A storm of angry feeling, of vengeful passion, raged fiercely the
next day throughout Appledore, as soon as Jim Ortop's story was
noised abroad. Doorways were crowded with men and women discussing
the report, and venting their feelings in no honeyed phraseology.
Knots of gossips augmented into small crowds, whose excitement grew
uproarious. The principal street became in an hour or so a scene of
the utmost exasperation, in which murmurs, intensified by the wailing
relatives of the drowned seamen, were concentrated, till in that
narrow gangway burst forth a fire of resentment, which nothing but
blood, the blacksmith was heard to say, could possibly quench.
'Murder! vengeance! vengeance! murder!' were the cries which sounded
high above the swelling din of that tumultuous multitude.
Whilst Appledore was thus in a state of frenzy, Northam was in a
state of gloom. A funeral is always a solemn occasion; but the
interment of four drowned men, whose bodies had been picked up
amongst the rocks at the west end of the Burrows, occasioned an
amount of sadness in the village not often manifested. The church
was crowded, the churchyard was thronged; and as the words of
consignment to earth were heard--'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'--a
stifled groan arose from that heart-struck assembly. There were many
who retired to their homes silent and thoughtful; but there were some
who hung about the church gates, conversing on the melancholy fate of
the deceased, until they too, like the men and women of Appledore,
were ruffled into an angry mood, and began to breathe out
threatening. Creeping slowly on toward the dwelling of Stauncy, they
grew louder in their protestations, exciting each other, as moved
spirits crowded together invariably do, and experiencing a glowing
thirst for action of some kind. They wanted to do as well as to
complain, but what to do they could not determine.
The captain's wife, with her usual foresight, had anticipated the
possibility of a storm. The news of her husband's rumoured
delinquency had filled her with distress, but it served to bring out
some of her fine qualities of head and heart. She felt assured the
report was untrue; though, from the time that Stauncy went over the
bar, her dream had troubled her, and she was unable to refrain from
depressing forebodings, so that she contrived a plan by which the
captain was absent from Northam at the time of the funeral.
The crowd became more and more uneasy and vehement, and a series of
altercations as to what ought to be done by no means improved their
temper. Whilst some pressed forward and gazed rudely into Stauncy's
windows, others vociferated, 'Who scuttled the brig? who murdered the
crew?' The voices of flushed females prevailed even more than the
clamour of wordy contention and indignation amongst the men, and
something serious seemed impending, when Mary Stauncy appeared at the
door, and, drawing herself up to the extent of her dignity, proceeded
at once, like a clever tactician, to charge right home.
'You're a disgrace to Northam,' she said; 'you're a disgrace to human
nature. Instead of uniting to shelter a townsman from suspicion, and
guard a character you have always held blameless, you first listen to
the scandal of a tap-room, believing a worthless toper who wants
money as a price for silence, and then you take the law into your own
hands without judge or jury. Be ashamed of yourselves, and go home,
as you ought to do after such a burying, serious and charitable.'
The crowd listened; the crowd relented; the crowd was on the point of
taking a new view of things, when a way was rapidly made in it by the
pushing form of the captain, who had returned sooner than his wife
expected, and imagined that some disaster had befallen his family.
But when his presence evoked again the cry, 'Who scuttled the brig?
who murdered the crew?' the truth flashed on him in a moment, and,
rushing towards the most noisy of the calumniators, he threatened to
fell him with a blow, and, confronting the astonished mob, exclaimed,
'If any of you have anything to say, say it, or else be off every one
of you!'
The people dispersed, grumbling but cowed, their leader, the
cadaverous shoemaker, muttering that Stauncy would repent of his work
yet.
'I'll dog him,' said Ortop, 'till he dangle from the yard-arm of a
jury-mast rigged up in Execution Dock.'
His presence was missed that night by the roystering tipplers in Ship
Street; for, on returning to Appledore, he revealed his mind to
another votary of Crispin, who was able to wield the quill, an
accomplishment not very common in those days; and, having dictated an
epistle giving information against Stauncy, he started off to
Bideford, and sent it on its way to London. 'There,' said he, as he
dropped the document into the letter-box, 'if that don't stretch him,
I'm no fortune-teller.'
It was deemed expedient by the captain that he should immediately
confer with the merchant; and when the shades of evening gathered in,
he paid him a visit.
'The cat's out of the bag, Mr. Phillipson,' he said; 'Jim Ortop has
told all he knows, and more, I daresay. A crowd of folks besieged my
house just now as if they were mazed. Old Ortop, who was there, let
out a bit of his mind, confirming what I feared from young Jim Ortop;
but I warned him to mind what he is about.'
'Stauncy,' said Mr. Phillipson in a serious tone, 'you might have
been born yesterday. You're very courageous, but you haven't got
half the sagacity of my dog. Instead of applying a plaster to the
sore place in Ortop's mind, you apply a blister. You should have
taken the bull by the tail, and not by the horns, cap'n; it's a bad
job of it! Why, here in Appledore there have been worse doings than
in Northam, I'll warrant you. The people came round my door like a
pack of wolves, and, just to show that they meant something, sent a
volley of stones through the windows. The groom went out to ask
"What's up?" and a hundred voices replied, in menacing words and
tones, "Tell the old wizard," I heard them say, "that we'll burn 'un.
Tell the old junk we'll scuttle 'un. Tell the old rogue we'll send
'un to sea in a hencoop." The women, who looked like harpies,
screeched defiance. The men and boys threw stones and cob,
upbraiding me all the while, and threatening I don't know what. I
knew they could prove nothing, and that it was all a surface thing--a
tide that could be made to ebb as easily as it was made to flow; so I
went to the door with my handkerchief to my eyes, and looking as if I
had lost a baby, or something worse. Didn't they yell! but when they
saw my pale face, and how I kept mopping up, they soon got as quiet
as lambs. "My good people," said I, as well as I could for choking
grief, you know, "what is it? Is this the way you treat an old
employer, who is paying half the town, and will soon pay the other
half? Can _I_ still the winds and waves? Can _I_ control the stormy
winds, or keep men back from death when their time has come? I never
thought"--and then I fairly blubbered--"to come to this, or that my
grey hairs, and family name, which is a household word, would be
treated with such a want of consideration." You should have seen,
Stauncy, how they all veered round in a minute. Some of the women
began a-crying too, and called out shame on the ringleaders, who
slunk away; and there I stood, sniffing, and speaking to their
feelings, until they all went home, declaring they wouldn't see a
hair of my head hurt. That's the way, Stauncy: nothing like _oil_
for troubled waters. Only make yourself _felt_
somehow--_anyhow_--and you'll be pronounced right.