THE MIDDLE WATCH
It says a good deal for Stephen Brand's courage that he was able to
laugh just then, but it is a fine thing for a man, in a moment of
supremest danger, to be called on to comfort a weeping woman.
The next minute might be their last--of that he was fully conscious.
Even before the girls reached his side he felt a curious lifting
movement of the whole frame of the lantern. Steel and glass alike were
yielding to the sustained violence of the wind-pressure. Well were they
molded, by men whose conscience need harbor no reproach of dishonest
craftsmanship; they were being tested now almost beyond endurance.
Some natures would have found relief in prayer. Gladly would Constance
and Enid have sunk on their knees and besought the Master of the Winds
to spare them and those at sea. But Brand, believing that a catastrophe
was imminent, decided that in order to save the girls' lives he must
neither alarm them nor lose an unnecessary instant.
To desert the light--that was impossible personally. If given the least
warning, he would spring towards the iron rail that curved by the side
of the stairs to the service-room, and take his chance. Otherwise he
would go with the lamp. There was no other alternative. The girls must
leave him at once.
The laugh with which he greeted their appearance gave him time to
scheme.
"I ought to scold you, but I won't," he cried. "Are you plucky enough to
descend to the kitchen and make three nice cups of cocoa?"
Just think what it cost him to speak in this bantering way, careless of
words, though each additional syllable might mean death to all three.
His request had the exact effect he calculated. For once, Constance was
deceived, and looked her surprise. Enid, more volatile, smiled through
her tears. So it was not quite as bad as they imagined, this gale. Their
father could never be so matter-of-fact in the face of real peril to all
of them. Cocoa! Fancy a man giving his thoughts to cocoa whilst they
were expecting the lighthouse to be hurled into the English Channel.
He turned again to manipulate the brass screws.
"Now, do not stand there shivering," he said, "but harden your hearts
and go. Use the oil stove. By the time it is ready--"
"Shivering, indeed!"
Constance, of the Viking breed, would let him see that he had no
monopoly of the family motto: "_Audèo._" She, too, could dare.
"Down you go, Enid," she cried. "He shall have his cocoa, poor man."
He looked over his shoulder and caught his daughter glancing at him from
the well of the stairs.
"Bad night," he shouted cheerfully, and he cheated her quick
intelligence a second time.
They were gone. Perchance it was his last sight of them in this life.
Three times the stalwart frame-work creaked. Once it moved so
perceptibly that the curtain rings jingled. Then he remembered the words
of Isaiah:
"For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in
his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the
blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."
The blast of the terrible ones! What a vivid pen-picture of the awesome
forces of nature. How long would this tornado continue? Already it must
have strewed its path with havoc at sea and on land. His physical senses
were elevated to the supernatural. He seemed to acquire abnormal powers
of sight and hearing. He could see the trees bending before the wrathful
wind, hear the crashing tiles and brickwork as houses were demolished
and people hurled to death. But there was no ecstasy of soul, no mental
altitude. In quick reaction came the fanciful memory of the hardy old
salt who cheered his shipmates during a terrific gale with the trite
remark:
"I pity the poor folk ashore on a night like this."
What a curious jumble of emotions jostled in his brain. A step from the
sublime to the ridiculous! Not even a step. They were inextricably
interwoven, the woof and the warp of things. He recalled the odd
expression of an officer who had passed unscathed through the Inferno of
Spion Kop.
"I had no sense of fear," said he, "but my teeth began to ache."
Brand, a student, even of himself, discovered that his dominant
sensation was one of curiosity.
"If it has to be," said his nervous system, "let it come quickly." He
felt like a man lying on the operating table waiting for the chloroform.
Suddenly, the bright flame of the lamp lessened. The use that was his
second nature caused him to raise the wicks and admit more draught. Even
whilst his deft fingers arranged the complex burner, his ear caught a
change in the external din. The shriek of the wind dropped to a
thunderous growl. This was a gale, not a tempest. God be praised, the
crisis had passed!
The hurricane had lasted thirty-five minutes. A similar tornado sufficed
to wreck one-half of the City of St. Louis. This one, as he learnt
afterwards, swept around the south of Ireland, created a tidal wave
which did great damage to the Scilly Isles and the headlands of the
south coast, yet spent itself somewhere in the North Sea. Dwellers in
inland cities were amazed and incredulous when the newspapers spoke of
its extraordinary violence. A truth is harder to swallow than a lie, all
the time.
Up clattered Enid with the steaming beverage; Constance, the
lantern-bearer, providing the rear-guard.
"I do believe it is blowing worse than ever," said Enid, striving
desperately to be unconcerned. In reality, the angry wind was no longer
able to behead the waves. With a rising tide and the gale assisting
there would soon be a sea worthy of Turner in his maddest mood.
"Good gracious, dad," cried Constance, "how pale you are. And your
forehead is wet. What have you been doing?"
Brand hastily mopped his face with a handkerchief.
"During some of the heavy gusts," he explained, "I was compelled to
stand on the trimming stage. And--the micrometer valve required
adjustment."
She eyed him narrowly. The margin of suspicion was wider.
"There is nothing else wrong?" she asked.
He approached and kissed her ear.
"Since when did my little girl begin to doubt me?" he said quietly.
Her eyes filled. Even the hint of a reproach from him was intolerable.
For the life of her she could no longer control the flood of terror
which welled up beyond restraint.
"Forgive me, dad," she murmured, "but I thought, and I still think, that
we were and are in a position of the utmost peril. I can't help knowing
that it is high-water about two o'clock. It is now only a quarter to
one. The worst is not over. Do you think I cannot read your dear face!
Dad! if there is danger, don't send us away again."
Tears were streaming down her white cheeks. Enid, holding the tray in
speechless bewilderment during this outburst from her proud and
self-reliant sister, set it down on the writing-desk with a crash.
"Oh, dear," she wailed, "I don't want any cocoa if we're gug-gug-going
to be drowned."
Certainly if Stephen Brand had imagined, two minutes earlier, that he
was about to laugh long and loudly, in a genuine surrender to an
uncontrollable spasm of mirth, he would have feared lest his wits were
leaving him. Yet he laughed now until his vision was blurred. And the
wonderful relief of it! What a tonic, after the ordeal he had endured!
It chanced, just then, that an emancipated wave embraced the granite
column, hit the cornice, and deluged the lantern, its disintegrated mass
striking the glass with force enough to break any ordinary window. The
astounded girls could not refuse the evidence of eyes and ears. Here was
the frantic sea leaping to a height of one hundred and forty feet and
more, yet their father was treating the incident as the merriest joke of
many a month.
No better cure for their hysteria could be contrived. Brand was
obviously not acting. The hearty pulsations of laughter had restored his
ruddy color. Evidently they were alarmed about nothing.
"Here, Enid, drink your parting cup," he cried at last. "Have no fear.
It is only the _dochan doris_ before many another feast."
Feeling somewhat ashamed of themselves, though smiling very wistfully,
they obeyed him. He sipped his cocoa with real nonchalance. Another wave
turned a somersault over the lantern. Brand's only anxiety was to blow
at the steaming liquid and cool it sufficiently.
Yet was he watching them and hammering out the right course to adopt. He
alone understood that, to the novice, the amazing ordeal from which the
lighthouse had successfully emerged was as naught compared with the
thunderous blows of the waves, the astounding reverberations of the
hollow pillar, the continuous deluge of spray striking the lantern,
which the infuriated sea would inflict on them.
To urge any further effort to sleep was folly. They must remain with him
and be comforted.
Being reasonable girls, of fine spirit under conditions less benumbing,
it was better that they should grasp the facts accurately. They would be
timid, of course, just as people are timid during their first attempt to
walk 'twixt rock and cataract at the Falls of Niagara, but they would
have confidence in their guide and endure the surrounding pandemonium.
"Here's to you, Enid. Still we live," he cried, and drained his cup.
"I sup-pup-pose so," she stammered.
"Better sup up your cocoa," said Constance. "Now I am quits with you for
this afternoon."
"I'll tell you what," went on Brand, confidentially. "In that locker you
will find a couple of stout pilot-coats. Put them on. As I cannot
persuade you to leave me you must sit down, and it is cold in here.
Moreover, for the first time in twenty-one years I will smoke on duty. I
have earned a little relaxation of the law."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Constance, if not Enid, had not
missed the subtle hint in his words. But she was quite normal again. She
gave no sign; helped her sister into the heavy reefer, and made herself
comfortable in turn.
"Neither of you will ever regret tonight's experience--when it is nicely
over," he said. "You are like a couple of recruits in their first
battle."
"I am sure--" began Enid.
A huge wave, containing several hundred tons of water, smote the
lighthouse, and cavorted over their heads. The house that was founded
upon a rock fell not, but it shook through all its iron-bound tiers, and
the empty cups danced on their saucers.
Not another word could Enid utter. She was paralyzed.
"That fellow--arrived--in the nick of time--to emphasize my remarks,"
said Brand, lighting his pipe. "This is your baptism of fire, if I may
strain a metaphor. But you are far better situated than the soldier. He
gets scared out of his wits by big guns which are comparatively
harmless, and when he has been well pounded for an hour or so, he
advances quite blithely to meet the almost silent hail of dangerous
bullets. So, you see, in his case, ignorance is bliss."
"Are we in bliss?" demanded Constance.
"You have been. The lighthouse has out-faced a hurricane such as has not
visited England before in my life-time. It is over. The wind has dropped
to a No. 10 gale, and we have not lost even a bit of skin to my
knowledge. Now the cannonade is beginning. Certainly, we may have the
glass broken, by a rare accident, but no worse fate can befall us."
A heavy thud was followed by a deluge without. They heard the water
pouring off the gallery.
Constance leaned forward, with hands on knees. Her large eyes looked
into his.
"This time, dad, you are not choosing your words," she said.
"I am sorry you should think that," was the reply. "I selected each
phrase with singular care. Never be misled by the apparent ease of a
speaker. The best impromptu is prepared beforehand."
"You dear old humbug," she cried.
Now the quiet deadliness of the scene which followed the reappearance of
Enid and herself from their bedroom was manifest to her. Enid, too, was
looking from one to the other in eager striving to grasp the essentials
of an episode rapidly grouping its details into sequence. Brand knew
that if he parried his daughters' questioning they would be on their
knees by his side forthwith, and he wished to avoid any further
excitement.
"Please attend, both of you," he growled, with mock severity. "I am
going to tell you something that will console you."
His voice was drowned by some part of the Atlantic whirling over the
lantern.
"This kind of thing does not go on all the time," he continued.
"Otherwise we should have five hours of spasmodic conversation. As soon
as the tide rises sufficiently to gain an uninterrupted run across the
reef we will have at least two hours of comparative quiet. About four
o'clock there will be a second edition for an hour or so. I suppose that
any suggestion of bed--"
"Will be scouted," exclaimed Enid.
"A nice pair of beauties you will be in the morning," he grumbled
artfully.
Not even Constance was proof against this new burthen of woe. She
glanced around.
"You say that," she cried, "knowing that the nearest looking-glass is
yards away."
He pointed with his pipe.
"In the second drawer of the desk you will find a heliograph. It is only
a toy, but will justify me."
They ran together, and found the little circular mirror. The next wave
passed unheeded. Smiling, he went up to the lamp. Even yet there was
hope they might go to bed when the respite came.
After much talk of disordered hair, wan cheeks, rings round the eyes,
cracked lips, and other outrageous defects which a pretty woman mourns
when divorced from her dressing-table, Constance called him.
"Here is a queer thing," she said. "Have you heard any steamer hooting?"
"No," he answered. Bending between the two of them he saw that the
pointer of the auriscope bore due southwest, though the last siren of
which they had any knowledge sounded from the opposite direction.
He picked up a little trumpet resembling the horn of a motor-car.
"I use this for tests," he explained. Its tiny vibrator quickly brought
the needle round towards his hand.
"It is improbable in the highest degree that any steamer is near enough
to affect the auriscope," he said. "On a night like this they give the
coast a wide berth."
He quitted them again. The girls, having nothing better to do, watched
the dial to see if any change occurred. He heard them use the small
trumpet three times. Then Enid sang out:
"Oh, do come, dad. It goes back to the southwest regularly."
He joined in the watch. The needle was pointing north in obedience to
the sound-waves created in the room. Suddenly, it swung round nearly
half the circumference of the dial.
"Hush!" he said. They listened intently, but the roar of wind and water
was too deafening. They could hear naught else. He went to the southwest
point of the glass dome, but the lantern was so blurred with rivulets of
water that he could see nothing save a tawny vastness where the light
fell on the flying spindrift.
To make sure, he tested the auriscope again, and with the same result.
"A vessel is approaching from the southwest," he announced, gravely.
"Evidently she is whistling for help. I hope she will not attempt to
approach too near the reef. I must have a look out."
He put on an oilskin coat and tied the strings of a sou'wester firmly
beneath his chin.
The small door of the lantern opened towards the Bay, so he had no
difficulty in gaining the gallery. The girls watched him forcing his way
against the wind until he was facing it and gazing in the direction of
the Scilly Isles.
"Perhaps some poor ship is in danger, Connie," whispered Enid. "It makes
me feel quite selfish. Here was I, thinking of nothing but my own peril,
yet that little machine there was faithfully doing its duty."
"It was not alone in its self-abandonment. We shall never know, dearest,
how much father suffered when he sent us off with a jest on his lips. I
am sure he thought the lantern would be blown away."
"And he with it! Oh, Connie!"
"Yes. He believed, if that awful thing took place whilst we were below,
we might escape. I can see it all now. I had the vaguest sort of
suspicion, but he hoodwinked me."
"Had we known we would not have left him," cried Enid, passionately.
"Yes, we would. Think of him, sticking to his post. Was it for us to
disobey?"
Overcome by their feelings, they stood in silence for a little while.
Through the thick glass they could dimly distinguish Brand's figure. A
great wave assailed the lantern and Enid screamed loudly.
"Don't, dear!" cried Constance, shrilly. "Father would not remain there
if it were dangerous."
Nevertheless, they both breathed more freely when they saw him again, an
indeterminate shape against the luminous gloom.
Constance felt that she must speak. The sound of her own voice begat
confidence.
"I have never really understood dad until tonight," she said. "What an
ennobling thing is a sense of duty. He would have died here quite
calmly, Enid, yet he would avoid the least risk out there. That would be
endangering his trust. Oh, I am glad we are here. I have never lived
before this hour."
Enid stole a wondering glance at her sister. The girl seemed to be
gazing into depths immeasurable. Afterwards the words came back to her
mind: "That would be endangering his trust."
Brand faced the gale a full five minutes. He returned hastily.
"There is a big steamer heading this way--a liner, I fancy," he gasped,
half choked with spray. "I fear she is disabled. She is firing rockets,
and I suppose her siren is going constantly, though I cannot hear it."
He ran to the room beneath. Flushed with this new excitement, the girls
donned their oilskin coats and arranged their sou'westers. When he
hurried up the stairs he was carrying four rockets. He noted their
preparations.
"Don't come out until I have fired the alarm signal," he shouted, "and
tie your dresses tightly around your knees."
They heard the loud hissing of the rockets, and the four reports
traveled dully from the sky. Three white star-bursts and one red told
the Land's End coastguards that a ship in need of help was near the Gulf
Rock. Probably they had already seen the vessel's signals. In any event,
they would not miss the display from the lighthouse.
Walking with difficulty, the girls crept out on to the balcony.
Brand had already gone to the windward side. The first rush of the gale
made them breathless, yet they persevered and reached him. They were
greeted by a climber, but their father, with a hand on their shoulders,
pressed them down, and the spray crashed against the lantern behind
them. He knew they would take no harm. When the vessel passed, their
boots and stockings would be soaked. Then he could insist that they
should go to bed.
At first they distinguished nothing save a chaotic blend of white and
yellow foam, driving over the reef at an apparently incredible speed.
Overhead, the black pall of the sky seemed to touch the top of the
lantern. Around, in a vast circle carved out of the murky wilderness,
the wondrous beam of the light fought and conquered its unwearied foes.
Constance caught the three quick flashes of the Seven Stones lightship
away to the right. She fancied she saw a twinkling ahead, but this was
the St. Agnes light, and neither girl could make out other sight or
sound until Brand pointed steadily towards one spot in the darkness.
Before they could follow his indication they were compelled to duck to
avoid another wave. Then, as if it had just popped up out of the sea,
they divined a tiny white spark swinging slowly across a considerable
area. It was by that means that Brand had estimated the size and
nearness of the steamer, and soon they glimpsed the red and green
side-lights, though ever and anon these were hidden by the torrents of
water sweeping over her decks. Of the vessel they could see nothing
whatever.
Steadily she rolled along her fearful path. Having once found her, there
was no difficulty in estimating the rapidity of her approach. Enid,
whose eyes were strong and far-sighted, fancied she caught a fitful
vision of a big, black hull laboring in the yellow waves.
Though it was difficult to speak, she crept close to Brand and screamed:
"Is she drifting onto the reef?"
"I fear so," he answered.
"Then she will be lost!"
"Yes. Unless they manage to pass to s'uth'ard."
Luckily for poor human nature, mental stress and physical effort rarely
unite forces. The mere attempt to resist the wind, the constant
watchfulness needed to avoid the ambitious seas, though these, strange
to say, appeared to be diminishing in size and volume as the tide rose,
served to dull the horror of the threatened tragedy.
Brand quitted them for an instant to glue his eyes to the lantern, after
wiping a space on the glass: he must see if the lamp needed tending.
Satisfied by the scrutiny, he stood behind the girls, who had shrunk
closely together the moment he retired.
"They are trying hard to steer clear of the reef," he shouted. "Twice
they have got her head round, but the sea is too strong for them. I am
afraid she is doomed."
Now, they unquestionably saw the great body of the ship. Her funnels
showed most clearly, making sharply defined black daubs on the heaving
desert of froth. The plunging whirls of the masthead light were enough
to prove how the unfortunate vessel was laboring in what might prove to
be her final agony.
And the pity of it! The wind was dropping. In another hour the weather
might moderate appreciably, the tide would sweep her away from the
horrible reef, and help would be forthcoming. Indeed, even then, a
powerful steam trawler was preparing to fight her way out of Penzance
harbor, with brave men on board ready to take any risk to save a ship in
distress.
But the hour was grudged by fate. They could plainly hear the hoarse
blasts of the steamer's foghorn, and again a rocket spurted its path to
the clouds. She was barely a mile away, and, if anything, in a worse
position than before, as the wind remained fixed in the southwest, and
the tide, at this stage, curved in towards the land ere it began to flow
back again to the Atlantic.
"Can nothing be done?" screamed Constance, rendered half frantic by the
thought that the steamer would go to pieces before their eyes.
"Nothing," was the answer. "Pray for them. They are in the hands of
God."
In gruesome distinctness they watched the vessel's approach. The siren
ceased. Had those on board abandoned hope? Pitching and rolling in a
manner that suggested the possibility of foundering in deep water, she
came on with fatal directness. Suddenly, a dreadful thought came to
Brand's mind. The lighthouse stood on the easterly and most elevated
portion of the reef, whose bearings ran southwest by west and
north-northwest. At low-water, some two acres of jagged rocks were
exposed. On all sides the soundings fell to sixteen and eighteen
fathoms. What if this helpless leviathan, of ten thousand tons or more
dead weight, were to strike the pillar? This was quite possible with the
tide at its present level. It all depended whether her bows were raised
or lowered at the moment of impact. In the one case she would smash away
many feet of rock, and perhaps damage the foundations of the lighthouse:
in the other, her sharp prow would stab into the vitals of the granite,
and the huge column might collapse in common ruin with its colossal
assailant.
One of the girls, he never remembered which of them, spoke to him. He
could not answer. For a second time that night he knew what fear meant.
He watched the onward plunging of the vessel with stupefied eyes. He
saw, as in a dream, that her officers and crew were still making
desperate efforts to weather the reef. But, with the utter malignity of
fate, though they might have swung her to port, she would not budge a
yard to starboard, for now both wind and waves assailed her most
vehemently on the starboard quarter.
Then when she was little more than twice her own length distant, he was
certain that a dim form on the bridge signaled to the chart-house. With
a miraculous deftness, on the assumption that her wheel was put hard
over, she fell away from the racing seas. Her red light disappeared; her
green light curved into full view. The next wave lifted her bodily, with
a mad joy that it should be able to use her to batter its enemy, the
rock.
Then she struck, with a sickening crash that was plainly audible above
the roar of the reef. This was not enough. Another rush of foaming water
enveloped her and smashed her again on an inner ledge. There she lodged,
falling inertly over to starboard.
And Brand found his voice once more, for, as sure as this terrible night
would have its end, so surely had the gallant captain of the steamer
refused to imperil the lighthouse when all hope of saving his ship had
vanished.
The tears were in Brand's eyes. His arms encircled the two girls.
"There goes a fine ship, commanded by a brave man," he cried.
And that was the beginning of the captain's requiem.