ON EARTH.
GRACE DARLING,
WHO SAVED THE CREW OF THE 'CUMBERLAND.'
EVERY VARIETY OF AMUSEMENT,
SERIOUS AND COMICAL.
BEARS, APES, LIVING SKELETON, AND
THE DREADED DOOROOCOOLIE.
ONLY LIVING MERMAN IN THE WORLD.
Well, Lotty could not help this; but when told that she must appear on
the stage in front of a specially prepared scenic screen--rocks, sea,
and wrecked ship, with the little _Jenny Wren_ bounding over the waves,
and she in it; and that, moreover, she must dress as 'Grace Darling
Redivivus' and describe her adventure, then for the first time in her
life she became a beautiful but tearful little rebel.
'Father, father,' she cried, 'I cannot, _will not_ do this!'
'_Will not_, eh? Well,' was the reply, 'and when I tell you that you
must and shall, what is your answer to be?'
'That I sha'n't.'
The scene that followed is one which no author would care to dwell upon.
But, losing all control over himself, the fat and burly showman advanced
with his fist clenched and eyes aflame, and no doubt might have done
poor innocent Lotty serious injury. But just at that moment came a fresh
actress on the scene, in the person of Crona herself. Dressed as usual
in the clean starched mob-cap or mutch, her tartan plaid and garments
fluttering around her in the breeze blowing off the sea, a long staff in
her hand, and Joe the raven on her shoulder, she appeared as suddenly as
if she had sprung from the earth, and interposed her presence 'twixt the
showman and child.
'Back!' she almost screamed, 'back, Biffins Lee. Lay but a finger on
that child, and there is an end to your show and to your career as
well.'
'How dare you, woman! Who are you that interferes with the legal right
of a parent to reprimand a disobedient child?'
'Who am I, Biffins Lee?' she repeated. Then she made one step towards
him and hissed something in his ear.
[Illustration: 'Father, father,' she cried, 'I cannot, _will not_ do
this.'
LASS. PAGE 224.
]
Lee started as if shot, and stood there before the witch, pale,
perspiring, and trembling.
But Crona only laughed.
'Come with your fairy godmother, darling.' She placed an arm around
Lotty, and together they left the stage.