FACE TO FACE WITH THE ROCK.
The wretched people in distress on board the _Matutina_ understood at
once the mysterious derision which mocked their shipwreck. The
appearance of the lighthouse raised their spirits at first, then
overwhelmed them. Nothing could be done, nothing attempted. What has
been said of kings, we may say of the waves--we are their people, we are
their prey. All that they rave must be borne. The nor’-wester was
driving the hooker on the Caskets. They were nearing them; no evasion
was possible. They drifted rapidly towards the reef; they felt that they
were getting into shallow waters; the lead, if they could have thrown it
to any purpose, would not have shown more than three or four fathoms.
The shipwrecked people heard the dull sound of the waves being sucked
within the submarine caves of the steep rock. They made out, under the
lighthouse, like a dark cutting between two plates of granite, the
narrow passage of the ugly wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be
full of the skeletons of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like the
mouth of a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could hear
the crackling of the pile on high within the iron grating. A ghastly
purple illuminated the storm; the collision of the rain and hail
disturbed the mist. The black cloud and the red flame fought, serpent
against serpent; live ashes, reft by the wind, flew from the fire, and
the sudden assaults of the sparks seemed to drive the snowflakes before
them. The breakers, blurred at first in outline, now stood out in bold
relief, a medley of rocks with peaks, crests, and vertebræ. The angles
were formed by strongly marked red lines, and the inclined planes in
blood-like streams of light. As they neared it, the outline of the reefs
increased and rose--sinister.
One of the women, the Irishwoman, told her beads wildly.
In place of the skipper, who was the pilot, remained the chief, who was
the captain. The Basques all know the mountain and the sea. They are
bold on the precipice, and inventive in catastrophes.
They neared the cliff. They were about to strike. Suddenly they were so
close to the great north rock of the Caskets that it shut out the
lighthouse from them. They saw nothing but the rock and the red light
behind it. The huge rock looming in the mist was like a gigantic black
woman with a hood of fire.
That ill-famed rock is called the Biblet. It faces the north
side the reef, which on the south is faced by another ridge,
L’Etacq-aux-giulmets. The chief looked at the Biblet, and shouted,--
“A man with a will to take a rope to the rock! Who can swim?”
No answer.
No one on board knew how to swim, not even the sailors--an ignorance not
uncommon among seafaring people.
A beam nearly free of its lashings was swinging loose. The chief clasped
it with both hands, crying, “Help me.”
They unlashed the beam. They had now at their disposal the very thing
they wanted. From the defensive, they assumed the offensive.
It was a longish beam of heart of oak, sound and strong, useful either
as a support or as an engine of attack--a lever for a burden, a ram
against a tower.
“Ready!” shouted the chief.
All six, getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw their weight
on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards a
projection of the cliff.
It was a dangerous manoeuvre. To strike at a mountain is audacity
indeed. The six men might well have been thrown into the water by the
shock.
There is variety in struggles with storms. After the hurricane, the
shoal; after the wind, the rock. First the intangible, then the
immovable, to be encountered.
Some minutes passed, such minutes as whiten men’s hair.
The rock and the vessel were about to come in collision. The rock, like
a culprit, awaited the blow.
A resistless wave rushed in; it ended the respite. It caught the vessel
underneath, raised it, and swayed it for an instant as the sling swings
its projectile.
“Steady!” cried the chief; “it is only a rock, and we are men.”
The beam was couched, the six men were one with it, its sharp bolts tore
their arm-pits, but they did not feel them.
The wave dashed the hooker against the rock.
Then came the shock.
It came under the shapeless cloud of foam which always hides such
catastrophes.
When this cloud fell back into the sea, when the waves rolled back from
the rock, the six men were tossing about the deck, but the _Matutina_
was floating alongside the rock--clear of it. The beam had stood and
turned the vessel; the sea was running so fast that in a few seconds she
had left the Caskets behind.
Such things sometimes occur. It was a straight stroke of the bowsprit
that saved Wood of Largo at the mouth of the Tay. In the wild
neighbourhood of Cape Winterton, and under the command of Captain
Hamilton, it was the appliance of such a lever against the dangerous
rock, Branodu-um, that saved the _Royal Mary_ from shipwreck, although
she was but a Scotch built frigate. The force of the waves can be so
abruptly discomposed that changes of direction can be easily managed, or
at least are possible even in the most violent collisions. There is a
brute in the tempest. The hurricane is a bull, and can be turned.
The whole secret of avoiding shipwreck is to try and pass from the
secant to the tangent.
Such was the service rendered by the beam to the vessel. It had done the
work of an oar, had taken the place of a rudder. But the manoeuvre once
performed could not be repeated. The beam was overboard; the shock of
the collision had wrenched it out of the men’s hands, and it was lost in
the waves. To loosen another beam would have been to dislocate the hull.
The hurricane carried off the _Matutina_. Presently the Caskets showed
as a harmless encumbrance on the horizon. Nothing looks more out of
countenance than a reef of rocks under such circumstances. There are in
nature, in its obscure aspects, in which the visible blends with the
invisible, certain motionless, surly profiles, which seem to express
that a prey has escaped.
Thus glowered the Caskest while the _Matutina_ fled.
The lighthouse paled in distance, faded, and disappeared.
There was something mournful in its extinction. Layers of mist sank down
upon the now uncertain light. Its rays died in the waste of waters; the
flame floated, struggled, sank, and lost its form. It might have been a
drowning creature. The brasier dwindled to the snuff of a candle; then
nothing; more but a weak, uncertain flutter. Around it spread a circle
of extravasated glimmer; it was like the quenching of: light in the pit
of night.
The bell which had threatened was dumb. The lighthouse which had
threatened had melted away. And yet it was more awful now that they had
ceased to threaten. One was a voice, the other a torch. There was
something human about them.
They were gone, and nought remained but the abyss.