A WRECK AND A RESCUE
All night the storm did its tyrannous work over sea and land; all
night, around old Dempster’s house, it howled its direful menaces. But
the house stood firm, for it had been built to withstand the shock of
any storm; only shivered now and then as the gale smote it with heavier
hand, then tore on its way lamenting.
More than once Miss Sullivan awoke and lay listening to the storm’s
wild voices--voices which recalled the past--voices whispering,
pleading, sighing, moaning to be heard again and again answered. And
they were answered--answered with bitter moans and tears, and at last
with prayers for patience and peace, and, if need were, for pardon.
Neither Mrs. Dempster nor Miranda understood the enthusiasm of Miss
Sullivan for storms and breakers. There were several things they would
rather do than venture out next morning: the chief of which was to stay
at home.
Old Dempster looked uneasily at the cloud-drift. The wind was as
furious as ever, but the rain came only in keen showers.
“These ’ere sou’-easters,” said he, “never last long at this time o’
the year. It’ll be clear as moonshine by long about noon. But ef you’ve
got your mind set on goin’ out, I’ll rig you out so you’ll be dry as a
rooster. Dan’l, go down to the mill an’ bring up them short overhauls.”
Dan’l brought up a great coat of yellow, oiled canvas, and a tarpaulin
with a flap like the tail of a Barbary sheep. Mrs. Dempster supplied
a pair of Dan’l’s fishing boots, outgrown by him in one bare-footed
summer, but still impervious.
Miss Sullivan, a person very critical in her toilet, hesitated a little
at this unaccustomed attire. However, it was the sensible style.
Miranda aided her in encasing herself. Stiffish were both overhauls and
boots; stiffness itself, at the first interview.
When they returned to the kitchen to stand inspection, a sound was
heard as if the kettle of dried apples boiling on the stove had
suddenly bubbled and sputtered over. It was Dan’l, utterly unable to
control his laughter. He immediately disappeared, and was heard in the
wood-shed endeavouring to whistle, but constantly breaking down into a
snicker.
“Poor Dan’l!” said Miss Sullivan; “I must look very droll, indeed.”
“Wal,” said Mrs. Dempster, “you are kind er like my idee of a Mormon--I
mean one o’ them folks in the pictures with gals’ heads an’ more like
a codfish to the other end. Now if one o’ them gals should make herself
decent with a set of overhauls--an’ massy knows she wants suthin’ to
cover her--she’d look jest as pooty as you do. Wouldn’t she, old man?”
To avoid other comparisons as complimentary to mermen or maids, Miss
Sullivan ran from her circle of amused admirers and, passing among
the pathless cucumber vines of the little garden, began awkwardly to
climb the fence that kept any amphibious rodent monster of the deep
from predatory excursions among the radishes and hollyhocks. Beyond the
garden, a thicket of wild fruit vines nearly closed the shoreward path.
Drops of rain hung heavy, crushing the bushes with pearly wreaths. A
few raspberries were only waiting one sunny day to take their dull
purple crimson of ripeness. It was wet work to penetrate by the
obliterated path. Miss Sullivan, however, crowded steadily forward.
When the rustling of her passage through the thicket ceased, she could
hear the neighbour crashing of breakers. Black Rock Head rose to the
north of the rocky cove, home of Dempster’s boat. Southward stood other
headlands, and southern-most, Wrecker’s Point, where all the fury of
surges driven by the southeast gale would be felt. When the mingled
mist, spray, and rain were drifted away for a moment, and shrank to
give space to a great, howling blast, she could see a lofty white
ghostly object, like a ship in full sail, dimly visible, suddenly lift
itself against the dark front of the Head. Then it sank away, dashed to
nothingness of foamy wreck. A hollow roar came, as the cavernous cleft
of the Head was overcrowded with the breaker, and, gushing up, the mass
of uprising waters overwhelmed the promontory and, spreading, mantled
over its smooth surfaces and tore in many cataracts down its chasms to
the sea. The Head, through veils of mist, seemed like a distant dome
mountain of snow.
Black Rock Head was evidently unapproachable, so Miss Sullivan faced
the blast and its blinding, driving spray, for a sheltered spot farther
on toward Wrecker’s Point. She found that her foreground of vision of
storm-experiences was crowding itself with quite unsatisfactory detail.
There was no sieve of trees by the shore to filter the salt showers.
Sometimes there was but a narrow path between slippery slopes of grass
and rounded rocks glistening with the touch of the more ambitious
breakers. As she passed by these perilous places, an unlooked-for wash
of water would come hungrily up and hasten hungrily back, willing to
sweep away fragile womanhood. The morning was well advanced when, with
slow and difficult progress, the lady who, after her bold vigour of
devotion to her object, merits, at least for the nonce, the title of
our heroine, reached Wrecker’s Point.
Of seeing much that storms may do she had had her heart’s desire.
All the dread fury of maddened winds had burst upon her till she had
tottered back to some shelter of intervening rock, appalled at tempest
terrors that houselings never know. In tremulous pauses, when the
gale was still, she had heard the coming thunder of the long breaker,
coming awfully because an infinite ocean drove it on; and as this went
bursting like an upward avalanche from crag to crag beyond, in the
silence while the next billow was lifting she had heard those dreadful
ocean voices surrounding her, a wild atmosphere of remorse--of remorse
unpardoned and forever unpardonable for all the murderous wrongs of
ocean to the world. And after these came the bewildering whirl of spray
and rain, the crash, the hissing fall, and then the great blow of the
breaker like a knell. It hammered at the world’s foundations, until
that solid world seemed an unstable thing to tread.
The rain had ceased when Miss Sullivan reached the Point. It was
clearing, and she could look more widely over the immense agitation
and sway of the lurid sea. She sat for an hour or wandered about over
perils of wave-worn crags, that waves were now striving vainly to
shatter. At last she remembered that she had the beach still to visit
before her return. Her path thither was through a wood, tangled and
bewildering with vines and underbrush. The storm was now almost a
calm, but the thunder of the surges followed her as she hastened along
the dripping trail. Penetrating slowly through the wood by paths of
uneasy footing, she began to distinguish the distant part of the beach.
It formed one end of a parallelogram, whose sides were dark ranges of
low, broken precipice and the farther end the blank of sea. Opposite
her, the precipice continued up into a wooded mountain. The sun was
just breaking forth and scattering a slender, illumined scarf of mist,
that wavered in among the trees of the mountain-side, and melted into
that ever-fresh wonder of beauty, the calm sky of summer.
There was much rubbish strewn along the beach. Miss Sullivan could
see old waterlogged slabs, logs purple with long drowning, pieces of
spar, a plank or so. As she descended and looked over the nearer sands,
she saw more rubbish; more than usual, perhaps of a recent wreck.
Such a storm could hardly pass without touching the pockets of jolly
underwriters--less jolly over their noon sandwich as the telegraph told
of ships ashore.
The path began to skirt the edge of the broken cliff, and finally
descended rapidly, by a series of dangerous stepping places, toward the
level. It was quite evident there had been a wreck. The water deepened
very slowly out from the shore, and each swell, as it swept in, drove
along bits or masses of wreckage, and retiring, dragged them back, to
be again heaved farther up.
Miss Sullivan had never before seen a wreck. She suddenly seemed very
curious to examine this one nearer,--passionately curious, indeed,--and
began to leap down the hillside rather precipitately. However, she was
now used to Dan’l’s boots; otherwise her headlong speed would have
been dangerous. She found it rather deep trudging in the sand, deeper
and more difficult as she ran rapidly down after the returning waves;
and she found it a struggle for her own life in the undertow, as she
resolutely plunged forward and, grasping some wrecked fragments, fought
with so much desperate womanish force as she had to drag them in to
shore and safety.
These fragments had lashed to them the body of a man.
The sea had done with this object what it chose; it was weary of its
plaything, and now aided her in her merciful task. For many moments she
was ready to despair and drown; but hope was her ally, and a nervous,
unsuspected strength, and at last she gained a firm footing and dragged
the man away from the waves up on the wet sand.
She sank exhausted in a dizzy trance, blinded and fainting. It had been
a terrible, heart-rending agony of combat--a very doubtful strife for
two lives with the hungry sea.
Starting up at last, she seemed to shrink from quieter examination of
the wrecked person. But conquering fear or superstition in a moment’s
struggle, she knelt beside him. His arm was raised, covering his face,
and his clenched hand held something that was attached by a strand of
silk around his neck. As she removed the arm, the hand relaxed in hers
and a small book fell from it; she pulled it from the silk and laid it
hastily by.
Parting the hair from the sadly bruised and battered face, she looked
vainly into closed eyes for any light of life. She laid her hand where
the heart should be beating; she placed her lips close, nay, almost
touching, livid lips, to catch a faintest breath; she did all those
passionately desperate things that one may do, feeling that another
life may depend on each lapsing moment’s effort. She had nothing
to cut the lashings which bound him to the wreck, and tore at them
furiously, vainly, with her teeth. There was a hard, dry sobbing in her
throat, and her features worked convulsively as she paused, exhausted,
and gazed down at that white, quiet face. She was ready again to
despair. She could not leave him; would no help come? The sun seemed
oppressively hot and cruel--a staring, insulting fullness of daylight.
Help was coming. She heard a cheerful woman’s voice singing a negro
melody in the wood. Miranda had evidently expected that Miss Sullivan’s
circuit would bring her to the beach and had come to join her.
Miss Sullivan essayed to scream, but could not. Miranda came to the
bank, and seeing her standing like a ghost, vainly striving to beckon,
divined the whole in an instant and sprang down the steps.
“Is he dead?” cried Miranda.
The formalising of a dreaded thought into words makes its terrors
doubly terrible.
“Dead! I fear so,” said Miss Sullivan, very slowly and with a shiver.
“He shan’t die if we can help it,” said Miranda resolutely. “Here, Miss
Mary, you run right up to the second field. Up there, Uncle Jake’s out
with the boys, seeing if they can mow after the shower. Bring ’em down
quick--I’ll cut him loose.”
Suiting act to word, she whipped out a jagged penknife of schoolmarm
days from her pocket, and began to saw at the lashings.
Miss Sullivan clambered, panting, up the cliff and plunged into the
wood. Presently she appeared at a run, followed by Uncle Jake and the
two boys--biggish boys of six feet two.
Miranda had cut the lashings of rotten stuff. Uncle Jake supported the
man in his arms. He was perfectly insensible.
“He’s not dead,” said Uncle Jake.
“He’ll live; I know he’ll live!” cried Miranda.
“Hooray!” shouted the two boys tumultuously--a view-halloo for a found
life.
“Thank God!” said Miss Sullivan, with a quick, irrepressible sob of
thankfulness.