The village of Northam, which lies on the slope of a high tongue of land between Bideford Bay and the Torridge, is neither pretty, nor picturesque, nor romantic, nor anything of the kind. It is a plain, antiquated, countrified-looking place, with irregular rows of cottages, representing the style of architecture which prevailed centuries ago, relieved occasionally by a dilapidated building of statelier proportions, disclosing signs of former gentility, at a time when the houses of the poor were at a respectful distance from it, and it could boast of shrubbery, lawn, and orchard. The plainness of the village, however, by no means detracts from its merit, for historic associations of no small interest have gathered round this little hamlet, from the days of Ubba, the Danish chieftain and robber, to the days of James Stauncy; and warriors of note, seamen of renown, friars of doubtful reputation, have in their turn given Northam a name, and made it, 'for the nonce,' a small lion. It is not of these, however that we have now to write. Had the captain's dwelling been elsewhere, the village would have been left alone in its quietude; but there, in the street which lies at right angles to the main road, and which leads to the Appledore Causeway, is the selfsame cottage he once called his home. Time has not changed it greatly. The huge chimney projects where it always projected, supporting the front wall, and wasting its comfortable warmth upon the front air. The window by its side is somewhat modernized, indeed, and instead of the double hatch there is a panelled door. In all other respects it is the same cottage still.
CAPTAIN STAUNCY REPORTS PROGRESS AT HOME.CAPTAIN STAUNCY REPORTS PROGRESS AT HOME.
By the side of a bright fire in that happy home sat Mary Stauncy, waiting the return of her husband. The children were settled for the night, and everything in the little sitting-room was made to wear an air of cheeriness, that would have brightened a cloudy brow had it darkened the door. But Stauncy's brow was not clouded when he stepped in lightly, and saluted his smiling wife. On the contrary, his manner was unusually lively, and, being quite himself again, having shaken off the effects of his morning potations, he laughingly said, 'The old boy was in good cue for once, Mary, and I'm a richer man than I was yesterday. He has come out handsome.'
Now, Mary Stauncy, who was a woman of a penetrating mind, and thoroughly sterling in character, had a marvellous contempt for the said Mr. Phillipson. She mistrusted and scorned him, and her dislike was the barbed arrow of a woman's aversion. She therefore replied, in a tone which showed that strong feelings were on the instant awakened, 'And not before it was time, James. He has often promised to do something; but his promises, like himself, are worthless. Here are your best years running out, and what do you get for it? Depend upon it, when you answer his purpose no longer, he'll send you adrift with as little compunction as he turned Nanny Heale out of house and home—the poor old creature!'
'Cut the painter, eh, Mary?' he replied, smiling.
'Yes—cut the painter, James, and no joke in it either. It'll be a serious thing to get older and poorer at the same time, living, as I may say, from hand to mouth, and letting time go by us until every opportunity for bettering ourselves has passed away, because your unprincipled employer is pleased to keep us off and on, promising and promising, without ever intending to perform.'
'Nonsense, Mary!' replied the captain; 'we're young enough yet, and all our spring tides are not done with. Though you think so ill of the merchant, it isn't all breath he deals in;' and, laying the fifty-pound note on the table, he added, 'Look, there's a hansel.'
The little woman coloured scarlet. Surprise, pleasure, hope, suspicion, marshalled themselves hastily in her bosom; and, as there are times when the whelming tide of the heart keeps back the faculties of thought and utterance, she remained for a few moments silent. But as the blood stole gradually from her cheeks, and a pallor all the more death-like spread over them, she gave utterance to her uppermost thought—the offspring of that intuition which is woman's surest and safest logic, and said, 'Well, James, that's a fine prize surely; but I'm certain there's roguery in it.'
'Roguery?'
'Yes, roguery, James. That covetous, dishonourable old man would as soon part with his blood as with his money, unless he had some bad scheme in his mind. It's no little would make him hand over a fifty-pound note; and, to my eyes, every letter of it spells a warning.'
'Come, come, Mary! you are too hard upon him; and really you might have been gossiping with that old croaking witch, Betty Eastman, you speak so solemnly about warning. The worst thing of the kind I know of is the warning to pack up and go over the bar the first tide.'
'To-night, James?'
'To-night, Mary; and a fine wind we shall have for it, I reckon. But you're all out at sea yourself, and look as melancholy as if you were going to a funeral. The note, which I thought would raise your spirits, has put a damper on them, sure enough.'
'And no wonder,' she replied, with tears in her eyes. 'I've had a weight on my mind all day, and a presentiment that something unfortunate would happen. I dreamt about you last night, James; and, though our sleep-thoughts may be nothing but airy fancies most times, we cannot always dismiss them as such. They hang about our minds like living realities, and there's no reason why they shouldn't now and then be true warnings. I have no wish to make too much of my dream, but it haunts me whether I will or not. I saw you, as plain as could be, walking among the sandhills, and soon the sky grew suddenly dark—so dark that I lost sight of your form, until, by the glare of a vivid flash of lightning, I beheld you sinking in a quicksand. A wild shriek sounded above the roaring wind, drowned only by the pealing thunder, and when the cloud passed away, and the sun shone out brightly again as before, you were gone—lost to me, I thought, for ever. As soon, therefore, as you showed me the note, it flashed across my mind in a moment—that'sthe quicksand: old Phillipson will make us sup sorrow yet.'
'I hope not, Mary,' the captain replied, with as cheerful and easy a manner as he could assume in the face of an upbraiding conscience; 'things are brighter than you think for. Get my traps together, and all will be right, you'll see.' And when the church clock tolled out the hour of eleven, the captain, who had talked himself into a comfortable state again, rose to depart.
'James,' said his wife, who was still struggling with her misgivings, 'you haven't told me where you're bound, and when I may expect you again.'
'You know, my love,' he answered, 'that Phillipson always gives his orders the last thing. You shall hear from me as soon as possible; so don't be down-hearted.' And, folding her in his arms, he bade her farewell, with a warmth of true affection which did but make the pang more poignant which apprehension had inflicted.
'God bless you and keep you!' she said, sobbing; and before those strange emotions which were conflicting within could express themselves further he was on his way to Appledore.
She watched him down the street, as he walked briskly along, encountering the frosty night air; and when his footfall no longer resounded on the hard causeway she clasped her hands, and said, 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!'
The Sarah Arm was as smart a little brig as ever crossed Bideford Bar. She lay in the Pool that night with her head seaward, dividing the flowing tide as though she were rushing through it, and rising to the gentle swell with a seeming impatience to be gone. And shortly after midnight the word was given to weigh anchor and shake out the sails; and James Stauncy once more bade farewell to the Tonidge and the Taw.
A light haze had gathered over the waters, but the gibbous moon, which still rode high in the heavens, shone brightly. In queenly majesty she looked down on that quiet scene, watching over unconscious slumberers; and though little of the landscape could be seen as the vessel passed Graysand, yet, when she had cleared the bar, the land-mist was left behind, and the bay, distinctly traceable, sparkled everywhere with silvery brightness.
The ship's company, besides the skipper and Mr. Mogford, the mate, consisted of eight seamen and an apprentice, whose name was Jim Ortop, a cross-grained, vexatious youngster, whose cunning at one time and sulkiness at another procured for him most days what the sailors called 'monkeys' 'lowance.'
The men, having seen all snug, were lounging in the forecastle, where the look-out was stationed; and as the vessel sped along under courses, with a fine breeze, they beguiled the time by giving utterance to sundry and divers reflections.
'We shall have a change of weather soon, I'm thinking,' said Harry Cole. 'D'ye hear how the sea roars at the Rock's Nose?'
'Ay, ay,' replied Jem Kelly; 'a ring round the moon and a roar at the Snuffler is a sure sign of a slapping sou-wester, and it'll be ready for us, all brewed, before we reach the chops of the Channel.'
'Do you know where we're bound?' said Sam Pickard. 'I made sure we were going foreign when Mr. Phillipson said to the cap'n, as he bade him good-bye, "Keep your weather eye open, cap'n."'
'I didn't like the way the gov'nor and the cap'n whispered and laughed as they parted,' answered Kelly. 'I overheard the cap'n tell the mate just now that we were going up the Straits, and that, according to the ship's papers, the bales we've got on board are bales of broadcloth, which he said were heavily insured.' And, having thus delivered himself, he winked hard for his own private amusement.
'Bales of broadcloth!' responded Jack Purden, with a sarcastic laugh; 'bales of list, more like; and a fine market the old rogue will make of it, I'll warrant you.' And Jim Ortop saw by the bright moonlight that he too winked in a very knowing and emphatic manner.
'The last time we were up the Mediterranean,' Jim chimed in, 'the cap'n knocked me overboard; and if it hadn't been for Ned Birch I should have been drowned. If he serves me so again, I'll run away.'
'Where will you run to, you young scapegrace?' said Pickard. 'How is it you haven't got that rope stowed away yet? Look sharp, or the end of it will make acquaintance with your shoulders.'
And so they talked and joked, and moralized too, by times, until the day began to dawn; and the order was given, as the wind had freshened, to clew up the courses and wash the deck.
They were still within sight of the Cornish coast when the sun rose gloomily into the thickening sky, assuming the cold red hue which characterizes a frosty morning, and then the dull greasy look which bespeaks a thaw, or maybe a storm.
Before nine o'clock the ship had been so far eased of canvas that she was scudding under topsails. Dark banks of clouds began to lower in the horizon. The wind, which had risen to a gusty gale, and veered frequently, swept and howled through the rigging; and so threatening were appearances that when Jim Ortop went whistling up the shrouds to execute some trifling order, he had to run the gauntlet for it as soon as he reached the deck.
'You whistling rascal!' said Cole; 'don't you know you can't be whistling when there's a wind without raising a hurricane? If I hear you at that again, I'll make a figure-head of you.'
But the warning came too late. The wind, which had been chopping about, determinately settled into a stern sou-wester, and began to muster its forces for a deadly assault. Gusty and gustier still, it swept the rain-clouds hurriedly along the sky, exciting the billows into a wild tumult.
The captain was obliged to alter his course a point or two, in consequence of this state of things; but he kept the vessel's head as close to the wind as possible, and carried all the sail she would bear.
'We shall have a dirty time of it, Mr. Mogford,' he said, 'We must batten all down, and keep her facing it as long as we can.'
'There's no telling, sir,' replied the mate, 'how it may go. We haven't got the worst of it yet, for certain.'
Nor had they. Hour after hour the tempest increased in violence, until it became a perfect hurricane. Pausing to take breath, and sobbing and sighing, as if in vexation whilst it lulled, the raging wind recovered itself to blow more frantically, bending the brig to the gunwale, and sending green waves over her, whose hissing crests rose haughtily, and broke in briny showers amid her spars and rigging. Right skilfully did Stauncy handle her, and gallantly she carried herself, struggling bravely with the wild, writhing billows, which chased each other like giants at their gambols.
The evening began to draw in, and, until the moon arose to cast a pale and sickly light over the wide waste of tumultuous waters, the darkness added to the terror of the storm. The men, who had lashed themselves to different parts of the vessel for safety, began to despair; and Stauncy himself perceived that the case was serious. Still, however, he carried on, until a gust more wilful than its fellows rent the staysail into strips, which streamed out into the wind or flogged and cracked with restless fury; and a monster wave, bent on destruction, broke over the trembling vessel, sweeping the caboose and part of the bulwarks overboard, and with them the pride and life of the crew, Jim Kelly.
'He's gone, sir!' shouted the men,—'Jim's overboard, sir!' and the order to wear the ship was immediately given. But the seaman was beyond the reach of help, and all that Stauncy could do was to look after the safety of the rest.
'We'll run before it, Mr. Mogford,' he said; 'I don't know what else we can do.' And away flew the brig with bare poles, plunging and rolling in the seething waters.
Swiftly and successfully the little brig retraced her steps, careering like a sea-fowl over the watery mountains that rose in her path, ever and anon plunging into the yawning abyss; but gallantly she rose again, and, shaking herself from brine and foam, bounded onward. Having ventured, after awhile, on the smallest show of canvas possible, the captain gave orders to sound the pumps, and sent Mogford below to ascertain how things looked in the hold.
The mate slipped down the fore hatchway, making his way over tightly packed bales, empty crates and barrels, which were stowed on an extemporized half orlop-deck; and, watching his opportunity, Jim Ortop, the 'prentice, descended too, for the purpose of getting an hour or two's undisturbed sleep. Discovering a crate half-filled with straw, he quietly stole into it, and, almost before the mate reached the deck again, was wrapped in slumber.
'There are two feet of water, sir, or a little more,' said Mogford, when he reappeared; 'but I don't think there is much wrong, and the weather is moderating.'
'See that there's a good look-out kept,' replied the captain. 'We shall soon, at this rate, be upon the coast.' And scarcely were the words uttered, when a voice was heard from the forecastle, struggling for audience against the humming wind, 'Land on the starboard bow!'
A misty line of elevated land was speedily traceable in the distance; and, wishing to avoid proximity to such a shore, the captain directed that the vessel should be brought up towards the wind. Such, however, was the force of the gale, and such the difficulty of spreading even a modicum of canvas, that Stauncy's seamanship was taxed to the utmost to save the ship from the grasp of that rock-bound coast. They were driven sufficiently near to discern, by the dusky moonlight, its frowning precipices, against which the sea broke heavily with deafening roar, sending up jets of spray into nooks and crannies where gulls and puffins had sought a roosting-place, and scaring them away to seek, with angry scream, a quieter retreat; but as yet there was no manifest danger.
'We're handy Bude Bay,' said Pickard, who was assisting Cole at the wheel; 'I know the look of that ugly headland well enough. We were coming home from America one time, and by our dead reckoning we ought'—
'Down helm! run up the jib, and shake out the foretopsail,' said the captain sharply. 'We're well in for Bude Bay, and shall hardly clear the land without making all the sail we can.'
The vessel answered well to her helm, springing her luff to Stauncy's satisfaction, but yawed alarmingly when a heavy sea struck her on the beam; so that he perceived at once how much depended on vigorous measures.
Accordingly, the closely-reefed maintopsail and mainsail were set, an experiment which made the Sarah Ann heel over so much that she was well-nigh on her beam ends; but it succeeded, so that the brig was kept at a respectful distance from the grim-looking rocks which scowled behind snowy foam; and every heart felt light and hopeful when Hartland Point stood out in the distance, like a huge fog-bank, and the arms of Bideford Bay seemed stretched out rejoicingly, to welcome them back again.
'Sound the pumps again,' said the captain, 'and I'll go below myself.'
'The water has gained on us rapidly, Mr. Mogford,' was his first remark on emerging from the hold, where he had unconsciously disturbed the slumbers of Jim Ortop. 'Every time she pitches, it seems to pour in; we'll run up under Lundy, and wait for the tide. Keep the pumps agoing.'
In less than half an hour he descended again, and seemed to examine with some care the state of the seams. The lantern carried in his hand was suddenly extinguished, and the apprentice, who had fallen into a doze, was aroused by a harsh rasping sound which startled him, and stirred his curiosity. It went on for some minutes, and then, as though every barrel in the hold had been pierced at once, a gurgling, gushing noise assailed his ears, which taxed his powers of consideration no little; and, as it lasted for a considerable time, his brain became greatly excited. A scrambling over bales and crates succeeded; and, as the captain swung himself up the hatchway, Jim heard him say, 'Mr. Mogford, I've been watching the water below, and it's gaining on us every minute;' and then, in a louder tone, 'All hands to the pumps! Where's that skulking Ortop got to?'
Now, Ortop was just beginning to engage in a small expedition on his own account. Creeping quietly down to the part from whence the grating noise had proceeded, he passed his hands inquiringly in all directions; but nothing could he discover save a little trickling stream, which seemed to spring from under a projecting trenail, standing out from the ship's side like a giant vent-peg. So he made his way to the crate again, and, considering that he might as well be rope's-ended for a long nap as a short one, made himself as comfortable as he could.
Daylight at length began faintly to appear, and the ship rolled and laboured as before; for, though the tempest had spent itself and was hushing up, she had now a considerable depth of water in her, as Stauncy had reported.
'Land ahead, sir!' said the mate.
'I see it, Mogford. Up helm! We'll run round off the cave.'
The brig fell off, and before she had passed Rat Island, to the south of Lundy, the captain made another descent into the hold, guided by the light of a lantern. The candle was extinguished, the old creaking sound followed, and then that self-same rushing, splashing commotion which had astonished the apprentice before astonished him again, as though the skipper were tapping the casks for his private gratification. On, and on, and on, the mysterious rush continued; and the captain, having once more groped his way upward, exclaimed, 'Get the boats ready for lowering: we're water-logged, sure enough! See that everything is right, Mr. Mogford, and I'll have another look.'
And, lantern in hand, he visited the mysterious spot once more, and the same harsh notes and hissing chorus chimed in with creaking timbers and splashing waves.
By this time the water had gained the aforesaid orlop-deck, and was slushing amongst the stowage; so that, after the captain had again ascended, the apprentice began to look out for a favourable time to accomplish his escape.
'Is all ready?' said Stauncy.
'All ready, sir,' replied the mate.
'Then get what you can out of the ship, all of you, for she's settling down fast.'
The jolly-boat was lowered first, and manned by six of the crew; but the painter snapped before they had settled themselves, and away she went astern, dancing over the billows, soon lost to view in the hazy morning twilight.
'Look sharp there!' said the captain; 'lower away quick!' and the other boat took the water like a gull. The 'prentice, who had turned up in the nick of time, Sam Pickard, the mate, and Stauncy jumped into her; and scarcely had they cleared the vessel when her death-struggle came on. It was soon over, however. A heavy sea raised her by the stern, and, unable to recover herself, she swayed and writhed for a moment, and then sunk headlong into the leaping waters, which closed over her hurriedly, clashing and seething amid the moaning of the wind and the booming of the broken surges against the beetling cliffs of Lundy Isle.
Calamity and danger are among the many circumstances which help to break down the distinctions of life into reasonable and helpful differences, and serve to bring out the cementing power of sympathy, which is the surest bond of social union. A common trouble does much to awaken a common interest; and so it proved with the saved remnant who pulled for their lives from the Sarah Ann. The captain, the cook, the mate, and the cabin-boy forgot for the time those ruling ideas of superior and inferior, which so frequently make great men tyrants and poor men obsequious, and as companions in tribulation endeavoured without distinction to manage the boat and effect a landing. But the task was no easy one, and had they been strangers to the island, in all probability they would have perished on the rocky shore; for Lundy tolerates but one small beach, defying intrusion elsewhere by its rough, inaccessible cliffs, towering hundreds of feet above the sea. For that beach the seamen longed and strove, and their efforts were so far successful that they ran in amongst the breakers, where, despite their utmost efforts, the boat was capsized, and they had to struggle as best they could for a footing on the gritty strand.
'Just!' exclaimed the 'prentice in a moody tone, as they stood on the shore wringing out their drenched clothes,—'just!'
'Just what?' said Stauncy, in a kinder tone than Jim was accustomed to.
'Just saved,' he replied; 'but I s'pose you reckoned on that when the brig was once off here.'
'Why, to be sure,' rejoined the mate; 'if there was any chance for us, it was the lee of Lundy, where nobody is more at home than ourselves.'
'Certainly,' responded the captain; 'I made sure of a chance if we only rounded Lametry; and here we are.'
'We've only got what we stand up in,' the 'prentice answered in a querulous and somewhat independent tone; 'I wonder who'll pay me for all I've lost.'
'You'll get as good a share as the rest,' said Pickard; 'and I wonder, Mister Jim, what makes you so forward.'
'I've got as much right to speak as you,' he replied. 'I don't think we ought to be turned adrift this way, and lose everything; we ain't ought.'
'Never mind him,' said the captain, apparently anxious to put an end to the dialogue; 'he's a saucy chap. A few hours' more pickling would have preserved him better. We'll get up to the top and rouse 'em up in the old Keep;' and he turned towards the narrow path which wound up the mountain side.
The cotters resident on the bleak island received them kindly, and, having dried their clothes and satisfied their hunger, proposed a turn in for a few hours' rest.
'I don't want any rest,' said Jim; 'I had a good sleep in one of the empty crates.'
'You had, eh?' replied Pickard; 'that's where you were hiding so long, was it? How did you get a berth there, I wonder?'
'Well, I was knocked up, and when the mate went down the fore-hatch I slipped after him.'
'I wish I'd pitched you overboard,' said Stauncy hastily; 'and very much inclined I feel to slip you down the Devil's Lime Kiln,[1] to spout your impudence to the gannets, or to the porpoises when they come in with the tide.'
[1] A singular hole so called, at the south-west point, about eighty yards square at the top, and 250 feet in depth, communicating by an outlet with the sea.
In fact, the 'prentice's disclosure of his sleeping quarters during the storm considerably discomposed the captain's serenity, calling up feelings whose first expression was anger; but, having lain down with the mate and cook, and spent an hour in reflection, he determined to proceed cautiously.
The morning broke with hopeful promise. A fresh, cold breeze, into which the gale had moderated, blew directly for the opposite quarter, as though the blustering tornado, having vented its passion, had turned repentant, and was now retracing its track with sober pace. There was still a tumbling sea on; but soon the bright blue sky and the sharp bracing air dispelled all omens suggested by the past, and a fleet of trawlers from Clovelly was to be seen dotting the heaving bosom of the ocean in all directions.
A signal was hoisted which drew one of the smacks towards the island, and Stauncy and his companions were consigned to the safe keeping of the master of a boat. The mate and Pickard settled down in the stern-sheets, and engaged in a close and earnest conversation with the steersman, whilst the captain went over the story of the storm to the skipper, and then slipped forward to the bow, where Jim Ortop was seated on a coil of rope, gazing intently into the sky.
'You needn't mind about the things you've lost, Jim,' said the captain; 'I'll rig you out again, and, if you behave yourself to my satisfaction, you shall have a guinea to boot, to sport with while ashore.'
The golden idea roused Jim from his contemplations, and was far too large to be taken in at once; it upset him completely. Whatever his thoughts and emotions may have been as he sat staring into vacuity, they were routed and sent to the gulls by this new gilded intruder. A guinea! He had scarcely ever seen one. Extravagant and romantic ideas had always been conjured up when people talked in his hearing of that precious coin. He pictured it to his mind. He fancied that he felt it in his hand. It seemed as though the universe itself would be purchasable; and, looking up into the captain's face with an animated eye, he said, 'Shall I fetch it, sir?'
'Yes, Jim; come to my house when we get to Northam, and you shall have a guinea sure enough—that is, if you mind and behave yourself.'
The 'prentice did not reply. The prospect of possessing a guinea had gathered all his thoughts into one sentiment, all his sensations into one passion; and his deep-set eyes again settled into an earnest gaze on the swelling sea, as though he had been spellbound.
The captain saw that he had hit the nail on the head, as he expressed it to himself, and, leaving Jim to his dreams, went aft with lighter heart than he expected.
'I wonder, Mogford,' he said, 'where the other poor fellows are;' and then, addressing himself to the fishermen, asked whether anything had been seen of a boat with six men in it. But no one had heard or seen thereof; and, indeed, whilst Stauncy was speaking, a wanderer on Brunton Sands picked up a portion of a boat's stern with Sarah Ann on it: so that the story is soon told. The jolly-boat had been swamped, or stove on the rocks, and the men who were borne away in her from the foundering brig soon followed the fated vessel to a watery grave. No human eye beheld that ocean funeral; no human voice bewailed them as they went to rest. The booming billows rang out their passing bell. The foam-draped waves joined hands to consign them to the deep. The moaning wind sang mournfully their requiem, and said farewell, as though the angry sea knew no remorse, and would never surrender its prey again.
The village of Clovelly, which looks out from the steep cliff's side on Bideford Bay, has surely a character peculiar to itself. Rising abruptly from an antique pier, its lichen-covered cottages are piled up on an incline so sharp that the traveller has to climb its oblique, pebble-paved street, and is constrained to wonder how human habitations were perched on so precipitous an acclivity, and how the villagers contrive to descend day after day without bodily detriment, or to ascend with fish-filled maunds without perilling their existence. Besides the dwellings which line the slanting thoroughfare, a number of cottages are scattered on the right and left, embosomed in foliage which salutes the waving ocean; and so completely is the cliff graced with fine old trees and with tangled underwood, through which a grey rock here and there protrudes, that the village looks right cosy, despite its perpendicular build, and adds no little to the picturesque appearance of the charming coast.
The only inn of those days, which swung its sign in the main street of that unique fishing hamlet, was the Crown and Anchor, in which Pickard and the 'prentice were quartered for the night. The captain and Mr. Mogford repaired to the outskirts of the village, where a relative of the former resided, a worthy bachelor, who made them welcome to his home and to such Devonshire fare as his larder afforded. Everything was done that evening which Cousin William could do to make the seamen 'snug and comfortable.'
It's like a dream, cap'n,' said Mogford; 'ain't it?'
'A dream with a plaguey nightmare into the bargain,' responded Stauncy; 'but the ship isn't launched, and the skipper isn't born, who can stand anything that comes.'
'Misfortunes will happen,' said the relative, with a sedate smile, 'and we must all be thankful it's no worse. We shall hear of many a wreck after such a night, and the list of widows and orphans will be greatly increased, I'm thinking.'
'Well, William,' said the captain, 'the mate knows, and I know, that every effort was made to weather the storm and keep her afloat. But it was to be.'
'There!' hastily interrupted the cousin. 'You're at your old doctrine again, James, which is really no creed at all, but only an easy, excusing way of getting over a difficulty, and sometimes of justifying a crime.'
'I don't know anything about that, William,' replied the captain; 'all I know is, that what is to be, will be.'
'What is to be: you mean by that, what has been determined by the Divine will. This is true as regards Divine permission, but not as regards responsibility and the rights and wrongs of what happens; because a great deal comes to pass through the wickedness of men, who act from the impulses of their own bad hearts.'
The captain winced, and, feeling exceedingly uncomfortable at the turn his relative's logic had taken, he replied, 'I cannot argue with you, cousin, particularly as you are a pious man. All I want to say is, that everything was done that mortal could do to survive the gale. But it was to be.'
'Everything,' said the mate; 'nothing but good handling would have kept her from foundering, or from running ashore between Bude and 'Arty. No better seamanship could be.'
'Thank you, Mogford,' replied Stauncy; 'we shall have to give an account of ourselves, I suppose, and you'll bear witness for me, I'm sure.'
'I should think so,' answered the mate; 'and perhaps your good cousin here will appear to prove that it wasn't to be.'
'It would require data,' responded the relative, 'with which I am unacquainted, and which have no existence, I am sure, to prove it in this case. But such a thingmightbe proved.'
And thus the evening was spent pleasantly, as it seemed: their worthy host declared it was spent profitably. They were known to become more eloquent! as it advanced; and the mate was afterwards heard to say that the debating theologian delivered them a final lecture before they separated for the night, in which, as far as he could understand it, he endeavoured to make good the point that to excuse all things by a Divine decree was to adopt a miserably one-sided and fallacious view, and at the termination of which he besought his cousin to throw overboard the foolish dogma, 'What is to be, will be.'
By sunrise the next morning the little party was on its way to Northam and Appledore. The captain first reported himself to his wife, who was no less surprised than rejoiced to see him, and then walked on to bear tidings to the merchant.
That gentleman was sitting in the parlour already described, and, when the captain was announced, rose up to meet him, with a cunning smile that would have startled most men.
'Well, Stauncy,' he said, 'what news?'
'All right, sir; she's in as snug a berth as you could wish, with plenty of water at low tide to cover her respectably. A prettier burying couldn't be; but we had a terrible time of it, and I scarcely thought we should have made Lundy again. One of our hands was washed overboard, and six, I fear, have been cast away in the jolly-boat.'
'Dear me!' exclaimed the merchant; 'and so she went down comfortably. Well—pax vobiscum—I believe that's the Latin; and now let us drink each other's health. There's a good round sum on the ship and cargo together.'
'I don't feel very comfortable, though,' said Stauncy; 'that sneaking 'prentice, who is crafty and malicious, was down in the hold from the time we reached Bude Bay, and I think he wants gagging.'
'Take no notice of him whatever,' replied Mr. Phillipson. 'The bark of such a young cur as that is not worth thinking about.'
'I thought,' said the captain, 'that I would just keep him, in tow, like, and promised to give him a guinea if he deserved it.'
'You're a simpleton—a downright simpleton!' answered the merchant angrily. 'He's wide-awake enough to read the meaning of that; and if he isn't his father is. Guessing that you fear something, he'll be ready to suspect much. You've the mate and the cook on your side, and if you don't put down that young fellow he'll be too much for you. Begin to give, and you'll always be in his power, depend upon it. In a case like this, either you must let the truth right out, or you must deny the truth right out. To go in the middle is to make yourself suspected, and halter yourself with your own hands. You must make short work with him, Stauncy. The promise of a good rope's end for going below without leave would serve him right, and serve you most.'
The captain saw the force of these remarks; but, had he consulted his wife before acting on them, he might have doubted their applicability in Jim's case. She would have suggested, in her wisdom, that the prentice's notion of wealth extended no further than the promised guinea, and that it would be more than unwise to provoke bad feeling by violating an engagement which had filled the boy's mind with such bright hopes. Acting, however, in accordance with the merchant's wishes, the captain treated the 'prentice in a way that his honest nature revolted against, and, like many another who has begun to do evil, condemned himself whilst carrying it out.
With a smiling face, which might have caused the merchant himself to relent, and a shyness of manner which betokened a sense of unworthiness, Jim Ortop presented himself the next day at the captain's door, and quietly said that he came about the guinea.
'I told you,' the captain remarked, assuming a ruffled manner, 'that you should have it if you behaved yourself; but now I come to think it over, it would be paying you for neglecting your duty. You know what you deserve, Jim, and be thankful to carry a whole skin. You shall have a guinea when you've earned it.'
So stunned was the boy by this reception that he stood speechless, and when Stauncy bid him begone, the shock was too much for him, and he burst into tears.
'Severity,' said Dr. Johnson, 'may be the way to govern men, but it is not the way to mend them,'—a sentiment which the wife of Stauncy mentally endorsed, as she listened to her husband's hectoring; and when he had closed the door on the 'prentice, she said, 'That was not like you, James. I never saw you act so unkindly before, nor so unwisely; for people are very much as they are treated. To disregard the finer feelings is to weaken them, and to be unjustly severe is to create an itching for that course which deserves it. You have smitten on the head some feeling that might have contributed to right character, and helped to make the boy reckless as well as hostile. Did you really promise him a guinea, James? Why, think, then, how he has been nursing the idea; what a hold it must have got on him; how he has been revelling in the prospect; and, all at once, you not only extinguish hope, and injure his feelings deeply, but you falsify your word, and make yourself unworthy of his confidence.'
'I would I were as wise as you, Mary,' replied Stauncy who had acted unnaturally, and whose conscience upbraided him; 'I should keep free from trouble; but I thought it best to act as I did.'
'Unkindness can never be best, James; wrong can never be right. You must think better of it and do the boy justice.' But the captain was unwilling to retrace his steps, for reasons of which his sensible and prudent wife knew nothing. So he left the matter where it was, saying to himself, 'What must be, must.'
The darkening shadows had fallen for hours that night, when a party more numerous than usual took possession of the taproom of the Jolly Tar, in one of the narrow streets of Appledore. The ruddy glow of the log fire on the hearth was warmly reflected on the faces of the motley group as they sat around the settle, and gave to their features a bloated appearance, which too well read out the sottish habits of most of them. Night after night they congregated in that beery repository of gossip and scandal, of drunkenness and brawling; and many were the hapless wives and children who paid in hunger, nakedness, tears, and crime, for their bacchanalian selfishness and revelry. The company was varied occasionally by casual visitors, who were constrained to 'stand a treat,' and tempted to aspire after that maudlin condition denominated 'three sheets in the wind.' Such a visitor on the evening in question was Sam Pickard, who became the hero of the night, and escaped the ordinary requirement of 'glasses round,' from the sympathy awakened by his escape from a watery grave. Jim Ortop's father a wild, cadaverous-looking shoemaker, and a noted tippler, appeared to be the leading spirit; and from the twinkling of his eyes, and the rapidity with which he swallowed his potations, it was evident that he was unusually excited.
By general request, Sam Pickard proceeded to give them the history of the loss of the Sarah Ann, which he did with much feeling, and amidst a silence which was only broken occasionally by unsympathetic grumblings from the restless, angry-looking shoemaker.
'What's become of the six poor fellows who drifted away in the jolly-boat?' asked a grim-looking blacksmith.
'Who knows?' said Pickard; 'I heard this afternoon that part of a boat had been picked up over to Braunton, and that'—
'Just before I came here,' broke in one of the party, 'Bill Berry told me that four of the bodies had been found at the back of the Burrows.'
'They've been murdered, then,' said Ortop fiercely. 'I tell you they never came to their end by fair means. Their blood lies at the door of Cap'n Stauncy, who scuttled the brig, as sure as I'm a living man; and if there's any justice in England, it ought to follow him like a bloodhound.'
'It's false!' said Pickard, rising, with a flow of blood in his face which threatened mischief. 'What should the cap'n want to scuttle the vessel for? He did his best to keep her up during the gale, and I'll sew your mouth up for you if you spread such a lying report any further.'
'I say,' vociferated the shoemaker, smashing his pipe on the table, 'that they're murdered men; and before you try to sew my mouth up, you'd better slacken the noose that's tightening round your own neck!'
The ex-cook rushed forward to take summary vengeance on the representative of the gentle craft, who rose to defend himself, and a fearful fight would have ensued had the evening been farther advanced. As it was, they were most of them tolerably sober, and managed to separate the combatants.
THEY MANAGED TO SEPARATE THE COMBATANTS.THEY MANAGED TO SEPARATE THE COMBATANTS.
'I say again what I have said,' exclaimed Ortop, as he was pushed to his seat. 'My boy told me all about it; and I'll have a reckoning with you another day, Mr. Pickard.'
It was some time before they were quieted; but a forecastle man, with a powerful voice, contrived to bring things round by singing a song in heave anchor fashion, the chorus of which was taken up noisily by most present. He was followed by an old salt, who had swallowed the handspike, as the sailors say when any one has retired from the service, and who perpetrated with a nasal twang a doggerel ballad, immensely popular amongst his class, which was followed by a furious rattling of tankards and glasses, in token of approbation; and, having 'filled again,' they opened a running fire of convivial talk, which gradually brought round the engrossing topic of the evening.
'I should think,' said a little man in the company, 'that the gale was heavy enough to send any vessel down, without laying violent hands on her.'
'So it was,' replied Pickard, 'and scuttling would have been like cutting the throat of a dead man.'
'Suppose he did scuttle her,' exclaims a wiry-haired mason, 'that's old Phillipson's look-out. The vessel belonged to him, and if Stauncy satisfies the merchant that's enough.'
'And who's to satisfy the widows and orphans, or who's to satisfy the insurance office?' said Ortop, in a sarcastic, bitter tone. 'I'll get that question answered before long. I owe Stauncy a grudge, and I'll not forget it.'
'If there's sin anywhere in this matter,' the blacksmith remarked, 'it lies with the old scoundrel on the quay, who'd sell the life of any one for a groat. He's made a market out of many a vessel and many a man before now, and little cares who suffers as long as he fingers the gold.'
'What's the use of talking in this way?' rejoined Pickard. 'The brig went down natural enough, and no blame to nobody.' And so the house became divided in opinion, and the division occasioned fierce words and much quarrelling, until towards midnight inebriate voices, loud and wrangling, broke incessantly on the stillness reigning without.
A storm of angry feeling, of vengeful passion, raged fiercely the next day throughout Appledore, as soon as Jim Ortop's story was noised abroad. Doorways were crowded with men and women discussing the report, and venting their feelings in no honeyed phraseology. Knots of gossips augmented into small crowds, whose excitement grew uproarious. The principal street became in an hour or so a scene of the utmost exasperation, in which murmurs, intensified by the wailing relatives of the drowned seamen, were concentrated, till in that narrow gangway burst forth a fire of resentment, which nothing but blood, the blacksmith was heard to say, could possibly quench. 'Murder! vengeance! vengeance! murder!' were the cries which sounded high above the swelling din of that tumultuous multitude.
Whilst Appledore was thus in a state of frenzy, Northam was in a state of gloom. A funeral is always a solemn occasion; but the interment of four drowned men, whose bodies had been picked up amongst the rocks at the west end of the Burrows, occasioned an amount of sadness in the village not often manifested. The church was crowded, the churchyard was thronged; and as the words of consignment to earth were heard—'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'—a stifled groan arose from that heart-struck assembly. There were many who retired to their homes silent and thoughtful; but there were some who hung about the church gates, conversing on the melancholy fate of the deceased, until they too, like the men and women of Appledore, were ruffled into an angry mood, and began to breathe out threatening. Creeping slowly on toward the dwelling of Stauncy, they grew louder in their protestations, exciting each other, as moved spirits crowded together invariably do, and experiencing a glowing thirst for action of some kind. They wanted to do as well as to complain, but what to do they could not determine.
The captain's wife, with her usual foresight, had anticipated the possibility of a storm. The news of her husband's rumoured delinquency had filled her with distress, but it served to bring out some of her fine qualities of head and heart. She felt assured the report was untrue; though, from the time that Stauncy went over the bar, her dream had troubled her, and she was unable to refrain from depressing forebodings, so that she contrived a plan by which the captain was absent from Northam at the time of the funeral.
The crowd became more and more uneasy and vehement, and a series of altercations as to what ought to be done by no means improved their temper. Whilst some pressed forward and gazed rudely into Stauncy's windows, others vociferated, 'Who scuttled the brig? who murdered the crew?' The voices of flushed females prevailed even more than the clamour of wordy contention and indignation amongst the men, and something serious seemed impending, when Mary Stauncy appeared at the door, and, drawing herself up to the extent of her dignity, proceeded at once, like a clever tactician, to charge right home.
'You're a disgrace to Northam,' she said; 'you're a disgrace to human nature. Instead of uniting to shelter a townsman from suspicion, and guard a character you have always held blameless, you first listen to the scandal of a tap-room, believing a worthless toper who wants money as a price for silence, and then you take the law into your own hands without judge or jury. Be ashamed of yourselves, and go home, as you ought to do after such a burying, serious and charitable.'
The crowd listened; the crowd relented; the crowd was on the point of taking a new view of things, when a way was rapidly made in it by the pushing form of the captain, who had returned sooner than his wife expected, and imagined that some disaster had befallen his family. But when his presence evoked again the cry, 'Who scuttled the brig? who murdered the crew?' the truth flashed on him in a moment, and, rushing towards the most noisy of the calumniators, he threatened to fell him with a blow, and, confronting the astonished mob, exclaimed, 'If any of you have anything to say, say it, or else be off every one of you!'
The people dispersed, grumbling but cowed, their leader, the cadaverous shoemaker, muttering that Stauncy would repent of his work yet.
'I'll dog him,' said Ortop, 'till he dangle from the yard-arm of a jury-mast rigged up in Execution Dock.'
His presence was missed that night by the roystering tipplers in Ship Street; for, on returning to Appledore, he revealed his mind to another votary of Crispin, who was able to wield the quill, an accomplishment not very common in those days; and, having dictated an epistle giving information against Stauncy, he started off to Bideford, and sent it on its way to London. 'There,' said he, as he dropped the document into the letter-box, 'if that don't stretch him, I'm no fortune-teller.'
It was deemed expedient by the captain that he should immediately confer with the merchant; and when the shades of evening gathered in, he paid him a visit.
'The cat's out of the bag, Mr. Phillipson,' he said; 'Jim Ortop has told all he knows, and more, I daresay. A crowd of folks besieged my house just now as if they were mazed. Old Ortop, who was there, let out a bit of his mind, confirming what I feared from young Jim Ortop; but I warned him to mind what he is about.'
'Stauncy,' said Mr. Phillipson in a serious tone, 'you might have been born yesterday. You're very courageous, but you haven't got half the sagacity of my dog. Instead of applying a plaster to the sore place in Ortop's mind, you apply a blister. You should have taken the bull by the tail, and not by the horns, cap'n; it's a bad job of it! Why, here in Appledore there have been worse doings than in Northam, I'll warrant you. The people came round my door like a pack of wolves, and, just to show that they meant something, sent a volley of stones through the windows. The groom went out to ask "What's up?" and a hundred voices replied, in menacing words and tones, "Tell the old wizard," I heard them say, "that we'll burn 'un. Tell the old junk we'll scuttle 'un. Tell the old rogue we'll send 'un to sea in a hencoop." The women, who looked like harpies, screeched defiance. The men and boys threw stones and cob, upbraiding me all the while, and threatening I don't know what. I knew they could prove nothing, and that it was all a surface thing—a tide that could be made to ebb as easily as it was made to flow; so I went to the door with my handkerchief to my eyes, and looking as if I had lost a baby, or something worse. Didn't they yell! but when they saw my pale face, and how I kept mopping up, they soon got as quiet as lambs. "My good people," said I, as well as I could for choking grief, you know, "what is it? Is this the way you treat an old employer, who is paying half the town, and will soon pay the other half? CanIstill the winds and waves? CanIcontrol the stormy winds, or keep men back from death when their time has come? I never thought"—and then I fairly blubbered—"to come to this, or that my grey hairs, and family name, which is a household word, would be treated with such a want of consideration." You should have seen, Stauncy, how they all veered round in a minute. Some of the women began a-crying too, and called out shame on the ringleaders, who slunk away; and there I stood, sniffing, and speaking to their feelings, until they all went home, declaring they wouldn't see a hair of my head hurt. That's the way, Stauncy: nothing likeoilfor troubled waters. Only make yourselffeltsomehow—anyhow—and you'll be pronounced right.
A strange-looking craft crossed Bideford Bar and anchored in the Pool about three weeks after this popular outbreak. She looked like a squat Dutchman: her bows were unusually round and bluff, even for those times; her mast was stepped much farther aft than the rules and proprieties of ship rigging tolerated, and on her roomy forecastle appeared a considerable mass of something, covered lightly over with a tarpaulin. Such a nondescript vessel had never been seen in those waters before, and many were the conjectures ventured on as to her class and calling. Some thought she must be a smuggler brought in for repairs. Others pronounced her to be a light-ship, which, for unknown reasons, had resigned her friendly office, and was taking a holiday; and a few of that class whose judgments are more romantic than reasonable affirmed, with a knowing jerk of the head, that she was a king's sloop—a revenue cutter got up in that odd fashion to beguile the unwary, to catch, as they said with a chuckle, 'a weasel asleep;' but what she really was remained, after all, a mystery.
'Rattler, ahoy!' shouted a genteel-looking man, who had been seen about Appledore for more than a week, and now made his appearance on the quay,—'Rattler, ahoy!'
A voice responded from the vessel, and, a boat being lowered, two men rowed ashore and took the stranger off.
'I scarcely expected to see you here, Captain Robinson,' he said, when he reached the deck; 'but it will expedite matters. You've had a fine time for pearl-fishing, eh?'
'A very fine time, Mr. Cocks, ever since we left Plymouth. The sea has been like a millpond, so that we finished operations sooner than I expected; and, as I wanted to see the face of a ship's chandler, I ran in here.'
'And what's the result of your operations?'
'Oh, very satisfactory. There's no doubt about the matter at all. The evidence has been drawn up and signed, and you can have it now if you please.'
That very evening the genteel-looking man betook himself to a justice of the peace, accompanied by Jim Ortop, and made such depositions that the worthy magistrate was necessitated, much against his will, to issue a warrant against James Stauncy, as charged with having scuttled on the high seas the brig Sarah Ann. The next morning that warrant was duly served by the village constable, who had received instructions to bring the captain at an early hour before the minister of justice; and, faithful to his duty, he appeared at the appointed time, accompanied by Stauncy, at the house of Squire Hart, who was universally esteemed and respected as a humane and impartial administrator of the law.
Poor Mary! her heart died within her when the fussy official hurried away the light of her eyes. Sinking into a chair, she sat gazing at the fire, spellbound, pale, and trembling, heaving deep sighs, and exclaiming, ever and anon, 'The quicksand! the quicksand!' and so she continued for hours, until a neighbour, like a true friend, looked in on the stricken woman, and endeavoured to soothe and comfort her afflicted spirit.
There is an amount of sympathy with fellow-suffering amongst the middle and lower classes especially, which serves to mitigate no little the miseries of life; and few there are who do not meet with some kind spirits prepared to act the part of the Good Samaritan, and to help in bearing the burden of woe. The wife of the captain found it so; and much, indeed, did her shocked and sensitive nature require a wise and aiding sympathizer, for such was the nature of the evidence brought against Stauncy that the magistrate, whilst he roundly asserted his repugnance, and spoke cheerily to the arraigned seaman, was under the necessity of committing him for trial; and he was hurried away in a hired vehicle to Exeter, without being permitted to see his wife and kiss his children.
How much he smarted and writhed under the deprivation may be conceived; but perhaps it was wisely ordered for Mary's sake, for a parting, andsucha parting, would have overwhelmed her, stricken and crushed as she was; whereas the cruelty of the thing, and the thought of hastening to him as soon as might be, gave a turn to the tide of her feelings, and helped to bring into action again her strong and resolute mind.
'Don't be cast down, Mary,' said her visitor, the widow of a respectable farmer, who had seen no little tribulation, and was much looked up to for her sagacious mind and sterling character. 'The law is a terrible thing, no doubt, and is sometimes severe without being righteous; but there is a power above the law which can say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." 'Tis a heavy blow, sure enough, but worse things might happen than for honesty to be suspected and for innocence to suffer. He'll come clear out of it, Mary; and the result will be outweighing compensations for all you are now suffering. Cheer up, and look on the bright side of things.'
'You mean well, Grace,' she replied. 'You have a wise head and a kind heart; but my fears are stronger than my hopes. I've had a presentiment of this from the time Stauncy went to sea, and I wish I could think him clear of all things. I can confide my mind to you, and it'll be a relief to do it. I greatly fear that Stauncy has been led into temptation, and has committed himself some way. I say led into temptation, for his heart revolts at crime as much as mine, and it could only have been under the influence of drink, and of wily, wicked reasoning, that he was persuaded to be the cat's paw of that heartless, unprincipled man in Appledore.'
'Phillipson you mean, Mary; and as like as not he has been the cause of the wrong, if wrong there be. Do you really think the charge is true?'
'I scarcely know what to think, Grace. Sometimes I cast the thought from me as I would hurl away a viper, and then again it twines round my heart with such irresistible power that I start at my suspicions, as though I were guilty myself. One thing I know—the merchant gave Stauncy a sum of money the very day he sailed, and I would rather have had a pest in the house than that fifty-pound note.'
Her visitor was silent for a while. This revelation perplexed her; but, knowing how to be candid without being unkind, she replied, 'I can't a-bear that roguish, wicked Phillipson, Mary: I've suffered too much from his grasping, cruel heart to think that any good can come with his gifts. You may depend upon it, he is at the bottom of all this; and at any rate it helps to make a bright lining to the dark clouds. Whatever Stauncy may have done, it will be traced to the merchant, and, as he has money and friends enough to rescue him even from the fangs of the law, he must carry the cap'n with him. He'll be high and dry after all, Mary.'
'God grant it!' she answered; 'but— There's a knock at the door, Grace;' and, deeming that signal of approach sufficient, the door was opened by the very gentleman whose merits they were discussing.
'Good afternoon, Mrs. Stauncy,' he said, standing in the middle of the room, 'I came to tell you not to trouble yourself about the cap'n. That good-for-nothing fellow, Jim Ortop, has been lying, as usual, and his father is vowing vengeance because Stauncy threatened him; but I'll see all made right, and punish the scamps, as sure as my name's Phillipson.'
'Sir,' said Mary, 'you know more than I do about it, and can tell whether you are trifling with me or not; but do you think Squire Hart would have suffered my poor James to be taken to jail like a criminal on the word of Jim Ortop? Who was the gentleman that said so much, and insisted in such a way, that the magistrate couldn't help himself?'
'Gentleman?' said the merchant quickly; 'what do you mean?'
'I mean,' she answered, 'that a strange gentleman, who has been about here for more than a week, obliged the squire to commit him for trial, and insisted on his being sent off to Exeter directly.'
'I never heard of it,' the merchant replied, with a frown on his brow; 'but I'll make that gentleman, whoever he is, eat up his words faster than he uttered them, and you shall see whether the service of the Phillipson family isn't proof against all the magistrates and lawyers of the country. This is Friday: on Monday I'll go to Exeter, and drive you down too, if you like.'
The prospect thus held out so filled her mind on the instant that she could say no more; but her worthy friend relieved her of the necessity by telling him as much of her own thoughts as she considered fitting.
'You know me well, Mr. Phillipson,' she said; 'and I should think my presence is enough to bring any wrong to remembrance. I am what I am—a poor widow—through you, robbed of the inheritance of my fathers; and I am not the only one you have sacrificed to your insatiable avarice. The cry of Miss Herbert, the poor crazed lady, must surely be ringing yet in your ears. It's seldom enough you darken the church doors; but don't you mind the last time you were there, how she rose when you entered, though the service had begun, and, exclaiming, "The widow's curse! my curse!" rushed out, to escape a presence more tormenting than the presence of an evil spirit could have been. And now, I'll warrant, you are trying to add to the number of your victims, whose cries rise up to heaven like the cry of Abel's blood. Mr. Phillipson, the judgment of God has leaden feet, and therefore, in mercy, it has not reached you yet; but its advance is as sure as the sun's rising. If its feet are leaden, its hands are iron, and whom it grasps it holds. You had better take care how you fasten another millstone round your neck.'
'You're an impudent woman!' he replied angrily. 'You, and the like of you, throw all your misfortunes into the teeth of those most troubled by them, because property happens to change hands through extravagance or folly. You won't improve your condition by such remarks, believe me. I can hinder as easily as I can help. Mrs. Stauncy, I'll call for you on Monday morning at nine o'clock, if you like to go.'
In these times of macadamized roads and railways, we can scarcely appreciate the difficulties our ancestors had to encounter a century ago in accomplishing a journey. To travel a distance of fifty miles was so serious a thing that it was only undertaken on urgent occasions; and we need not wonder that, when the figures increased to hundreds, it was customary for our forefathers to settle their affairs with more care and completeness than men do now-a-days when leaving home for the antipodes. The roads were wretched in the extreme; in some parts, at certain seasons of the year, they were all but impassable, and this, combined with the strength and weight of vehicles built to contend with rough usage, rendered locomotion a slow and tedious process. No one will be surprised to learn, therefore, that Mr. Phillipson and the captain's wife were two days on the road, and did not reach Exeter until the shades of evening had drawn in, and the dusky oil lamps were twinkling in the streets of the city, on the second evening.
Their journey, however, was a delightful one, as far as externals were concerned. A frosty morning, sharp and crisp, gave omen, as the merchant thought, of propitious experiences, and was regarded as a special boon. It braced up nature marvellously, turning dangerous sloughs into solid roadways; and even if the jolting was thereby augmented, the anxieties of sunken wheels and floundering cattle were escaped. Instead of a host of forebodings in anticipation of untold depths of soaked clay and sludgy mire, there was the prospect of keeping to the earth's surface, and of doing better than the Devonshire traveller of a certain century, who is reported to have 'rode fourteen miles in fifteen days.'
The sun shone out most brightly and cheerily on the scene as the travellers wended their way from Northam to Bideford, and enabled them, after they had climbed the old Torrington road, to gaze on a landscape which, though familiar, would have been anew enchanting, had the nature of their errand permitted them to enjoy it. It seemed as if the contagion of ocean's society had greatly affected those highlands, for not more wavy was the Atlantic itself, and up and down they went, until at length they dived into a true Devonian lane, with its towering hedges of furze, hazel, and tangled weed, its sharp descent, its labyrinthine windings, its rough and rocky pavement, and emerged in a shady dell in which a rustic village nestled, surrounded by woody hills and rock-capped heights, on which the grey mists of morning continued to hover.
These sylvan and picturesque districts were succeeded by bleak moors, or 'commons,' as they are called, where Mary was glad of additional wrappings, and the merchant made frequent appeals to a bottle with which he had considerately furnished himself. These wild, exposed regions stretch away for miles, affording a scanty pasturage for cattle, and supplying the villagers in the neighbourhood with peat and furze. They are for the most part covered with rough grass, ferns, and rushes, and here and there a morass may be met with, as well as a sprinkling of granite boulders, whilst loftier specimens of this primitive rock occasionally spring up in fantastic forms, the hiding-place of highwaymen in days of yore, who drove a good business on these desolate wastes.
And so the face of the country alternated between the romantic and the sterile until they reached the neighbourhood of Exeter, where the former has it all its own way. But the evening was too far advanced, and our travellers were too wearied to do homage to beauties of scenery, and gladly did they exchange the biting air for the inviting comforts of the London Inn.
As soon as Mr. Phillipson had breakfasted the next morning, he made his way to the jail. Unfeeling and selfish as he was, strong qualms of conscience troubled him as he strode along, despite his infidel theories; nor was he able, with all his efforts, to command in full the powers of his scheming, reckless mind. For two days he had been travelling with a woman of a sorrowful spirit, whose meek sadness and high-toned Christian principle had embarrassed and cowed him. Her sensitiveness had put to shame his stolidity; her simple-hearted confidence in her husband had roused into spasmodic action the dying pity of his heart. If ever regret had place within him it was now; but, ashamed of these softer emotions, he took a little time to shake them off before visiting the prisoner, and walked for an hour in the streets, recalling more congenial feelings, which might enable him to act his part becomingly. Having obtained permission to see the captain, he was admitted through a heavy-looking gateway, strongly secured, into a yard which disclosed on all sides grim-visaged doors frowning implacably, and small rusty gratings which looked like devouring eyes—the outward and visible signs of dark and saddening scenes within. There may now, perhaps, be the extreme of pitying benevolence in prison accommodation and usage; but at that time there was the extreme of unpitying neglect.
Through one of these surly-faced doors the merchant passed with his conductor into a low dark passage, where his ears were assailed by the chilling music of clinking manacles resounding from cells on either side; and the application of a massive key introduced him to his victim. The captain was stretched on his hard bed, as the most satisfactory position he could discover; but he rose when the merchant entered, and, recognising his visitor, made room for him on his pallet of straw.
'I have brought,' said Mr. Phillipson, scarcely knowing in what shape to open the conversation,—'I have brought your wife to see you, Stauncy. I thought it would be a satisfaction to her, poor woman, and to you also. Why, cap'n, I can't believe my own senses. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the world.'
'Our wisdom comes too late sometimes,' replied Stauncy, 'and that's my case. If I could only undo one thing, I could be happy even in a prison. The darkness within is the worst darkness now to me. The iron in my soul is a thousand times more humiliating and painful than these bars and doors, believe me. I could have wished, for her own sake, that my wife had not had an opportunity of witnessing my degradation; but her wisdom and love will comfort me.'
'As for myself,' the merchant remarked, 'I came to Exeter mainly for the purpose of securing the best counsel the city will afford; and it's impossible that those Ortops can make head against the searching, withering cleverness of Mr. Whitehead.'
'No cleverness will be of any avail, Mr. Phillipson,' said the captain mournfully. 'I thought the Sarah Ann was mute for ever, but she has been made to speak. Did you notice that lumbering vessel in the Pool? There are those on board of her who could hang both of us.'
The merchant's cheeks blanched at this intelligence. With the rapidity of lightning the true state of the case flashed upon his perception, and in an instant exposure and punishment confronted him. The light which struggled for existence in the cell was too dim, however, to reveal his ashy features, and, contriving to maintain an air of composure, he said,—
'Were the remarks made before Squire Hart confined to the scuttling of the brig?'
'I believe so; at least, when I was present.'
'No one, then, was implicated but yourself?'
'No one, as far as I know. Not a word escaped my lips that would implicate any one. I simply denied that I wasguilty; for acts are to be judged of by circumstances—at least, you have taught me so. If you had done it, it would have been a different thing. I did as I wasordered, and therefore draw a line between duty and crime.'
'A distinction,' responded the merchant, momentarily startled at his own doctrine when presented in such a practical form, and wishing to rid himself of all responsibility arising from the lessons he had inculcated, 'which the law would scarcely acknowledge as a difference. That kind of casuistry, Stauncy, often satisfies a fellow's conscience, and is something to keep the spirits up; but there its utility ends.'
'Then you have doubly deceived me,' replied the captain scornfully; 'and there's a strong temptation to turn king's evidence.'
'It wouldn't help you, cap'n. Everybody knows that the biggest rogues always do that, and judges them accordingly; and as I am at the top of the ladder, and you are at the bottom, it would be all the worse for you. A little palm-grease and a little hard swearing would upset you, depend upon it.'
'I don't know,' said the captain. 'It would go hard with you, Mr. Phillipson, if all I know were to come out; and far better would it be for you to devise a plan for my protection, if money and station can do it, than to let an implied threat tread on the heels of a snakish bribe.'
The merchant was silent, because he was mortified. His mind oscillated between his two theories of bluster and blarney. Should he defy or conciliate, threaten or cajole? His prudence, however, got the better of his vexation, and he answered, after a short pause, 'I admit all you say, Stauncy; but suppose the worst comes to the worst, it's no use for both of us to put our heads into one noose; and though life is as precious to you as to me, yet consider for a moment the merits of the case.Youdid the deed; so that, if I were put up as a breastwork before you, you would be sent to Botany Bay for life,—as good as dead to your wife and family,—whilst I should be placed beyond the possibility of acting as a husband and a father to them. And then there's your oath, Stauncy. How can you get over that? whilst, by letting me down helm, that I may pay off, you would leave some one behind who could provide for the widow and the orphan; and I give you my oath here, against yours.'