THE HURRICANE
They descended into the service-room.
"Let me see," said Enid; "it will be nineteen years on the 22d of next
June, since you found me floating serenely towards the Gulf Rock in a
deserted boat?"
"Yes, if you insist on accuracy as to the date. I might cavil at your
serenity."
"And I was 'estimated' as a year old then? Isn't it a weird thing that a
year-old baby should be sent adrift on the Atlantic in an open boat and
never a word of inquiry made subsequently as to her fate? I fear I could
not have been of much account in those days."
"My dear child, I have always told you that the boat had been in
collision during the fog which had prevailed for several days
previously. Those who were caring for you were probably knocked
overboard and drowned."
"But alone! Utterly alone! That is the strangeness of it. I must be an
American. Americans start out to hustle for themselves early in life,
don't they."
"Certainly, in that respect you might claim the record."
Brand had not told her all the facts of that memorable June morning.
Why should he? They were not pleasant memories to him. Why cumber her
also with them? For the rest, he had drawn up and read to her, long ago,
a carefully compiled account of her rescue and the steps taken to
discover her identity.
"I entered on an active and useful career with no such halo of glory,"
broke in Constance. "I am just plain English, born in Brighton, of
parents not poor but respectable. Mother died a year after my birth,
didn't she, dad?"
"You were thirteen months old when we lost her," he answered, bending
over the clock-work attachment of the fog bell to wipe off an invisible
speck of dust. Since his first term of service on the rock the light had
changed from an occulting to a fixed one.
"She is buried there, isn't she," the girl went on. "How strange that,
amidst our many journeyings, we have never visited Brighton."
"If I were able to take you to her grave-side, I would not do it," said
Brand. "I do not encourage morbid sentiments, even of that perfectly
natural kind. Your mother, to you, Constance, is like Enid's to her, a
dear but visionary legend. In a degree, it is always so between loved
ones lost and those who are left. Truth, honor, work, these are the
highest ideals for the individual. They satisfy increasingly. Happy as I
am in your companionship, you must not be vexed when I tell you that the
most truly joyful moment of my life was conferred when my little friend
here first responded accurately to external influences."
He laid his hand on an object resting on a table by itself. It looked
like an aneroid barometer, but the others knew it was the marine
auriscope to which he had devoted so many patient hours.
"Is it in working order now?" asked Constance instantly, and Enid came
nearer. Together they examined the small dial. It was equipped with an
arrow-headed pointer, and marked with the divisions of the compass but
without the distinguishing letters.
These three understood each other exactly. By inadvertence, the
conversation had touched on a topic concerning which Brand was always
either vague or silent. Both girls were quick-witted enough to know that
Constance's mother was never willingly alluded to either by the
lighthouse-keeper or by the elderly Mrs. Sheppard who looked after them
in infancy, and was now the housekeeper of Laburnum Cottage.
Constance was annoyed. How could she have been so thoughtless as to
cause her father a moment's suffering by bringing up painful
reminiscences. But he helped her, being master of himself.
He adjusted a switch in the instrument.
"I had no difficulty in constructing a diaphragm which would intercept
all sounds," he said. "The struggle came when I wanted an agent which
would distinguish and register a particular set of sounds, no matter
what additional din might be prevalent at the same time. My hopes were
wrecked so often that I began to despair, until I chanced one day to
read how the high-tension induction coil could be tuned to disregard
electrical influences other than those issued at the same pitch. My
anxiety, until I had procured and experimented with a properly
constructed coil, was very trying, I assure you."
"I remember wondering what on earth it was," volunteered Enid. "It
sounded like a mathematical snake."
"And I am sorry to say that even yet I am profoundly ignorant as to its
true inwardness," smiled Constance.
"Yet you girls delight in poets who bid you hearken to the music of the
spheres. I suppose you will admit that the ear of, say, Ben Pollard, is
not tuned to such a celestial harmony. However, I will explain my
auriscope in a sentence. It only listens to and indicates the direction
of foghorns, sirens, and ship's bells. A shrill steam whistle excites
it, but the breaking of seas aboard ship, the loud flapping of a
propeller, the noise of the engines, of a gale, or all these in
combination, leave it unmoved."
"I remember once, when we were going from Falmouth to Porthalla in a
fog, how dreadfully difficult it was to discover the whereabouts of
another steamer we passed _en route_," said his daughter.
"Well, with this little chap on the bridge, the pointer would have told
the captain unerringly. I don't suppose it will be thick whilst you are
here, or you would see it pick up the distant blasts of a steamer long
before we can hear them, and follow her course right round the arc of
her passage. It is most interesting to watch its activity when there are
several ships using their sirens. I have never had an opportunity of
testing it on more than three vessels at once, but as soon as I could
deduce a regular sequence in the seemingly erratic movements of the
indicator, I marked the approach and passing of each with the utmost
ease."
"Would that stop collisions at sea?"
"Nothing will do that, because some ship's officers refuse at times to
exercise due care. But with my instrument on board two ships, and a time
chart attached to the drums, there would be no need for a Board of Trade
inquiry to determine whether or not the proper warning was given. To the
vast majority of navigators it will prove an absolute blessing."
"You clever old thing!" cried Enid. "I suppose you will make heaps of
money out of it."
"The inventor is the last man to make money out of his inventions, as a
rule," said Brand. "I suppose I differ from the ordinary poor fellow
inasmuch as I am not dependent for a livelihood on the success of my
discovery."
"There's not the least little bit of chance of there being a fog
tonight?" queried Enid, so earnestly that a wave of merriment rippled
through the room.
"Not the least. In any event, you two girls will be in bed and sound
asleep at ten o'clock."
"Perish the thought!" cried Constance. "Bed at ten, during our first and
only night on a lighthouse!"
"You will see," said her father. "You cannot imagine how the clock
dawdles in this circumscribed area. Work alone conquers it. Otherwise,
men would quit the service after a month's experience."
"Ship ahoy!" screamed Enid. "Here comes the _Lapwing_ round Carn du. Mr.
Lawton must have lent her to bring the relief. How kind of him."
"The _Lapwing_ cannot approach the rock," said Brand. "I will signal
'Landing impossible today.' It will save them a useless journey."
He selected the requisite flags from a locker, the phrase he needed
being coded. Soon the strong breeze was trying to tear the bunting from
the cordage, and though they could not hear the three whistles with
which the little yacht acknowledged the signal, they could easily see
the jets of steam through their glasses.
Constance happened to overlook the table on which stood the auriscope.
"This thing has actually recorded those whistles," she cried in wonder.
"What sort of whistle has the _Lapwing_?" asked Brand.
"A loud and deep one, worthy of a leviathan. It was a fad of Mr.
Lawton's. They say his siren consumes more steam than his engines."
Her father laughed.
"Anyhow, he is sticking to his course," he announced. "I may as well
take in the decorations."
Undauntedly, but much flurried by a sea ever increasing in strength as
the force of the ebb tide encountered the resistance of the wind, the
_Lapwing_ held on. With wind and sea against her she would have made
slow work of it. As it was, there was help forthcoming for both journeys
unless the wind went back to the north again as rapidly as it had veered
to the southwest.
She would not be abreast the rock for nearly an hour, so Brand left the
girls in charge of the lookout whilst he visited the oil-room. A wild
night, such as he anticipated, demanded full pressure at the lamp. If
the air became super-saturated, breakage of the glass chimneys might
take place, and he must have a good stock on hand. Water and coal, too,
were needed; the double accident to Bates and Jackson had thrown into
arrears all the ordinary duties of the afternoon watch.
Naturally, the pair in the lantern found the progress of the yacht
exasperatingly slow.
"A nice _Lapwing_," said Enid, scornfully. "I will tell Mr. Lawton he
ought to rechristen her the _Bantam_. All her power is in her crow."
When Brand joined them matters became livelier. More accustomed than
they to the use of a telescope, he made discoveries.
"The two supernumeraries are there," he announced, "but I cannot see
Lawton. Indeed, so far as I can make out, she is commanded by Stanhope,
dressed in Ben Pollard's oil-skins."
"He has left Lady Margaret!" cried Constance.
"He never went home!" essayed Enid.
"Poor chap! He was going to take us for a drive tomorrow," said
Constance.
"To Morvah," explained Enid, with a syllabic emphasis meant for one pair
of ears.
"It is very nice of him to struggle on and have a look at us," said
Brand. "He can come close enough to see us, but that is all. Our small
megaphone will be useless."
Indeed, the _Lapwing_ dared not approach nearer than the Trinity mooring
buoy. By that time the three, protected from the biting wind by oilskin
coats, were standing on the gallery. The reef was bellowing up at them
with a continuous roar. A couple of acres of its surface consisted of
nothing more tangible than white foam and driving spray.
Stanhope, resigning the wheel to a sailor, braced himself firmly against
the little vessel's foremast and began to strike a series of
extraordinary attitudes with his arms and head.
"Why is he behaving in that idiotic manner?" screamed Enid.
"_Capital_ idea--semaphore--clever fellow, Jack," shouted Brand.
Abashed, Enid held her peace.
The lighthouse-keeper, signalling in turn that he was receiving the
message, spelled out the following:
"Is all well?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Bates and Jackson reached hospital. Bates compound fracture. If weather
moderates will be with you next tide."
"All right," waved Brand.
The distant figure started again:
"L-o-v-e t-o E-n-i-d."
Enid indulged in an extraordinary arm flourish.
"A-n-d C-o-n-s-t-a-n-c-e."
"That spoils it," she screamed. "It ought to be only kind regards to
you, Connie. I believe you are a serpent, a--"
"Do stop your chatter," shouted Brand, and he continued the message:
"Weather looks very bad. Little hope for tonight. _Lancelot_ due at six.
Will see personally that no chance is lost. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," was the response.
The _Lapwing_ fell away astern from the vicinity of the buoy.
"Why is he doing that?" asked Constance, close to her father's ear.
"He is too good a sailor to risk turning her in that broken water. A
little farther out there is greater depth and more regular seas."
They watched the yacht in silence. At last her head swung round towards
the coast. When broadside on, a wave hit her, and the spray leaped over
her masts.
"That gave them a wetting," cried Brand, and his calm tone stilled their
ready fear. Indeed, there was greater danger than he wanted them to
know. But the _Lapwing_ reappeared, shaking herself, and still turning.
"Good little boat!" said Brand. The crisis had passed. She was headed,
at full speed, for the Bay. And not too soon. 'Ere she reached the
comparative shelter of Clement's Island she was swept three times by
green water.
Inside the lantern, their faces ruddy with the exposure, their eyes
dancing with excitement, the girls were voluble with delight. Could
anything be more thrilling than their experiences that day!
"That semaphore dodge is too precious to be lost," cried Enid. "Connie,
you and I must learn the alphabet. You shall teach us this very evening,
dad. Fancy me signaling you the whole length of the Promenade: 'Just
look at Mrs. Wilson's bonnet,' or 'Here come the Taylor-Smiths. Scoot!'
Oh, it's fine."
She whirled her arms in stiff-jointed rigidity and mimicked Stanhope's
fantastic posing.
"Why should you scoot when you meet the Taylor-Smiths?" asked Brand.
"Because Mrs. T.-S. hauls us off to tea and gives us a gallon of gossip
with every cup."
"I thought your sex regarded gossip as the cream?"
"Sex, indeed! Old Smith is worse than his wife. He doesn't say much, but
he winks. One of his winks, at the end of a story, turns an episode into
a three-volume novel."
"It seems to me I must teach you the code in my own self-defence," he
replied. "And now for tea. Let us have it served here."
They voted this an admirable notion. The girls enlivened the meal by
relating to him the doings and sayings of current interest ashore during
the past two months. By a queer coincidence, which he did not mention,
his relief was again due within a week, just as on the occasion of
Enid's first appearance on the rock. The fact struck him as singular. In
all probability he would not return to duty. He had completed twenty-one
years of active service. Now he would retire, and when the commercial
arrangements for the auriscope were completed, he would take his
daughters on a long-promised Continental tour, unless, indeed, matters
progressed between Stanhope and Enid to the point of an early marriage.
He had foreseen that Stanhope would probably ask Enid to be his wife. He
knew the youngster well, and liked him. For the opposition that Lady
Margaret might offer he cared not a jot. He smiled inwardly--as the
convenient phrase has it--when he reviewed the certain outcome of any
dispute between himself and her ladyship. He would surprise her.
Brand, the lighthouse-keeper, and Brand urging the claims of his adopted
daughter, would be two very different persons.
Of course, all Penzance knew that he was a gentleman, a scientist in a
small way, and a man of means: otherwise Constance and Enid would not
have occupied the position they held in local society. Those
unacquainted with English ways ofttimes make the mistake of rating a
man's social status by the means he possesses or the manner of his life
in London. No greater error could be committed. The small, exclusive
county town, the community which registers the family connections of
many generations, is the only reliable index. Here, to be of gentle
birth and breeding--not bad credentials even in the court of King
Demos--confers Brahminical rank, no matter what the personal fortunes of
the individual.
Brand, it is true, did not belong to a Cornish county family, but there
were those who conned him shrewdly. They regarded him as a well-meaning
crank, yet the edict went forth that his daughters were to be
"received," and received they were, with pleasure and admiration by all
save such startled elderly mammas as Lady Margaret Stanhope, who
expected her good-looking son to contract a marriage which would restore
the failing fortunes of the house.
All unconscious of the thoughts flitting through his brain, for Brand
was busy trimming a spare lamp, the two girls amused themselves by
learning the semaphore alphabet from a little hand-book which he found
for them.
When the night fell, dark and lowering, the lamp was lighted. They had
never before seen an eight-wicked concentric burner in use. The shore
lighthouses with which they were better acquainted were illuminated by
electricity or on the catoptric principle, wherein a large number of
small Argand lamps, with reflectors, are grouped together.
To interest them, to keep their eyes and ears away from the low-water
orgy of the reef, he explained to them the capillary action of the oil.
Although they had learnt these things in school they had not realized
the exactness of the statement that oil does not burn, but must first
be converted into gas by the application of heat. On the Gulf Rock there
were nearly 3,000 gallons of colza oil stored in the tanks beneath,
colza being used in preference to paraffin because it was safer, and
there was no storage accommodation apart from the lighthouse.
Requiring much greater heat than mineral oil to produce inflammable gas,
the colza had to be forced by heavy pressure in the cistern right up to
the edge of the wicks, and made to flow evenly over the rims of the
burner, else the fierce flame would eat the metal discs as well.
He read them a little lecture on the rival claims of gas and
electricity, and demonstrated how dazzlingly brilliant the latter could
be on a dark, clear night by showing them the fine light on the Lizard.
"But in hazy weather the oil wins," he said, with the proper pride of
every man in his own engine. "Fishermen sailing into Penzance along a
course equidistant from the two points tell me that if they can see
anything at all on a foggy night they invariably catch a dull yellow
radiance from the rock, whilst the Lizard is invisible. The oil has more
penetrative power. Its chemical combination is nearer the mean of
nature's resources."
At the proper time he banished them to the kitchen to prepare dinner, a
feast diverted from the hour of noon by the chances of the day. He
adopted every expedient to keep them busy, to tire them physically and
mentally, to render them so exhausted that they would sleep in blissful
calm through the ordeal to come.
As he could not leave the lamp, and they refused to eat apart from him,
the dinner, in three courses, was a breathless affair. Going up and down
five flights of stairs with soup, joint and pudding, whilst one carried
the tray and the other swung a hand lantern in front, required time and
exertion. They were cheerful as grigs over it.
Enid, whose turn it was to bring up the plates of tapioca, pleaded
guilty to a slight sensation of nervousness.
"I could not help remembering," she said, "what an awful lot of dark
iron steps there were beneath me. I felt as if something were creeping
up quickly behind to grab me by the ankles."
"You should go up and down three times in the dark," was Brand's recipe.
"When you quitted the door level for the third ascent you would cease to
worry about impossible grabs."
Constance looked at her watch.
"Only eight o'clock! What a long day it has been," she commented.
"You must go to bed early. Sleep in my room. You will soon forget where
you are; each of the bunks is comfortable. Now I will leave you in
charge of the lamp whilst I go and lock up."
They laughed. It sounded so home-like.
"Any fear of burglars?" cried Enid.
"Yes, most expert cracksmen, wind, and rain, and--sleet," he added
quietly. "I must fasten all the storm-shutters and make everything
snug. Don't stir until I wake you in the morning."
"Poor old dad!" sighed Constance. "What a vigil!"
He was making new entries in the weather report when she remarked
thoughtfully:
"It is high-water about half past one, I think?"
He nodded, pretending to treat the question as of no special import.
"From all appearances there will be a heavy sea," she went on.
"Just an ordinary bad night," he said coolly.
"Do the waves reach far up the lighthouse in a gale?" she persisted.
Then Brand grasped the situation firmly.
"So that your slumbers may be peaceful," he said, "I will call your kind
attention to the fact that the Gulf Rock light has appeared every night
during the past twenty-five years, or since a date some four years
before you were born, Constance. It contains 4,000 tons of granite and
is practically monolithic, as if it were carved out of a quarry. Indeed,
I think its builder went one better than nature. Here are no cracks or
fissures or undetected flaws. The lowest course is bolted to the rock
with wrought-iron clamps. Every stone is dovetailed to its neighbors,
and clasped to them with iron, above, below and at the sides. If you
understand conic sections I could make clearer the scientific aspect of
the structure, but you can take it from me you are far safer here than
on a natural rock many times the dimensions of this column."
"That sounds very satisfactory," murmured Enid, sleepily.
"I am overwhelmed," said Constance, who grasped the essential fact that
he had not answered her question.
Soon after nine o'clock he kissed them good-night. They promised not to
sit up talking. As a guarantee of good behavior, Enid said she would
ring the electric bell just before she climbed into her bunk.
The signal came soon and he was glad. He trusted to the fatigue, the
fresh air, the confidence of the knowledge that he was on guard, to lull
them into the security of unconsciousness.
The behavior of the mercury puzzled him. In the barometer it fell, in
the thermometer it rose. Increasing temperature combined with low
pressure was not a healthy weather combination in January. Looking back
through the records of several years, he discovered a similar set of
conditions one day in March, 1891. He was stationed then on the
Northeast coast and failed to remember any remarkable circumstance
connected with the date, so he consulted the lighthouse diary for that
year. Ah! Here was a possible explanation. The chief-keeper, a stranger
to him, was something of a meteorologist.
He had written: "At 4.15 P.M. the barometer stood at 27.16°, and the
thermometer at 45.80°. There was a heavy sea and a No. 7 gale blowing
from the S. S.-W. About five o'clock the wind increased to a hurricane
and the sea became more violent than I have seen it during five years'
experience of this station. Judging solely by the clouds and the flight
of birds, I should imagine that the cyclonic centre passed over the
Scilly Isles and the Land's End."
Then, next day:
"A steady northeast wind stilled the sea most effectually. Within
twenty-four hours of the first signs of the hurricane the Channel was
practicable for small craft. A fisherman reports that the coast is
strewn with wreckage."
Brand mused over the entries for a while. With his night glasses he
peered long into the teeth of the growing storm to see if he could find
the double flash of the magnificent light on the Bishop Rock, one of the
Atlantic breakwaters of the Scilly Isles. It was fully thirty-five miles
distant, but it flung its radiance over the waters from a height of 143
feet, and the Gulf Rock lamp stood 130 feet above high-water mark. A
landsman would not have distinguished even the nearer revolutions of the
St. Agnes light, especially in the prevalent gloom, and wisps of
spindrift were already striking the lantern and blurring the glass.
Nevertheless, he caught the quick flashes reflected from clouds low, but
unbroken. As yet, there was a chance of the incoming tide bringing
better weather, and he bent again over the record of the equinoctial
gale in 1891. Soon he abandoned this hope. The growing thunder of the
reef as the tide advanced gave the first unmistakable warning of what
was to come. As a mere matter of noise the reef roared its loudest at
half-tide. He understood now that a gale had swept across the Atlantic
in an irregular track. Howsoever the winds may rage the tides remain
steadfast, and the great waves now rushing up from the west were
actually harbingers of the fierce blast which had created them.
Of course, the threatened turmoil in no wise disconcerted him. It might
be that the rock would remain inaccessible during many days. In that
event the girls would take the watch after the lamp was extinguished and
they must learn to endure the monotony and discomforts of existence in a
storm-bound lighthouse. They would be nervous unquestionably--perhaps he
had forgotten how nervous--but Brand was a philosopher, and at present
he was most taken up with wonderment at the curious blend of
circumstances which resulted in their presence on the rock that night.
Ha! A tremor shook the great pillar. He heard without the frenzied
shriek of the first repulsed roller which flung itself on the sleek and
rounded wall. Would the girls sleep through the next few hours?
Possibly, if awake, they would attribute the vibration of the column to
the wind. He trusted it might be so. Shut in as they were, they could
not distinguish sounds. Everything to them would be a confused hum, with
an occasional shiver as the granite braced its mighty heart to resist
the enemy.
But what new note was this in the outer chaos? An ordinary gale
shuddered and whistled and chanted its way past the lantern in varying
tones. It sang, it piped, it bellowed, it played on giant reeds and
crashed with cymbals. Now--he looked at the clock, after
midnight--there was a sustained screech in the voice of the tempest
which he did not remember having heard before. At last the explanation
dawned on him. The hurricane was there, a few feet away, shut off from
him by mere sheets of glass. The lighthouse thrust its tall shaft into
this merciless tornado with grim steadfastness, and around its smooth
contours poured a volume of unearthly melody which seemed to surge up
from the broad base and was flung off into the darkness by the outer
sweep of the cornice.
The wind was traveling seventy, eighty, mayhap a hundred miles an hour.
Not during all his service, nor in earlier travels through distant
lands, had he ever witnessed a storm of such fury. He thought he heard
something crack overhead. He looked aloft, but all seemed well. Not
until next day did he discover that the wind-vane had been carried away,
a wrought iron shank nearly two inches thick having snapped like a piece
of worsted at the place where the tempest had found a fault.
He tried to look out into the heart of the gale. The air was full of
flying foam, but the sea was beaten flat. If the growling monster
beneath tried to fling a defiant crest at the tornado, the whole mass of
water, many tons in weight, was instantly torn from the surface and
flung into nothingness. Some of these adventurers, forced up by the
reef, hit the lighthouse with greater force than many a cannon-ball
fired in battles which have made history. Time after time the splendid
structure winced beneath the blow.
If Stephen Brand were ever fated to know fear he was face to face with
the ugly phantom then. The granite column would not yield, but it was
quite within the bounds of possibility that the entire lantern might be
carried away, and he with it.
He thought, with a catching of his breath, of the two girls in the tiny
room beneath. For one fleeting instant his mortal eyes gazed into the
unseen. But the call of duty restored him. The excessive draught
affected the lamp. Its ardor must be checked. With a steady hand he
readjusted the little brass screws. They were so superbly indifferent to
all this pandemonium. Just little brass screws, doing their work, and
heeding naught beside. Suddenly there came to him the triumphant
knowledge that the pure white beam of the light was hewing its path
through the savage assailant without as calmly and fearlessly as it lit
up the ocean wilds on a midsummer night of moonlight and soft zephyrs.
"Thank God for that!" he murmured aloud. "How can a man die better than
at his post?"
The ring of iron beneath caught his ears. He turned from the lamp.
Constance appeared, pale, with shining eyes. She carried the lantern.
Behind her crept Enid, who had been crying; she strove now to check her
tears.
"Is this sort of thing normal, or a special performance arranged for our
benefit?" said his daughter, with a fine attempt at a smile.
"Oh, dad, I am so frightened," cried Enid. "Why does it howl so?"