Haste with your weapons, cut the shrouds and stay,
And hew at once the mizen-mast away.
FALCONER.
The following evening Melmoth retired early. The restlessness of the
preceding night inclined him to repose, and the gloom of the day left
him nothing to wish for but its speedy conclusion. It was now the latter
end of Autumn; heavy clouds had all day been passing laggingly and
gloomily along the atmosphere, as the hours of such a day pass over the
human mind and life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
portentously off, like ships of war after reconnoitering a strong fort,
to return with added strength and fury. The threat was soon fulfilled;
the evening came on, prematurely darkened by clouds that seemed
surcharged with a deluge. Loud and sudden squalls of wind shook the
house from time to time, and then as suddenly ceased. Towards night the
storm came on in all its strength; Melmoth’s bed was shaken so as to
render it impossible to sleep. He “liked the rocking of the
battlements,” but by no means liked the expected fall of the chimneys,
the crashing in of the roof, and the splinters of the broken windows
that were already scattered about his room. He rose and went down to the
kitchen, where he knew a fire was burning, and there the terrified
servants were all assembled, all agreeing, as the blast came roaring
down the chimney, they never had witnessed such a storm, and between the
gusts, breathing shuddering prayers for those who were “out at sea that
night.” The vicinity of Melmoth’s house to what sea-men call an
iron-bound coast, gave a dreadful sincerity to their prayers and their
fears.
In a short time, however, Melmoth perceived that their minds were
occupied with terrors beside those of the storm. The recent death of his
uncle, and the supposed visit of that extraordinary being in whose
existence they all firmly believed, were connected in their minds
inseparably with the causes or consequences of this tempest, and they
whispered their fearful suggestions to each other, till the sound
reached Melmoth’s ears at every step that he measured across the broken
floor of the kitchen. Terror is very fond of associations; we love to
connect the agitation of the elements with the agitated life of man; and
never did a blast roar, or a gleam of lightning flash, that was not
connected in the imagination of some one, with a calamity that was to be
dreaded, deprecated, or endured,--with the fate of the living, or the
destination of the dead. The tremendous storm that shook all England on
the night of Cromwell’s death, gave the hint to his puritanic chaplains
to declare, that the Lord had caught him up in the whirlwind and chariot
of fire, even thereafter, as he caught the prophet Elijah; while all the
cavalier party, putting their own construction on the matter, proclaimed
their confidence, that the Prince of the power of the air was
vindicating his right, and carrying off the body of his victim (whose
soul had long been his purchase) in a tempest, whose wild howl and
triumphant ravage might have been variously, and with equal justice,
interpreted by each party as giving testimony to their mutual
denunciations. Just such a party (_mutatis mutandis_) were collected
round the bickering fire and rocking chimney in Melmoth’s kitchen. “He
is going in that blast,” said one of the hags, taking the pipe from her
mouth, and trying vainly to rekindle it among the embers that the storm
scattered about like dust; “he is going in that blast.”--“He’ll come
again,” cried another Sybil, “he’ll come again,--he’s not at rest!--He
roams and wails about till something is told that he never could tell in
his life-time.--G-d save us!” she added, howling up the chimney, as if
addressing the troubled spirit; “tell us what you want, and _stop the
blast_, will ye?”--The wind came like thunder down the chimney; the hag
shuddered and retreated. “If it’s this you want--and this--and this,”
cried a young female whom Melmoth had not noticed before, “take them;”
and she eagerly tore the papers out of her hair, and flung them into the
fire. Then Melmoth recollected a ridiculous story told him the day
before of this girl, who had had the “bad luck,” as she called it, to
curl her hair with some of the old and useless law-papers of the family,
and who now imagined that they “who kept this dreadful pudder o’er her
head,” were particularly provoked by her still retaining about her
whatever belonged to the deceased; and as she flung the fragments of
paper into the fire, she cried aloud, “There stop for the holy J----s’
sake, and let us have no more about it!--You have what you wanted, and
will you have done?” The laugh that Melmoth could hardly resist, was
checked by a sound which he heard distinctly amid the storm.
“Hush--silence! that was a signal gun!--there is a vessel in distress.”
They all paused and listened. We have already mentioned the closeness of
Melmoth’s abode to the sea-shore. This had well accustomed its inmates
to all the terrors of shipwrecked vessels and drowning passengers. To
their honour be it spoken, they never heard those sounds but as a claim,
a piteous, irresistible claim on their humanity. They knew nothing of
the barbarous practice on the English coast, of fastening a lanthorn to
the limbs of a spanselled horse, whose plungings were to misdirect the
wrecked and sinking wretches, in the vain hope that the light they saw
was a beacon, and thus to double the horrors of death by the baffled
expectation of relief.
The party in the kitchen all watched Melmoth’s countenance intently, as
if its expression could have told them “the secrets of the hoary deep.”
The storm ceased for a moment, and there was a deep and dreary silence
of fearful expectation. The sound was heard again,--it could not be
mistaken. “It is a gun,” cried Melmoth; “there is a vessel in distress!”
and he hurried out of the kitchen, calling on the men to follow him.
The men partook eagerly of the excitement of enterprise and danger. A
storm without doors is, after all, better than a storm within; without
we have something to struggle with, within we have only to suffer; and
the severest storm, by exciting the energy of its victim, gives at once
a stimulus to action, and a solace to pride, which those must want who
sit shuddering between rocking walls, and almost driven to wish they had
only to suffer, not to fear.
While the men were in search of a hundred coats, boots, and hats of
their old master, to be sought for in every part of the house,--while
one was dragging a great coat from the window, before which it had long
hung as a blind, in total default of glass or shutters,--another was
snatching a wig from the jack, where it had been suspended for a
duster,--and a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens
for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of
her accouchement,--Melmoth had gone up to the highest room in the house.
The window was driven in;--had there been light, this window commanded a
view of the sea and the coast. He leaned far out of it, and listened
with fearful and breathless anxiety. The night was dark, but far off,
his sight, sharpened by intense solicitude, descried a light at sea. The
gust drove him from the window for a moment; at returning the next, he
saw a faint flash, and then the report of a gun followed.
There needed no more; and in a few moments after, Melmoth was on the
shore. Their way was short, and they walked with their utmost speed; but
the violence of the storm made their progress very slow, and their
anxiety made it seem still slower. From time to time they said to each
other, in choaked and breathless accents, “Call up the people in those
cabbins--there is a light in that house--they are all up--no wonder--who
could sleep in such a night--hold the lanthorn low--it is impossible to
keep footing on the strand.” “Another gun!” they exclaimed, as the flash
faintly broke through the darkness, and the heavy sound rolled round the
shore, as if fired over the grave of the sufferers. “Here’s the rock,
hold fast, and cling together.” They scaled it. “Great God!” cried
Melmoth, who was among the first, “what a night! and what a
spectacle!--Hold up your lanthorns--do you hear cries?--shout to
them--tell them there is help and hope near them.--Stay,” he added, “let
me scramble up that crag--they will hear my voice from that.” He dashed
desperately through the water, while the foam of the breakers from a
distant rock almost choaked him, gained the point, and, elated by his
success, shouted aloud with his utmost strength. But his voice, baffled
and drowned by the tempest, was lost even to his own hearing. Its sound
was faint and querulous, more like the wail of grief, than the
encouraging cry of hope. At this moment, the racking clouds flying
rapidly across the sky, like the scattered fugitives of a routed army,
the moon burst forth with the sudden and appalling effulgence of
lightning. Melmoth caught a full view of the vessel, and of her danger.
She lay beating against a rock, over which the breakers dashed their
foam to the height of thirty feet. She was half in the water, a mere
hulk, her rigging torn to shreds, her main mast cut away, and every sea
she shipped, Melmoth could hear distinctly the dying cries of those who
were swept away, or perhaps of those whose mind and body, alike
exhausted, relaxed their benumbed hold of hope and life together,--knew
that the next shriek that was uttered must be their own and their last.
There is something so very horrible in the sight of human beings
perishing so near us, that we feel one firm step rightly planted, one
arm steadily held out, might save at least one,--yet feel we know not
where to fix that step, and cannot stretch that arm, that Melmoth’s
senses reeled under the shock, and for a moment he echoed the storm with
yells of actual insanity. By this time the country, having been alarmed
by the news of a vessel going to pieces on the shore, had poured down in
multitudes; and those who, from experience or confidence, or even
ignorance, repeated incessantly, “it is impossible to save her,--every
soul on board must perish,” involuntarily quickened their steps as they
uttered the words, as if they were anxious to behold the fulfilment of
their own prediction, while they appeared hurrying to avert it.
Of one man, in particular, it was observed, that during their hurried
rush to the shore, he was, with what breath his haste allowed him,
assuring the rest every moment, “she would be down before they could get
there,” and heard the ejaculations of “Christ save us! don’t say that,”
“No, please God, we’ll do some good,” with a laugh almost of triumph.
When they arrived, this man scaled a rock at the risk of his life,
caught a view of the vessel, pointed out her desperate situation to
those below, and shouted, “Didn’t I tell you so? wasn’t I right?” And as
the storm increased, his voice was still heard, “wasn’t I right?” And
when the cries of the perishing crew were distinctly wafted to their
ears, he was still heard in the interval repeating, “But wasn’t I
right?” Singular sentiment of pride, that can erect its trophies amid
the grave. ’Tis in this spirit we give advice to those who suffer from
life, as well as from the elements; and when the heart of the victim
breaks, console ourselves by exclaiming, “_Didn’t I foretell it all?_
did I not tell you how it would be?” It is remarkable that this man lost
his life that very night in the most desperate and fruitless attempt to
save the life of one of the crew who was swimming within six yards of
him. The whole shore was now crowded with helpless gazers, every crag
and cliff was manned; it seemed like a battle fought at once by sea and
land, between hope and despair. No effectual assistance could be
rendered,--not a boat could live in that gale,--yet still, and to the
last, cheers were heard from rock to rock,--terrible cheers, that
announced safety was near and--impossible;--lanthorns held aloft in all
directions, that displayed to the sufferers the shore all peopled with
life, and the roaring and impassable waves between;--ropes flung out,
with loud cries of help and encouragement, and caught at by some
chilled, nerveless, and despairing hand, that only grasped the
wave,--relaxed its hold,--was tossed once over the sinking head,--and
then seen no more. It was at this moment that Melmoth, starting from his
trance of terror, and looking round him, saw all, to the number of
hundreds, anxious, restless, and occupied; and, though obviously in
vain, the sight cheered his heart. “How much good there is in man,” he
cried, “when it is called forth by the sufferings of his fellows!” He
had no leisure or inclination, then, to analyse the compound he called
good, and resolve it into its component parts of curiosity, strong
excitement, the pride of physical strength, or the comparative
consciousness of safety. He had, indeed, no leisure, for just then he
descried, standing a few yards above him on the rock, a figure that
shewed neither sympathy or terror,--uttered no sound,--offered no help.
Melmoth could hardly keep his footing on the slippery and rocking crag
on which he stood; the figure, who stood still higher, appeared alike
unmoved by the storm, as by the spectacle. Melmoth’s surtout, in spite
of his efforts to wrap it round him, was fluttering in rags,--not a
thread of the stranger’s garments seemed ruffled by the blast. But this
did not strike him so much as his obvious insensibility to the distress
and terror around him, and he exclaimed aloud, “Good God! is it possible
that any thing bearing the human form should stand there without making
an effort, without expressing a feeling, for those perishing wretches!”
A pause ensued, or the blast carried away the sound; but a few moments
after, Melmoth distinctly heard the words, “Let them perish.” He looked
up, the figure still stood unmoved, the arms folded across the breast,
the foot advanced, and fixed as in defiance of the white and climbing
spray of the wave, and the stern profile caught in the glimpses of the
stormy and doubtful moon-light, seeming to watch the scene with an
expression formidable, revolting, and unnatural. At this moment, a
tremendous wave breaking over the deck of the hulk, extorted a cry of
horror from the spectators; they felt as if they were echoing that of
the victims whose corses were in a few moments to be dashed against
their feet, mangled and lifeless.
When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a laugh that chilled his blood.
It was from the figure that stood above him. Like lightning then glanced
on his memory the recollection of that night in Spain, when Stanton
first encountered that extraordinary being, whose charmed life, “defying
space and time,” held such fatal influence over his, and when he first
recognised his supposed demoniac character by the laugh with which he
hailed the spectacle of the blasted lovers. The echo of that laugh rung
in Melmoth’s ears; he believed it was indeed that mysterious being who
was standing so near him. His mind, by its late intense and bewildering
pursuits, at once heated and darkened, like the atmosphere under an
incumbent thunder-cloud, had now no power of inquiry, of conjecture, or
of calculation. He instantly began to climb the rock,--the figure was
but a few feet above him,--the object of his daily and nightly dreams
was at last within the reach of his mind and his arm,--was almost
tangible. _Fang_ and _Snare_(12) themselves, in all the enthusiasm of
professional zeal, never uttered, “If I but once get him within my
vice,” with more eagerness than did Melmoth, as he scrambled up his
steep and perilous path, to the ledge of the rock where the figure stood
so calm and dark. Panting from the fury of the storm, the vehemence of
his own exertions, and the difficulty of the task, he was now almost
foot to foot, and face to face, with the object of his pursuit, when,
grasping at the loosened fragment of a stone whose fall could not have
hurt a child, though on its tottering insecurity hung the life-grasp of
a man, his hold failed--he fell backwards,--the roaring deep was
beneath, seeming to toss its ten thousand arms to receive and devour
him. He did not feel the instantaneous giddiness of his fall, but as he
sunk he felt the splash, he heard the roar. He was engulphed, then for a
moment thrown to the surface. He struggled with nothing to grasp at. He
sunk with a vague thought, that if he could reach the bottom, if he
could arrive at any thing solid, he was safe. Ten thousand trumpets then
seemed to ring in his ears; lights flashed from his eyes. “He seemed to
go through fire and water,” and remembered no more till several days
afterwards, when he found himself in bed, the old gouvernante beside
him, and uttered faintly, “What a horrid dream!” then sinking back as he
felt his exhaustion, “and how weak it has left me!”
(12) See Henry IV. Second Part.