My little Tess came to me, a sea upcast, after one of our great
northeast gales. I myself found her: lying where the waves had landed
her on the shingle, and where they had left her with the fall of the
tide.
I was but a bit of a lad myself, then, going on to be eight years
old. Storms had no fright in them for me in those days. What I most
was thinking about when one was blowing--while my poor mother, if my
father was out in his boat, would be looking wild-eyed seaward, or in
the bed-room praying for him on her knees--was what I'd be picking up
on the shingle when the gale was over and the sea gone down. Later on,
when I came to know that at the gale's end I might be lying myself on
the shingle, along with the other wreckage, I got to looking at storms
in a different way.
That blow that brought my Tess to me had no fears in it for my poor
mother, seeing that it came in the night time and my father safe at
home. The noise of my father getting up wakened me; and in a sleepy
way I watched him from my little bed, when he had the lamp lighted,
hurrying his clothes on that he might go down to where his boat was
hauled up on the shingle and heave her with the capstan still higher
above the on-run of the waves. And as I lay there, very drowsy,
watching my father drag his big boots on and hearing the roar of the
wind and feeling the shaking that it was giving to our house-walls,
there came suddenly the sharp loud bang of a gun.
My father stopped as he heard it--with one leg in the air and his hands
gripping the boot-straps, I can see him now. "That's from close by!"
he said. "God help them--they must be ashore on the Barnard Bank!" Then
he jammed his other boot on, jumped into his sou'wester, and was gone
on a run. My mother ran to the door--I know now, having myself helped
to get men ashore from wrecked ships at my life's peril, what her fear
was--and called after him into the darkness: "Don't thou go to putting
thy life in danger, George May!" What she said did no good. The wind
swallowed her words before they got to him. For a minute or two she
stood in the doorway, all blown about; then, putting her weight on it,
she got the door shut and came back into the bed-room and knelt by the
bedside praying for him. I still was very drowsy. Presently I went off
to sleep again, thinking--God forgive me for it!--that if a ship had
stranded on the Barnard I'd find some pretty pickings when morning came
and the storm was over and I could get down to the shore.
And that was my first thought when I wakened, and found the sun shining
and the wind blowing no more than a gentle breeze. My father was home
again, and safe and sound. There had been no chance for a rescue,
he said--the ship being deep down in the sands, and all her people
swept out of her, by the time that daylight came. And so I bolted my
breakfast, and the very minute that I had it inside of me I was off
down the cliff-path and along the beach northward to find what I could
find. All the other Southwold boys were hurrying that way too; but our
house being up at the north end of the village gave me the start of all
of them but John Heath, who lived close by us, and he came down the
cliff-path at my heels.
The Barnard Bank lies off shore from Covehithe Ness, and under the Ness
our pickings would be most like to be. At the best they would be but
little things--buckets and baskets and brooms and odd oars, and such
like--the coast guard men seeing to it that we got no more; but things,
all the same, that any boy would jump for: and so away John and I ran
together, and we kept together until we were under the Ness--and could
see the broken stern-post of the wreck, all that was left to see of
her, sticking up from the Barnard going bare with the falling tide.
There I passed him--he giving a shout and stopping to pick up a basket
that I missed seeing because on my side weed covered it--and so was
leading him as we rounded the Ness by a dozen yards. And then it was I
who gave a shout--and made a dash for a big white bundle that was lying
in a nook of the shingle just above the lap of the waves.
John saw the bundle almost as soon as I did, and raced me for it. But
I did see it first, and I touched it first, and so it fairly was mine.
A white sheet was the outside of it; and at one corner, under the
sheet, a bit of a blanket showed. I would have none of John's help as I
unwrapped it. He stood beside me, though, and said as I opened it that
even if I had touched it first we had seen it together--which wasn't
so--and that we must go share and share. I did not answer him, being
full of wonder what I was like to come to when I had the bundle undone.
In a good deal of a hurry I got the sheet loose, it was knotted at the
corners, and then the blanket, and then still another blanket that was
under the first one: and when that inner wrapping was opened there was
lying--a little live baby! It looked up into my face with its big black
eyes, and it blinked them for a minute--having been all shut up in the
dark and the sunlight bothering it--and then it smiled at me as if I'd
just waked it up not from the very edge of death in the sea but from a
comfortable nap in its cradle on land!
John Heath burst out laughing. "You can have my share of it, George,"
said he; "we've got babies enough of our own at home." And with that he
ran away and began to look again for brooms and buckets along the shore.
But I loved my little Tess from that first sight of her, and I was
glad that John had said that I might have his share in her; though of
course, because I first saw her and first touched her, he had no real
share in her at all. So I wrapped her up again as well as I could in
her blankets--leaving the wet sheet lying there--and set off for home
along the shore, carrying her in my arms. Tired enough I got before I
had lugged my load that long way, and up the cliff, and so to our house
door. In the doorway my mother was standing, and I put the bundle in
her arms. "Lord save us!" said my mother. "What's the boy got here?"
"Mother," said I, "it's a little beautiful live baby--and I found it,
and it's mine!"