It was several weeks after the attack on Mark Merrill, on his visit to
the town of B---- after the doctor, and Mrs. Merrill had regained her
health, old Peggy had returned to her duties, and the young sailor lad
was thus able to resume his fishing and carrying the mail each week to
and from several little hamlets on the coast.
By the sale of his fish and the mail carrying, both most dangerous work
in rough weather, the lad made a fair living for his mother, old Peggy,
and himself, the only three dwellers in the once grand old mansion
of Cliff Castle, then the wonder and admiration of the country folk,
but for years left deserted and crumbling to decay, its hundreds of
surrounding acres allowed to grow up with weeds and undergrowth.
The furniture all had been left after the fateful tragedy beneath its
roof, which had gained for it the name of Spook Hall, and the place had
been shunned as a pestilence, until the moving into one wing of the
Merrills, who had set at defiance the weird stories of the old mansion.
There was an unsolved mystery hanging over the Merrills, for no one
seemed to know who they were, or from whence they had come.
The lad had visited B---- as one of a schooner’s crew, and not long
after had come with his mother and Peggy, and sought a home in a cabin
on the shore.
After a run to Boston, where he had seen the agent of Cliff Castle, he
had permission to move into the mansion, and for over a year they had
dwelt there, and that was all that was known of them.
At the risk of his life the brave boy had gone out in a storm one night
and acted as pilot to a schooner that was in a dangerous anchorage, and
this had won him fame along the coast, and the name of the boy pilot.
Again, he had sailed out in his surf-skiff to a vessel adrift, and
found it utterly deserted, so had gotten up sail, as well as he could,
and run the craft to a safe anchorage.
He had given notice of the fact, but no one had come to claim the
pretty craft, which was a small schooner yacht, and Mark had begun to
regard her as his own property.
One afternoon he was standing upon the cliff watching the coming up of
what threatened to be a terrible storm.
The whole heavens to seaward were one mass of inky clouds, which were
rising higher and higher, and ominous rumblings of thunder and vivid
flashes of lightning grew louder and brighter as the tempest came
sweeping on.
From his position on the cliff he could look down into two basins, or
bays.
In one lay the little schooner at anchor, and all ship-shape to meet
the coming tempest, and there, too, was his surf-skiff with a couple of
boats drawn up on the beach.
The entrance to this bay was winding and dangerous in the extreme, but
these very dangers of running in and out made it more sheltered and
secure as a harbor.
The bay upon the other side of the cliff was larger and by no means
well sheltered from a wild sea, though to an ordinary observer it
appeared to be a safe anchorage for a vessel.
The lad stood upon a rock overhanging the sea, and commanding a grand
view, seemingly unconscious that a false step would hurl him into the
waters eighty feet below.
Suddenly he started, for around a point of land heavily wooded a vessel
came in sight, driving along under reefed sails before the breeze which
was the forerunner of the storm.
“It is one of those beautiful yachts out of Boston; but there can be no
pilot on board, or he would have run into Rover’s Roost.
“Why does she not stand out to sea for good room?” said the lad
anxiously.
Then he watched the vessel attentively, a large schooner yacht of some
two hundred tons burden, painted white, which was driving along like a
huge thing of life seeking a place of refuge from the storm.
“Great Cæsar’s ghost! she is running into Hopeless Haven in the very
teeth of this storm. She will be wrecked!” and the boy’s voice now rang
out in dire alarm for the safety of the beautiful vessel.
He saw her run, to what her skipper evidently believed a safe
anchorage; the anchors were let fall and the sails furled.
Then Mark Merrill waited no longer, for from his lips came the words:
“She is doomed unless I can save her! I have no time to get my boat and
run around the point, for the storm would catch me halfway--yes, I must
take the chances and swim out to her!”
He paused for a few seconds, as though taking in the whole situation,
and then quickly ran around the edge of the cliff to where there was a
small arbor, in the top of which had been a beacon in the early days
of the mansion.
Quickly divesting himself of his jacket, shoes, stockings and hat, he
began to descend the steep side of the cliff with the agility of a cat.
He reached within twenty feet of the water’s edge, and turning, gazed
first out at the yacht, half a mile distant, and then down into the
surf, dashing with thunderous roar against the base of the cliff.
“Now for it!” and as the words left his lips Mark Merrill made the
fateful spring into the surging breakers on his daring swim out to the
yacht in the face of the coming storm.