ran every few minutes to the water and examined a stake hammered into it a
foot from the edge. It seemed, as far as might be judged by such fitful
light and rough measurement, that the river had sunk an inch or two, but it
was running in undulations, and what its muddy mass had lost in volume was
gained in speed. The water chattered and hissed; and Amos Bartlett, who
next made a survey, declared that the flood had by no means waned, but
rather risen. Then, the last ropes being disposed to the best advantage,
all joined the laborers who were digging. Twenty minutes later, however,
and before the trench was more than three parts finished, there came a
tremendous change. Turning hastily to the river, Bartlett uttered a shout
of alarm and called for light. He had approached the telltale stake, and
suddenly, before he reached it, found his feet in the water. The river was
rising with fierce rapidity at last, and five minutes later began to lick
at the edge of the hay-rick, and churn along with a strange hidden force
and devil in it. The pace increased with the volume, and told of some
prodigious outburst on the moor. The uncanny silence of the swelling water
as it slipped downward was a curious feature of it in this phase. Chirgwin
and his men huddled together at the side of the rick; then Bartlett held up
his hand and spoke.
"Hark 'e all! 'Tis comin' now, by God!"
They kept silence and listened with straining ears and frightened eyes,
fire-rimmed by the flickering torchlight. A sound came from afar--a sound
not unmelodious but singular beyond power of language to express--a whisper
of sinister significance to him who knew its meaning, of sheer mystery to
all others. A murmur filled the air, a murmur of undefined noises still far
distant. They might have been human, they might have arisen from the flight
and terror of beasts, from the movement of vast bodies, from the
reverberations of remote music; Earth or Heaven might have bred them, or
the upper chambers of the air midway between. They spoke of terrific
energies, of outpourings of force, of elemental chaos come again, of a
crown of unimagined horror set upon the night.
All listened fearfully while the solemn cadences crept on their ears,
fascinated them like a siren song, wakened wild dread of tribulations and
terrors unknown till now. It was indeed a sound but seldom heard and wholly
unfamiliar to those beside the stack save one.
"'Tis the callin' o' the cleeves," said Uncle Chirgwin.
"Nay, man, 'tis a live, ragin' storm comed off the sea an' tearin' ower the
airth like a legion out o' hell! 'Tis the floodgates o' God opened you'm
hearin'! Ay, an' the four winds at each other's throats, an' a outburst o'
all the springs 'pon the hills! 'Tis death and ruin for the whole
country-side as be yelling up-long now. An' 'tis comin' faster'n thot."
As Bartlett spoke, the voice of the tempest grew rapidly nearer, all
mystery faded out of it and its murmuring changed to a hoarse rattle.
Thunder growled a bass to the shriek of coming winds and a flash of distant
lightning bridged the head of the coomb with a crooked snake of fire.
"Us'd best to get 'pon high land out o' this," shouted Bartlett. "All as
men can do us have done. The hay's in the hand o' Providence, but I
wouldn't be perched on top o' that stack not for diamonds all the same."
A cry cut him short. Mary had turned and found the way to higher ground
already cut off. The lake was rising under their eyes, and that in spite of
the fact that the waters had already reached the trench cut for them, and
now tumbled in a torrent back to the parent stream. Escape in this
direction was clearly impossible. It only remained to wade through the head
of the lake, and that without a moment's delay. Mary herself, holding a
torch, went first through water above her knees and the men hastily
followed, Uncle Chirgwin coming last and being nearly carried off his short
legs as he turned to view the rick. Once through the water, all were in
safety, for the meadow sloped steeply upward. An increasing play of
lightning made the torches useless, and they were dropped, while the party
pressed close beneath an overhanging hedge which ran along the upper
boundary of the meadow. From this vantage-ground they beheld a spectacle
unexampled in the memory of any among them.
Screaming like some incarnate and mad manifestation of all the elements
massed in one, the hurricane launched itself upon that valley. As a wall
the wind heralded the water, while forked lightnings, flaming above both,
tore the black darkness into jagged rags and lighted a chaos of yellow
foaming torrent which battled with livid front straight down the heart of
the coomb. The swollen river was lost in the torrent of it; and the hiss of
the rain was drowned by its sound.
So Nature's full, hollowed hand ran over lightning-lighted to the organ
music of the thunder; but for these horror-stricken watchers the majestic
phenomena sweeping before them held no splendor and prompted no admiration.
They only saw ruin tearing at the roots of the land; they only imagined
drowned beasts floating before them belly upward, scattered hay hurried to
the sea, wasted crops, a million tons of precious soil torn off the fields,
orchards desolated, bridges and roads destroyed. For them misery stared out
of the lightning and starvation rode upon the flood. The roar of water
answering the thunder above it was to their ears Earth groaning against the
rod, and right well they knew that the pale torrent was drowning those
summer labors which represented money and food for the on-coming of the
long winter months. They stared, silent and dumb, under the ram; they knew
that the kernel of near a year's toil was riding away upon the livid
torrent; that the higher meadows, held absolutely safe, were half under
water now; that the flood tumbling under the blue fire most surely held
sheep and cattle in its depths; that tons of upland hay swam upon it; that,
like enough, dead men also turned and twisted there in a last mad journey
to the sea.
A passing belief that their labors might save the stack sprung up in the
breast of one alone. Uncle Chirgwin trusted Providence and his hempen ropes
and clothesline; but it was a childish hope, and, gazing open-mouthed upon
that swelling, hurtling cataract of roaring water, none shared it. An
almost continuous mist of livid light crossed and recrossed, festooned and
cut by its own crinkled sources, revealed the progress of the flood, and,
heedless of themselves, Uncle Chirgwin and his men watched the fate of the
stack, now rising very pale of hue above the water, seen through shining
curtains of rain. First the torrent tumbled and rose about it, and then a
sudden tremor and turning of the mass told that the rick floated. As it
twisted the weak ropes, receiving the strain in turn, snapped one after
another; then the great stack moved solemnly forward, stuck fast, moved
again, lost its center of gravity and foundered like a ship. Under the
lightning they saw it heave upward upon one side, plunge forward against
the torrent which had swept its base from beneath it, and vanish. The
farmer heaved a bitter groan.
"Dear God, that sich things can be in a Christian land," he cried. "All
gone, this year, an' last, an' the aftermath; an' Lard He knaws what be
doin' in the valley bottom. I wish the light may strike me dead wheer I
stand, for I be a blot afore Him, else I'd never be made to suffer like
this here. Awnly if any man among 'e will up an' tell me what I've done
I'll thank en."
"'Tis the land as have sinned, not you," said Mary. "This reaches more'n us
o' Drift. Come your ways an' get out o' these clothes, else you'll catch
your death. Come to the house, all of 'e," she cried to the rest. "Theer
ban't no more for us to do till marnin' light."
"If ever it do come," groaned the man Bartlett. "So like's not the end o'
the world be here; an' I'd be fust to hollo it, awnly theer's more water
than fire here when all's said, an' the airth's to be burned, not drowned."
"Let a come when a will now," gasped an aged man as the drenched party
moved slowly away upward to the farm; "our ears be tuned to the trump o'
God, for nort--no, not the screech o' horns blawed by all the angels in
heaven--could sound awfuler than the tantarra o' this gert tempest. I,
Gaffer Polglaze, be the auldest piece up Drift, but I never heard tell o'
no sich noise, let alone havin' my awn ears flattened wi' it."
They climbed the steep lane to the farm, and the wind began to drown the
more distant roar of the water. Rain fell more heavily than before, and the
full heart of the storm crashed and flamed over their heads as Drift was
reached.
Dawn trembled out upon a tremendous chapter of disasters, still fresh in
the memory of many who witnessed it. A gray, sullen morning, with
sky-glimpses of blue, hastily shown and greedily hidden, broke over Western
Cornwall and uncovered the handiwork of a flood more savage in its fury and
far-reaching in its effects than man's memory could parallel--a flood which
already shrunk fast backward from its own havoc. To describe a single one
of those valleys through which small rivers usually ran to the sea is to
describe them all. Thus the torrent which raved down the coomb beneath
Drift, and carried Uncle Chirgwin's massive hayrick with it like a child's
toy-boat, had also uprooted acres of gooseberry bushes and raspberry canes,
torn apple trees from the ground, laid waste extensive tracts of ripe
produce and carried ripening roots by thousands into the sea. Beneath the
orchards, as the flood subsided, there appeared great tracts of nakedness
where banks of stone had been torn out of the land and scattered upon it;
dead beasts stuck jammed in the low forks of trees; swine, sheep and calves
appeared, cast up in fantastic places, strangled by the water; sandy
wastes, stripped of every living leaf and blade, ran like banks where no
banks formerly existed, and here and there from their midst stuck out naked
boughs of upturned trees, fragments of man's contrivances, or the legs of
dead beasts. Looking up the coomb, desolation was writ large and the utmost
margins of the flood clearly recorded on branch and bough, where rubbish
which had floated to the fringe of the flood was caught and hung aloft.
Below, as the waters gained volume and force, Buryas Bridge, an ancient
structure of three arches beneath which the trout-stream peacefully babbled
under ordinary conditions, was swept headlong away and the houses hard by
flooded; while the greatest desolation had fallen on those orchards lying
lowest in the valley. Indeed the nearer the flood approached Newlyn the
more tremendous had been the ravage wrought by it. The orchards of Talcarne
valley were ruined as though artillery had swept them, and of the lesser
crops scarce any at all remained. Then, bursting down Street-an-nowan, as
that lane is called, the waters running high where their courses narrowed,
swamped sundry cottages and leaped like a wolf on the low-lying portion of
Newlyn. Here it burst through the alleys and narrow passages, drowned the
basements of many tenements, isolated cottages, stores and granaries,
threatened nearly a hundred lives startled from sleep by its sudden
assault. Then, under the raging weather and in that babel of angry waters,
brave deeds were done by the fisher folk, who chanced to be ashore. Grave
personal risks were hazarded by many a man in that turbid flood, and not a
few women and children were rescued with utmost danger to their saviors'
lives. Yet the petty rivalry of split and riven creeds actuated not a few
even at that time of peril, and while life was allowed sacred and no man
turned a deaf ear to the cry of woman or child, with property the case was
altered and sects lifted not a finger each to help the other in the saving
of furniture and effects.
Newlyn furnished but one theater of a desolation which covered wide
regions. At Penzance, the Laregan River flooded all the lowlands as it
swept with prodigious cataracts to the sea; mighty lakes stretched between
Penzance and Gulval; the brooklets of Ponsandine and Coombe, swollen to
torrents, bore crushing destruction upon the valleys through which they
fell. Bleu Bridge with its ancient inscribed "long stone" was swept into
the bed of the Ponsandine, and here, as in other low-lying lands, many tons
of hay were torn from their foundations and set adrift. At Churchtown the
rainfall precipitated off the slopes of Castle-an-dinas begot vast torrents
which, upon their roaring way, tore the very heart out of steep and stony
lanes, flooded farmyards, plowed up miles of hillside, leaped the wall of
the cemetery below and spread twining yellow fingers among the graves.
Three hundred tons of rain fell to the acre in the immediate tract of that
terrific storm, and the world of misery, loss and suffering poured forth on
the humble dwellers of the land only came to be estimated in its bitter
magnitude during the course of the winter which followed.
Ashore it was not immediately known whether any loss of human life had
added crowning horror to the catastrophe, but evil news came quickly off
the sea. Mourning fell upon Mousehole for the crews of two among its fisher
fleet who were lost that night upon the way toward Plymouth waters to join
the herring fishery; and Newlyn heard the wail of a robbed mother.
At Drift the farmhouse was found to hold a mystery soon after the day had
broken. Joan Tregenza, whose condition rendered it impossible for her to
actively assist at the struggle in the coomb, did not retire early on the
previous night, as her family supposed, and Mary, entering her room at
breakfast-time, found it empty. There was no sign of the girl and no
indication of anything which could explain her absence.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OUT OF THE DEEP
At the dawn of the day which followed upon the great storm, while yet the
sea ran high and the gale died hard, many tumbling luggers, some maimed,
began to dot the wind-torn waters of Mounts Bay. The tide was out, but
within the shelter of the shore which rose between Newlyn and the course of
the wind, the returning boats found safety at their accustomed anchorage;
and as one by one they made the little roads, as boat after boat came
ashore from the fleet, tears, hysteric screams and deep-voiced thanks to
the Almighty arose from the crowd of men and women massed at the extremity
of Newlyn pier beneath the lighthouse. Cheers and many a shake of hand
greeted every party as, weary-eyed and worn, it landed and climbed the
slippery steps. From such moments even those still in the shadow of
terrible fear plucked a little courage and brightened hopes. Then each of
the returned fishermen, with his own clinging to him, set face homeward--a
rejoicing stream of little separate processions, every one heralding a
saved life. There crept thus inland wives smiling through the mist of dead
tears, old mothers hobbling beside their bearded sons, young mothers
pouring blessing on proud sailor boys, sweethearts, withered ancients,
daughters, sons, little children. Sad beyond power of thought were the
hearts of all as they had hastened to the pierhead at early morning light;
now the sorrowful still remained there, but those who came away rejoiced,
for none returned without their treasures.
Thomasin stood with many another care-stricken soul, but her fears grew
greater as the delay increased; for the Tregenza lugger was big and fast,
yet many boats of less fame had already come home. All the fishermen told
the same story. Bursting out of an ominous peace the storm had fallen
suddenly upon them when westward of the Scilly Islands. One or two were
believed to have made neighboring ports in the isles, but the fleet was
driven before the gale and had experienced those grave hazards reserved for
small vessels in a heavy sea. That all had weathered the night seemed a
circumstance too happy to hope for, but Newlyn hearts rose high as boat
after boat came back in safety. Then a dozen men hastened to Mrs. Tregenza
with the good news that her husband's vessel was in sight.
"She've lost her mizzen by the looks on it," said a fisherman, "an' that's
more'n good reason for her bein' 'mong the last to make home."
But Thomasin's hysterical joy was cut short by the most unexpected
appearance of Mary Chirgwin on the pier. She had visited the white cottage
to find it locked up and empty; she had then joined the concourse at the
pierhead, feeling certain that the Tregenza boat must still be at sea; and
she now added her congratulations to the rest, then told Mrs. Tregenza her
news.
"I be comed to knaw if you've heard or seen anything o' Joan. 'Tis 'mazin'
straange, but her've gone, like a dream, an' us caan't find a sign of her.
What wi' she an' terrible doin's 'pon the land last night, uncle's 'bout
beside hisself. Us left her in the kitchen, an' when we comed back from
tryin' to save the hay she was nowheer. Of coorse, us thot she'd gone to
her bed. But she weern't, an' this mornin' we doan't see a atom of her, but
finds a envelope empty 'pon the kitchen floor. 'Twas addressed to Joan an'
comed from Lunnon."
"Aw jimmery! She've gone to en arter all, then--an' in her state."
"The floods was out, you see. Her might have marched off to Penzance to
larn 'bout the manner o' gwaine to Lunnon an' bin stopped in home-comin';
or her might have slept in Penzance to catch a early train away."
"Iss, or her might a got in the water, poor lamb," said Thomasin, who never
left the dark side of a position unconsidered. Mary's face showed that the
same idea had struck her.
"God grant 'tedn' nothin' like that, though maybe 'twould be better than
t'other. Us caan't say she've run away, but I thot I'd tell 'e how things
is so's you could spread it abroad that she'm lost. Maybe us'll hear
somethin' 'fore the day's much aulder. I be gwaine to Penzance now an' I'll
let 'e knaw if theer's anything to tell. Good-by, an' I be right glad all's
well wi' your husband, though I don't hold wi' his 'pinions."
But Mrs. Tregenza did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the lugger which
had now got to its anchorage and looked strange and unnatural shorn of its
lesser mast. She saw the moorings dragged up; and a few minutes later the
boat, which had rolled and tumbled at them all night, was baled. Thereupon
men took their seats in her and began to row toward the harbor. It seemed
that Gray Michael was steering, and his crew clearly pulled very weak and
short, for their strength was spent.
Then, as they came between the arms of the harbor, as they shipped oars and
glided to the steps, Tregenza's hybrid yellow dog, who accompanied the
fisherman in all his goings, jumped ashore barking and galloped up the
slippery steps with joy; while, at the same moment, a woman's sharp cry cut
the air like a knife and two wild eyes looked down into the boat.
"Wheer'm the bwoy, Michael? Oh, my good God, wheer'm Tom?"
Everybody strained silently to hear the answer, but though the fisherman
looked up, he made no reply. The boat steadied and one after another the
men in her went ashore, Tregenza mounting the steps last. His wife broke
the silence. Only a murmur of thankfulness had greeted the other men, for
their faces showed a tragedy. They regarded their leader fearfully, and
there was something more than death in their eyes.
"Wheer'm the bwoy--Tom? For the love of God, speak, caan't 'e? Why be you
all dumb an' glazin' that awful!" cried the woman, knowing the truth before
she heard it. Then she listened to the elder Pritchard, who whispered his
wife, and so fell into a great convulsion of raving, dry-eyed sorrow.
"Oh, my bwoy! Drownded--my awn lil precious Tom! God a mercy! Dead! Then
let me die tu!"
She gave vent to extravagant and savage grief after the manner of her kind.
She would have torn her hair and thrown herself off the quay but for kindly
hands which restrained.
"God rot you, an' blast you, an' burn you up!" she screamed, shaking her
fists at the sea. "I knawed this would be the end. I dreamed it 'fore 'e
was born. Doan't 'e hold me back, you poor fools. Let me gaw an' bury
myself in the same graave along wi' en. My Tom, my Tom! I awnly had but
wan--awnly wan, an' now--"
She wailed and wrung her hands, while rough voices filled her ears with
such comfort as words could bring to her.
"Rest easy, bide at peace, dear sawl." "'Tis the Lard's doin', mother; an'
the lil bwoy's better off now." "Take it calm, my poor good creature." "Try
an' bring tears to your eyes, theer's a dear wummon."
Tears finally came to her relief, and she wept and moaned while friends
supported her, looking with wonder upon Michael, her husband. He stood
aloof with the men about him. But never a word he spoke to his wife or any
other. His eyes dilated and had lost their steady forward glance, though a
mad misery lighted them with flashes that came and went; his face was a
very burrow of time, seared and trenched with pits and wrinkles. His hat
was gone, his hair blew wild, the strong set of his mouth had vanished; his
head, usually held so high, hung forward on a shrunken neck.
The brothers Pritchard told their story as a party conducted Thomasin back
to her home. For the moment Gray Michael stood irresolute and alone, save
for his dog, which ran round him.
"Us was tackin' when it fust began to blaw, an' all bustlin' 'bout in the
dark, when the mainsail went lerrickin' 'cross an' knocked the poor dam
bwoy owerboard into as ugly a rage o' water as ever I seed. Tom had his
sea-boots on, an' every sawl 'pon the bwoat knawed 'twas all up as soon as
we lost en. We shawed a light an' tumbled 'bout for quarter o' an hour wi'
the weather gettin' wicked. Then comed a scat as mighty near thrawed us
'pon our beam-ends, an' took the mizzen 'long wi' it. 'Tis terrible bad
luck, sure 'nough, for never a tidier bwoy went feeshin'; but theer's worse
to tell 'e. Look at that gert, good man, Tregenza. Oh, my God, my blood do
creem when I think on't!"
The man stopped and his brother took up the story.
"'Twas arterwards, when us had weathered the worst an' was tryin' to fetch
home, Michael failed forward on's faace arter the bwoy was drownded; an' us
had to do all for the bwoat wi'out en. But he comed to bimebye an' didn't
take on much, awnly kept so dumb as a adder. Not a word did er say till
marnin' light; then a 'orrible thing fell 'pon en. You knaw that yaller dog
as sails wi' us most times? He turned 'pon en sudden an' sez: 'Praise God,
praise the Lard o' Hosts, my sons, here's Tom, here's my lad as us thot
weer drownded!' Then he kissed that beast, an' it licked his faace, an' he
cried--that iron sawl cried like a wummon! Then he thundered out as the
crew was to give God the praise, an' said the man as weern't on's knees in
a twinklin' should be thrawed out the bwoat to Jonah's whale. God's truth!
I never seed nothin' so awful as skipper's eyes 'pon airth! Then er calmed
down, an' the back of en grawed humpetty an' his head failed a bit forrard
an' he sat strokin' of the dog. Arter that, when us seed Newlyn, it 'peared
to bring en to his senses a bit, an' he knawed Tom was drownded. He rambled
in his speech a while; then went mute again, wi' a new look in his eyes as
though he'd grawed so auld as history in a single night. Theer he do stand
bedoled wi' all manner o' airthly sufferin', poor creature. Him wi' all his
righteousness behind en tu! But the thinkin' paarts of en be drownded wheer
his bwoy was, an' I lay theer ban't no druggister, nor doctor neither,
as'll bring 'em back to en."
"Look at that now!" exclaimed another man. "See who's a talkin' to
Tregenza! If that ban't terrible coorious! 'Tis Billy Jago, the softy!"
Billy was indeed addressing Gray Michael and getting an answer to his
remarks. The laborer's brains might be addled, but they still contained
sane patches. He had heard of the fisherman's loss and now touched his hat
and expressed regret.
"Ay, the young be snatched, same as a build-in' craw will pick sprigs o'
green wood for her nest an' leave the dead twig to rot. Here I be, rotten
an' coffin-ripe any time this two year, yet I'm passed awver for that
braave young youth. An' how is it wi' you, Mr. Tregenza? I s'pose the Lard
do look to His awn in such a pass?"
Gray Michael regarded the speaker a moment and then made answer.
"I be that sleepy, my son, an' hungry wi' it. Iss fay, I could eat a bloody
raw dog-fish an' think it no sin. See to this, but doan't say nothin' 'bout
it. The bwoat went down wi' all hands, but us flinged a bottle to Bucca for
en to wash ashore wi' the news. But it never comed, for why? 'Cause that
damnation devil bringed the bottle 'gainst granite rocks, an' the message
was washed away for mermaids to read an' laugh at; an' the grass-green
splinters o' glass as held the last cry o' drownin' men--why, lil childern
plays wi' 'em now 'pon the sand. 'Sing to the Lard, ye that gaw down to the
sea.' An' I'll sing--trust me for that, but I must eat fust. I speaks to
you, Billy, 'cause you be wan o' God's chosen fools."