“‘Vait a minute, sir,’ says the elector. ‘Ve likes this idea of yours,’ he says, ‘only there’s vun thing: ve doesn’t want to be disfranchised for corruption,’ says he. ‘The bony fiddles of our borough is wery dear to us,’ he says.
“‘And to me,’ says the candidate. ‘Rather sacrifice twenty seats than imperil that and my good name,’ he says.
“‘So ve thought, sir,’ says the elector. ‘And therefore ve’re going to eat your wittles, and drink your hale, and arterwards go down in a body and plump for the other gentleman, in order to prove,’ says he, ‘that our incorruptibility was what you stood on. And we’ll be wery much obliged,’ he says, ‘if you’ll give us your countenance by clearing out.’”
The illustration went home—we were not so far from the Reform Act of ’32—and was greeted with laughter and cheers.
“Now, you have not that excuse,” said the lecturer. “The author of this feast comes to save, not to corrupt you; and if you would honour Him, consider His sober innocence in your midst, or His Father will withdraw Him. Christmas without Christ! That is to play the devil’s game.”
He sat down, as he spoke, to his “Seraphine,” and broke into a hymn—his own production, and very characteristic—which ran, literally, as follows—
“’Tis Christ His feast,” said Short to Long.“Let’s pass the night in drink and song.”“The liquor must not be too mildFor toasting of that holy Child,”Said Long. “Them Jews was blind,” said he;“But not so blind as we will be.”They drank Him once, and twice, and thrice;The main brace they began to splice.A child’s voice wailed outside the door:“O, let me enter, I implore!“’Tis freezing cold, and dark, and dire.O, let me warm me at your fire!”“No place for children here,” said Long,And bid him “cut his lucky” strong.“We’re keeping of Christ Jesus’ feast,Clear out,” said Short, “you little beast!”They sang to “David’s royal Son,”And not till all the drink was doneAbstained; then staggered to the door,And sobered at the sight they saw.Stark on the snow Christ baby lay.’Twas Him those sots had cursed away.Now tell me, what availed them, then,To keep Christ out and Christmas in?
“’Tis Christ His feast,” said Short to Long.“Let’s pass the night in drink and song.”“The liquor must not be too mildFor toasting of that holy Child,”Said Long. “Them Jews was blind,” said he;“But not so blind as we will be.”They drank Him once, and twice, and thrice;The main brace they began to splice.A child’s voice wailed outside the door:“O, let me enter, I implore!“’Tis freezing cold, and dark, and dire.O, let me warm me at your fire!”“No place for children here,” said Long,And bid him “cut his lucky” strong.“We’re keeping of Christ Jesus’ feast,Clear out,” said Short, “you little beast!”They sang to “David’s royal Son,”And not till all the drink was doneAbstained; then staggered to the door,And sobered at the sight they saw.Stark on the snow Christ baby lay.’Twas Him those sots had cursed away.Now tell me, what availed them, then,To keep Christ out and Christmas in?
“’Tis Christ His feast,” said Short to Long.
“Let’s pass the night in drink and song.”
“The liquor must not be too mild
For toasting of that holy Child,”
Said Long. “Them Jews was blind,” said he;
“But not so blind as we will be.”
They drank Him once, and twice, and thrice;
The main brace they began to splice.
A child’s voice wailed outside the door:
“O, let me enter, I implore!
“’Tis freezing cold, and dark, and dire.
O, let me warm me at your fire!”
“No place for children here,” said Long,
And bid him “cut his lucky” strong.
“We’re keeping of Christ Jesus’ feast,
Clear out,” said Short, “you little beast!”
They sang to “David’s royal Son,”
And not till all the drink was done
Abstained; then staggered to the door,
And sobered at the sight they saw.
Stark on the snow Christ baby lay.
’Twas Him those sots had cursed away.
Now tell me, what availed them, then,
To keep Christ out and Christmas in?
He had set his words to the tune of “Immortal Babe who this dear day,” and you may question, if you are purists, a cockney rhyme or two; and you may question, if you are Pharisees, his methods. Well, all I can tell you is that women wiped their eyes over the homely theme, and that our Christmas was the sweeter for the lesson it taught.
At the end Mr. Sant jumped up, and taking his rod, pointed to the first object on the screen.
“Now, then!” sniggered Harry, kneading his hands between his knees.
There followed a pause and a general stir, rippled through with a little undercurrent of laughter.
“Go on!” whispered Harry, nudging me.
“Oyster!” I sung out.
Mr. Sant caught sight of us, and nodded and laughed.
“Thank you, Mr. Bowen,” said he. “No, it’s not an oyster!” and he sat down and began trolling out a new carol.
The little ex-bookseller shifted; blushed faintly, I do believe, and turned to me.
“I fancy I’ve got it,” said he.
“Have you?” I answered delightedly. “Cry up, then!”
“Christmas pie!” he piped, in his thin, cracked voice.
Every head was turned momentarily our way. Mr. Sant left his stool and bowed.
“The artist is vindicated,” said he. “The gentleman has the right penetrative vision. A mince-pie it is.” And he made his illustration forthwith the text for a lovely disquisition on plum-porridge and frumenty and goose-pie, “on beef and plum-pudding and turkey and chine,” and, generally, the history and rationale of Christmas fare, till his audience shifted and sighed under the influence of an illusive surfeit.
A thing guessed for “one o’ them tree worms,” and turning out to be a yule log, came next, and provoked an allusion to a Norfolk custom on certain farms of dealing out the strong cider to the household at meals for so long as the block was in consuming; for which reason the servants would select for Yule the biggest and most cross-grained stump of elm they could find—a shrewd providence which tickled the simple fancy of this fishing community, where wood for burning was economized to the last spark it would yield.
A leathern jack coming third, and passing, by way of a wading boot, the ordeal of identification, led to the liveliest little essay on the drinking vessels of our ancestors; the “cocker-nuts” and hornes of beasts; the “goords” and ostrich eggs; the “mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, noggins, whiskins, piggins, crinzes, ale-bowls, wassell-bowls, court-dishes, tankards, Kannes, from a pottle to a pint and a pint to a gill;” and, last of all, the great jacks and bombards, which indeed were not unlike the cavalry boot of William III.’s time.
Then we came to a fowl of some sort, most unnamable and amazing. Every species of partlet known to Dunberry, from a barn-door to a guinea-hen, was named without success, while Mr. Sant at the “Seraphine” laughed so that he could hardly sing, and from the hall a peal of merriment went up with every guess. But at last, a dear fat boy, Hoogan by name, was inspired, and to an explosion of chuckles gave up the secret.
“I’ve got un, Muster Sarnt, I’ve got un! It’s a tor-key!”
The lecturer brought down his hands to a little scream of laughter, and sprang to his feet.
“Hoogan,” he cried, “you redeem me. Not know him! Look here—his vain, empty, strutting, intolerable self-importance! Isn’t it all there to the life? The very manner of the creature that imposed so abominably upon the Mayor of Bantam.”
Cries and cheers greeted him as the laughter subsided.
“Your reverence, your reverence! Tell us who was the Mayor of Bantam.”
“Why, he was the Mayor of Bantam, to be sure, and so puffed up with pride and good living, that when he sat down, I tell you for a fact, he couldn’t see his own lap. He could only see, resting on it, what he loved best in the world; and you may guess what that was. Anyhow, there are two ways of running to waste, and his wasn’t the consumption of the stomach one.
“Well, one Christmas, when he was at the height of his glory and appetite, he conceived the happy idea of making that part of himself a present of the primest and most promising bird which money could procure. ‘It’s no less than a duty,’ thinks he, ‘to so faithful a servant; and I’ll go to Huggins myself this day about it.’
“Now, this Huggins bred turkeys; and what he didn’t know about ’em wasn’t worth knowing. He knew their pride and their self-sufficiency; he knew that of all the fowls that came strutting out of the ark they were the vainest about their election; he knew how a little flattery, properly administered, would serve them for food and drink till they came near bursting; and he had a grudge against this Mayor of Bantam for having once fined him for being incapable when he had never felt sopowerfuldrunk in his life. So, ‘Ho-ho!’ says he to himself, when the mayor comes upon his quest, ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, my friend; and fine pickings you shall have!’
“‘You want such a turkey as never was, my lord?’ says he. ‘And you want to take and fatten him, and watch him fattening, and enjoy him in anticipation, do you?’ he says. ‘But turkeys is queer beasts,’ says he; ‘and whited sepulchres to them as doesn’t know their tricks.’
“‘How do you mean “whited sepulchres?”’ asks the Mayor of Bantam.
“‘Bones, when all’s told,’ says Huggins, shaking his head darkly, ‘ifyou don’t know the trick of inducing of ’em to swell.’
“‘Well, what is the trick?’ says the mayor.
“‘Flattery, my lord,’ says Huggins. And then he pointed to a bird.
“‘Do you see him?’ says he. ‘There’s the proudest, healthiest cock in my yard—one as, if humoured, would fill a whole corporation, down to its hungriest kitchen gal on two and six a week and what she could pick up, with the marrer of deliciousness. A dream, he is.’
“‘A nightmare, by the looks of him,’ says the mayor, ‘There’s more of sepulchre than of meat about him,’ he says.
“‘Ah!’ says Huggins; ‘and that shows your ignorance. It’s just slighting that keeps him in his place till he’s wanted. If I was to flatter that bird, sir, he’d puff himself out that amazing with self-importance, he’d burst in a week and anticipate his own market. You take him home, and feed him judicious on admiration and little else, and you’ll have such a feast of him in the end as you never dreamed.’
“‘How much for him?’ says the mayor.
“‘Not a penny less than two guineas,’ says Huggins.
“‘Preposterous!’ says the mayor.
“‘O, very well!’ says Huggins. ‘I’d as lief you refused. He shall be three to the next customer.’
“Well, the mayor allowed himself to be persuaded; and he had the bird sent home and put in a coop. And every day, and half a dozen times a day, he’d go down and praise the creature to its face till its very wattles turned purple with pleasure. There’s nothing too fulsome for a turkey to swallow. The very ‘gobble-gobble’ of him set the mayor’s jaws going with a foretaste of delight.
“‘Gobble-gobble! I could eat you, my beauty!’ says he, just as a rapturous mother talks to her child.
“You should have seen the turkey ruffle and swell to be called beauty.
“‘Put up your tail,’ says the mayor, ‘and the dear little pope’s nose! There’s no Juno’s peacock can spread such a fan!’ says he.
“The cage would hardly contain the bird at that. He expanded at the very sound of the mayor’s footstep afterwards; and he discarded his food almost entirely, as something too gross for the consideration of a better than Juno’s peacock. The mayor wondered; but he couldn’t discount the evidence of his own eyes.
“‘That Huggins is a cunning one,’ he thought. ‘He knows what he’s about’—which was very true.
“Well, at length the festive day arrived, and the mayor went to take a last look at his beauty before consigning him to his cook. He was almost in tears. He’d been starving himself for a week, in anticipation of the feast, and perhaps that was the reason.
“‘Darling!” he said, ‘my whole being craves for you! There never was such a beautiful turkey in the world!’
“Bang! went the bird. It was like a paper bag exploding. And there before the mayor’s eyes was just a little sack of bones and feathers. The creature’s pride had been nothing but wind; and that was a turkey all over.
“It was Christmas Day, not a market open, and Huggins was avenged.”
The lecturer ended amidst shouts of laughter and applause. In the midst, he sat down to the “Seraphine,” and was fingering out the first bars of a new hymn, when some one coming up on to the platform whispered to him. He rose hurriedly, and, listening a moment or two, as hurriedly left the room. The audience, including ourselves, relaxed, at his going, into a babble of talk and merriment.
“Prime, isn’t it, Mr. Pilbrow?” said Harry, grinning and rubbing his hands.
“If you introduce me to nothing worse,” answered the visitor, “I shall love Dunberry for itself.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I never thought of it before. If we’re going to take him to see the wreck to-morrow, Harry, where shall we get a boat?”
“H’m!” said my friend. “That requires consideration, to be sure. They’re all laid up for the holidays, I suppose.”
“Well, we must see,” said I, and, in the act of speaking, turned my head.
Now there was a row of wooden pillars behind us, supporting a gallery, which threw into comparative darkness the space underneath; and projected round that pillar nearest us, and leaned out of the darkness, hung the face of Rampick. It was ghastly pale, the jaw loose, the livid spectacles about the eyes horribly emphasized; and its expression was one of an unnerved and listening sickness that made me shudder. In the very act of my looking, it was snatched back; and I saw the man himself going, lurching heavily, but on tiptoe, into the gloom and away.
To say that I was startled would be but to express ill my feelings. All the doubts and agitations of the earlier evening trooped upon me again, like a cold cloud. Had he followed us for a purpose? and, if so, for what purpose? He had long slunk out of all attendance at these feasts. For some reason, it seemed—we could only assume what—we had become objects of mixed terror and fascination to him. He must have picked himself up from that fall, and stealthily shadowed us hither, where, it was evident, he had taken up a position cautiously to observe and overhear us.
I bent towards Harry to whisper to him; but before I could secure his attention, a stir and silence ran through the room, and there, on the platform, was our parish clerk holding up his hand. He came to say that Mr. Sant had been summoned hastily to the Court, where an old servant of the squire was reported at death’s door, and to request the audience to take his apologies and disperse.
As we rose, I looked at Harry dumbly and significantly.
So here were we again baulked for the moment of our confession. It was under the spirit of a fall from gaiety to a very real depression that I said good night to my friends.
Butthe morning, rising cold and bright, though still misty, found me on the rebound once more. The day, after all, is what we make it, and Iwouldnot think evil of so smiling a one. Mr. Sant was back, even if we could not see him yet, and his mere neighbourhood was a splint to a weak-knee’d conscience.
Uncle Jenico, though still oppressed with some odd premonition, some formless concern about me, permitted himself to be reassured so far by my high spirits as to let me go presently, with nothing more than an earnest entreaty that I would take care of myself. I had told him nothing about our proposed trip to the Weary Sands. It would have served no purpose but to trouble him all day with anxiety as to our return. I was glad to think, later, that I had not done so; that I had sat content with him for an hour or two after breakfast; had kept him chatting genially, and made him laugh; had taken a genuine bright interest in the “Colossal Wrench,” an invention (which he was engaged in perfecting at the time) somewhat on the principle of the Spanish garrotte, for applying tremendous haulage to an object—the most gratifyingly practical of all his inspirations, as you shall see. And I was glad to think that when at last I had left him, well on in the morning, in a sudden access of emotion he had kissed me, and then driven me away with his stick, and a laugh, and the tears in his eyes. I had been half shamefaced, it is true, at the moment; but presently was to sentimentalize more over the memory than he had over the fact.
We were engaged, Harry and I, by arrangement for this day to the convoying of Mr. Pilbrow about the place, in order to his making acquaintance with its objects of interest. It was nothing, in fact, but an excuse for a ramble; only, to give it a holiday complexion, we had arranged to bring our lunch with us, and our visitor back to high tea at the end of the jaunt.
I set forth about eleven o’clock for the Flask, where we were to meet. The shadows of the previous night were dispelled. A still, shining mist half hid and half revealed, like a bridal veil, the pretty face of nature. There was a smile and a sparkle of gems through it all, and I whistled, as happy as a blackbird, as I went. It was within three mornings of Christmas, a time of peace and good-will, and I was determined to let the day be sufficient for itself in evil without troubling to force its hand.
On the wall of the inn I found a wonderful notice posted. It was written crooked, in great black letters and without any stops, and ran as follows:—
“Nekt Thrusday 26t Desrember there will be on Plaistoo Jingling matches for Hats grinning thro coler Catching of a pig with the Tail greazed climing of a pole of wemen Running For Snuff old Men for tobakker there will be also a place receved for dancing and seats Will be also receved for the Leadies there will be a band including marrow bons and clever to conclude with a grand Exbitrition of Fire wax and Cullerd bumps by J.F.”
“Nekt Thrusday 26t Desrember there will be on Plaistoo Jingling matches for Hats grinning thro coler Catching of a pig with the Tail greazed climing of a pole of wemen Running For Snuff old Men for tobakker there will be also a place receved for dancing and seats Will be also receved for the Leadies there will be a band including marrow bons and clever to conclude with a grand Exbitrition of Fire wax and Cullerd bumps by J.F.”
Harry joined me while I was spluttering over this, and read the exciting legend across my shoulder.
“I say,” he said, “Mr. Pilbrow’s in luck. He’ll think we’re a game lot. I only hope the reaction won’t be too severe. But what does ‘bumps’ mean? Is Sant getting up a sparring match?”
“Bombs, you gaby,” I said, sniggering.
“Mighty!” said he. “Old Fleming’s going it. But won’t it be fun!”
Then he fell to a little gravity.
“By the way,” he said, “Sant hasn’t come home yet, and they don’t expect him at the rectory till this afternoon.”
It was the first little damper on my serenity.
“O, well!” I said, with a sigh; “we shall be out for the day anyhow; and it don’t make much difference if we can only get hold of him this evening. You saw Rampick last night?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Bother Rampick for this day at least!”
We ran up in good spirits to Joshua, and in a little while were launched upon our explorations. Our odd dry old companion was quite excited, too, in his way. It was the most novel, most wonderful experience to him, I think, thus to chaperon a couple of lively lads, and be their favoured charge and mentor in one. He kept himself acrid and reserved—it was the habit of his life; but a certain glistening in his pale eyes, a spot of colour that established itself in his lean cheek, spoke of some spark reawakening in those long-chilled ashes of his soul underneath. There was even some glow of self-marvelling enthusiasm in that haunting gaze of his, of which I found myself from time to time the cynosure. It was like the glare of a remorseful ghost coveting recognition in heaven’s nursery by its own child’s happy spirit. “What human sympathy have I foregone and realized too late!” it seemed to express.
We betook ourselves in the first place—by Joshua’s rather insistent wish, but, secretly, against our own—to the ruins, and for an hour poked about among them wearily, loitering after our guest, and supplying, scarcely volunteering, all that of their history with which we were acquainted—impersonally, that is to say. The truth is, the place had become odious to us—as full of sordid significances as is a house in which a murder has been committed, when we know ourselves subpoena’d to give evidence on the crime. But naturally our companion felt none of this, and was only absorbed and interested, so far as appeared, in the archaeological testimony. Once, at the end, he paused, as fatality would have it, close by the plinth and the encumbered thicket. I glanced at Harry.A second time, patiently and scrupulously, had the hole been stopped, and the traces of our visit effaced.
What did the man mean? Did he, in his diseased imagination, think thus to convince us in the face of our actual experience? It was like enough. His unnerving dreams are so real to the drunkard, he cannot but think that others must see what he sees and be blind to what he has successfully hidden from himself. He is like the ostrich in his amazing digestion of both facts and fables, Whether he puts fire in his stomach or his head in the sand, he is equally the confident and incurable dupe of his own imagination.
Suddenly Joshua, after a prolonged reverie, half turned to us.
“Are there any legends of crypts, underground vaults, anything that we have not seen about here?” he demanded.
I was startled; I could not order my thoughts. I mumbled out involuntarily—
“I—there used to be a talk of smugglers.”
He turned upon me like a snapping dog.
“Smugglers! What about them?”
Harry glanced at me warningly.
“O!” I said, recovering myself with a flush, “it was an old tale when we came, Mr. Pilbrow; and, since, the weather and the coastguard have been knocking it to pieces between them.”
He stood thoughtfully rubbing his chin.
“So?” he murmured. “Knocking what to pieces?”
“Why, the tale,” said I; for I did not wish to be more particular.
I don’t know if he understood my reluctance. He did not persist in his questions, anyhow, but lapsed into a brown study. He seemed to have forgotten our presence.
“So it ever vanishes,” he muttered, with a stark and melancholy frown. “From Dungeness to Spurn Head it is always the same. The past breaks away and falls into the sea as I approach. The ghosts lead, the mirage beckons me; and, behold! the precipice and the boom of waters where I had thought a treasure house!”
He gave a sigh that was nothing less than heart-rending. A certain awe and discomfort kept us mute. Here was some tragedy beyond our guessing, but to which we were guiltily conscious that our secretiveness contributed. Then in a moment he turned upon us with a laugh in which there was not even a tinge of mirth.
“If there is any land too much in the world,” said he, “put me to walk upon its shore, and it will vanish before me yard by yard. My breath is blasting powder; my feet are earthquakes. I must drown if I live long enough.”
He walked off towards the cliff, and paused at its edge, looking down gloomily on the leaning shaft of the well.
“He is thinking of Abel and his book,” I whispered to Harry as we followed.
Suddenly he turned to me, and put his arm through mine with an air emotional and apologetic.
“Dear lad,” he said, “you mustn’t consider my moods. I talk to myself, Richard—the bad habit of a lonely man. What is that thing, now? I have wondered before this.”
I told him.
“Ah!” he said, with a bleak jocosity: “let well be. It should have confronted me six years ago; and I see it only now, the moral of all my wanderings. Yet in a good hour is it spoken, Richard, since chance has brought me to your company again. Or is it destiny, which leading me to neglect this scrap of shore hitherto, points its lesson at the end with the broken shaft yonder? Let well be. I am hungry.”
So we sat down then and there and got out our provisions. They put astonishing comfort into us, and we two boys, at least, grew hilarious. Sound-livered and hardened, we took no thought of chill; and indeed the weather for the time of year was balm. A light glistening fog still slept over everything; there was no breath of wind, and the whisper of the surf came up to us drowsily.
“Now, this wreck,” said Joshua presently: “where will it be?”
Harry jumped to his feet.
“Mighty!” he exclaimed. “We must be thinking of moving if we want to pull out to it. Tide’s at ebb, Dicky, and near the turn. Thereabouts it lies, Mr. Pilbrow, on the Weary Sands; but we can’t just make it out in this haze.”
“Well, for the boat,” I said, scrambling up; and we all made for the Gap together. It was then half an hour past midday.
“A bad time,” said I. “What fools we were not to think of it before! There won’t be a soul about.”
There was one soul, however, it appeared—a gaunt solitary figure, which, as we neared the head of the sandy slope, we could see silhouetted against the sky—a figure, too, which, from its restless craning attitude, one might have thought was expecting us.
Harry edged up to me, and was on the point of whispering, when he caught Joshua’s eyes fixed upon him. He giggled, and looked silly.
“I was thinking, sir,” began he, “that that man there——” and then he stopped.
“Well, what about him?” said the other.
“Why,” said Harry, so confused as to forget himself—“if—if you want to know about smugglers, he’s the chap to tell you, that’s all.”
I nudged my friend.
“Well,” he muttered peevishly; “I’ve not said anything, have I? Rampick can look after himself.”
Joshua did not answer, and we went on—and in the same moment Rampick was gone.
But we saw him again when we came into view of the beach. He was down by the water, ostentatious with a boat, which lay stern on to the surf—the only man and the only craft handy in all the waste prospect.
Joshua stopped in admiration.
“A providence, it seems to me!” said he.
“We can’t go withhim!” I muttered.
Our visitor looked at me in wonder.
“Why not?” he said.
How could I answer? That this seeming opportuneness was nothing more, as I was convinced, than a deliberate self-appropriation by this man of a scheme which he had overheard us discussing in the hall last night? And what then, save a confession on his part of a good trading instinct? I must find something better than that.
“He’s a drunkard,” I said, flushing. “He isn’t to be trusted, in my opinion.”
“Why?” said Joshua. “Isn’t it his own boat?”
“O yes!” I answered; for it was, indeed—the single sound piece of goods which Rampick had saved and clung to out of the wreck of his past.
“Isn’t it big enough?” insisted the visitor.
“Quite big enough.”
“Why,” said Joshua, “a seaman never loses his legs but ashore. And we are three to one, gentlemen. I’m small; but I’ll back myself for a rat to grip. If it’s me you’re thinking of——”
Harry hung his head. I was ashamed to say more. It did seem ridiculous that three vigorous bodies should be timorous of this one crazy oaf. The half-truth made us out cravens, and the whole was impossible. Nevertheless, the prospect of such a boatman for the trip quite took off the edge of its pleasure. We followed Joshua hangdog, as he strode down the Gap and across the beach.
“You’ve whetted my curiosity,” he said over his shoulder. “A drunken smuggler should be good company.”
I scowled at Harry, dropping behind.
“Well, why didn’t you take upon yourself to answer him?” he muttered viciously. “We’re in for a nice thing, it seems, knowing what we know. It’ll be pleasant to have to hob-nob with the fellow, and a warrant for his hanging like in our pockets!”
“He’s brought it on himself,” I answered. “He heard us last night; and I’ll swear he’s been ready and waiting for us all the morning.”
“Well, look out for squalls, that’s all I can say,” said my friend; and, as he spoke, we reached the boat.
Rampick, busy over it, never even looked up as we came. But I could see his great hands trembling on the thwarts, as he leaned down.
“We want to pull out to the wreck, Mr. Rampick,” I faltered. “Can you let us have your boat?”
I essayed to exclude him, as a last resource. He did not raise his head, but answered in a heavy shaking voice from where he bent.
“Which it’s well knowntoyou, sir, that my boat and me don’t part company.”
“It’s a special occasion, Mr. Rampick.”
He came up, with a sudden heaving together of all his bulk, and subsiding rigidly backwards against the gunwale, stood breathing softly, and staring with intense unblinking eyes,not at us, but at our companion.
So a cat stares at bay, crouching before a watchful snuffing dog. I don’t think he ever once looked at Harry or me. From that moment he seemed to focus all the panic of his haunted soul on the stranger who had come in our train. It was inexplicable, though in its way a relief to us for the time being—the sort of relief one feels when some deriding gutter urchin attracts from one to himself the unwelcome notice of the town drunkard.
“Which, it’s well known,” he whispered breathless.
His demented gaze wandered from Joshua’s face to his knees, where it fixed itself.
“‘And He said,’” he muttered, “‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. It’s come to it—a special occasion. Oneorthe other of us. Boat, sir, yes. But I never done it.Youought to know—one,orthe other of us.”
“Then the other, by all means,” said Joshua, caustic but interested. “My good man, we don’t want to separate you from your boat. If your presence is indispensable, why, we’ll put up with it.”
Rampick, I could have thought, went a shade more livid. His dry lips seemed to crackle under his hand as he passed the back of it over them. Yet, strangely enough, I did not believe him drunk. He seemed rather in that arid, aghast condition which, with such a man, bespeaks a temporary abstinence.
Suddenly he heaved himself upright, and began heavily to busy himself with preparations for launching his craft. We all lent a hand, and in another minute, with a slide and a jump, were on board and slipping easily over the shoreward swell.
Not then, when he had settled himself to his sculls, we being all seated in the stern, did he for a moment take his eyes off our visitor. Sympathetically, I shrunk under that concentrated stare; but Joshua bore it unruffled. Still, there was something in the atmosphere to freeze our loquacity. For a long time none of us spoke at all. There had not been air enough to fill a sail; and the monotonous bump and creak of the oars in the rowlocks beat a dreary accompaniment to our depression.
At length Harry essayed a little weak conciliation.
“Tide’ll hold for us to land and see the wreck, won’t it, Mr. Rampick?” he said.
His voice broke the spell, and to strange effect. The ex-smuggler did not answer him; but he suddenly ceased rowing, and, resting on his sculls, felt out with his foot, and kicked Joshua softly on the shins.
“What are you doing?” snapped the victim, jerking his insulted limbs under him. “What do you mean, man?”
Rampick cowered where he sat.
“I see you walk, sir,” he said hoarsely. “I see youwithmy own eyes. It’s not in nature, is it? You was kep’ from it, I say—held by the legs from rising. Who let you loose? Who patched you up to follow me? My God, I’ll be even with ’em, I will!”
He was working himself up to a mad pitch of excitement. I half rose in agitation, and looked behind me. We were already so far from the shore that its line of cliffs was a mere blurred bank in the haze. But Joshua, in the same instant, had seized the occasion to justify the character he had given of himself.
“Silence!” he said, not loud, but in a tone like a vice. “Who speaks of being out of nature, you crazy patch! Row on, and mind your business, which is to take us to the wreck!”
The maniac creature shrunk, as quickly as he had flamed up, under the bitter voice. Lowering and trembling he applied himself to his sculls once more, and the boat sped on.
“Harry,” I whispered, pale and gulping. “Did you understand?”
“Yes. Him that lies with the pistol in the hill yonder. He thinks it’s Mr. Pilbrow, and that we’ve set him free!”
He ended with an hysterical giggle. Here, in truth, it appeared, was this bedlamite’s attitude towards our guest explained. The infection of Harry’s laugh over the absurdity seized me. I struggled in vain to control myself. In another moment we were both of us doubling and rolling as if the devil were tickling our ribs.
Joshua expressed no surprise, but nodded intelligently as we gasped ourselves sober again. He attributed our merriment, no doubt, to a general sense of the ludicrous in this wretched creature’s wanderings, of the likelihood of any significance or coherence in which he had, of course, no idea. As for the man himself, he regarded Harry and me no further than if we had been squeaking mice behind a wainscot; but sat with his vision attached once more, and more cringingly than ever, to the little wintry, venomous figure in the stern.
We recovered ourselves, half fearful, from our convulsion, feeling rather, I think, like fugitives who had consciously betrayed their own whereabouts. But the explosion, in fact, had relieved the air; and thenceforth we began to talk together, moved by a common rebellion against the moral tyranny of the depression which had held us hitherto. But, for all that, it startled us near out of our skins, when Joshua of a sudden turned upon Rampick, and asked him roundly if he hadn’t any good smuggling yarns to recount to him.
“Of hidden stores, and black nights,” said he; “and the ground giving up a sudden swarm of mushroom creatures, things squat and stealthy, shouldering kegs?”
Rampick’s chest had seemed to fall in at the first word. It was painful to hear his breathing. But he made no attempt to answer.
“Come!” said Joshua. “It’s fast confidences, man. You know what you know. These young gentlemen have given you away—but no further than to me, mind. Come! What happened underground in those days, before the sea took its toll of the vaults?”
“Why, you should know, sir—aswell as me!”
Such a funny little voice, so strained and hoarse, like a cry at a great distance. Joshua himself was startled by it, moved, perhaps, by its distress. He persisted no further, but shrugged his shoulders, and turned to address us again.
In the meanwhile we were approaching the wreck, which for some time now had been visible to us. It hung oddly in the mist—suspended, as it seemed, in the mid-haze of sky and water, like a wreck painted on glass. Still, seen through that illusive medium, it appeared a phantom, far-off thing, when to our surprise, grown absorbed as we were in contemplation of it, our boatman gave a final stroke, and finished on it with his sculls poised.
“No further?” said I, rising all excitement now. “Can’t you take us any further, Mr. Rampick?”
I’ll swear that not once during our approach had he turned his head to canvass our distance or direction. Old crafty smuggler as he was, he had hit his mark blindfold as it were. Even as I spoke, I was aware of something stretching its endless length across our course—a great soft, iridescent fish-shaped bulk, as it might be a vast submarine monster floating dead and motionless on the surface. It shone sleek and fawny, and pitted with little blue scales of water; and in the instant of my recognizing it, our boat had floated on, and, with the way given it, had grated its nose softly in its flank.
Following the little shock and recoil, we were all on our feet.
“The sands!” whispered Harry, with glistening eyes. “That was clever of you, Mr. Rampick.”
We did not, he or I, demur to our enemy’s silence. It would have made no difference if we had. His regard, his consideration, were still all for our companion.
Across the glimmering lifts of sand, the wreck, now we were brought stationary, seemed to draw nearer and clearer—a phantom still, yet claiming some foothold on this unreal reality of an amphibious little continent. Only a broken poop it was, tilted up and its mighty entrails spilt into the drift. Another storm, any rough weather, would scatter it for ever; yet no plundered town could have stood a symbol of more awful and pathetic desolation. The haze blurred and magnified it to us where we stood; so that, huge relic as it was in reality, it looked nothing less than gigantic. Gazing on it, its ruin and isolation in that mist of waters, I felt as one might feel in alighting on a fallen colossus in a desert.
“Are we to land here?” said Joshua, breaking through the spell which had overtaken me.
“Aye,” answered the smuggler, in that one terse, low monosyllable, and with his eyes never leaving the other’s face.
“Go, you,” said Joshua, turning briskly to us two. “I will wait here, and take my turn when you’ve finished.”
We hesitated, questioning him with a dumb glance.
“Come!” he said. “The tide, as I reckon, don’t stand on ceremony.”
“Why should we any of us go, Mr. Pilbrow?” I spoke up quickly. “We can see all we want to see from here.”
“Nonsense!” he said sharply. “Who’ll credit our adventure if we don’t bring back her name?”
We still hung reluctant; but he drove us good-humouredly forward, and out over the bow. Looking back, after we had leapt to the reeking sand and were hurrying to cross it, I saw him still standing there, taut and resolute, to wave us on.
“I don’t like it, Harry,” I said; “I don’t like it. And no more did he, or he wouldn’t have stayed by Rampick. Let’s hurry all we can.”
“Well, come on!” panted my friend. “The quicker we’re there, the quicker we shall be back.”
Yard by yard, as we traversed the broad spit of sand, the looming ribs of the wreck seemed to shrink, and materialize, and take on outline. And then, in a moment, with an involuntary gasp, we had pulled up, and were standing staring. For between us and our quarry had come suddenly into view an unguessed-at channel of dim water, a hundred feet it might be across.
Harry wheeled.
“He’s done us!” he exclaimed. “He’s meaning some mischief, I’ll swear. Come back, Dick!”
With the word we were running. For a moment the bulge of the drift hid the boat from our view. The next, we had topped it, and breathed with relief to see the figure of Joshua still standing up at the bow as we had left him. For an instant only; and, in that instant, Rampick, catching sight of our returning forms, rose hurriedly and stealthily, with one of his sculls clubbed to strike. We screeched out together. The warning was quick to save Joshua from the worst, but not from secondary consequences. Instinctively he ducked, as the blade flashed over his head; but the act toppled him from his balance, and he fell from the boat prone upon the sand, from which he rolled down, clutching, into the sea. In the same moment, Rampick, using the scull he had swung for lever, pushed off from the bank, hurriedly seated himself, and in a stroke or two was out at safe distance and in deep water, where he held up, breathing stertorously as he regarded us.
By this time we were down at the edge, and, flinging ourselves flat, had caught at Joshua’s hands, where they clawed and slipped in the slobber of wet sand. The drift took the water at a deepish angle, but it was firm above for knee-hold; and in a minute or two we had drawn him up far enough to enable him to get a bite with his own nails, and then the rest was easy. As he sat to recover himself, crowing and spitting but not otherwise greatly discomposed, Harry jumped to his feet, and hailed the madman furiously—
“Come back!”
Rampick, resting on his oars, chewed his dry lips for moisture, but answered nothing.
“Come back!” screamed Harry; “or I’ll fetch you!”
He dropped, and slipped knee-deep into the water as he cried, as if to verify his threat, insane one as he knew it to be. The sea was near quiet as a mill-pond, and Rampick had only to pull a couple of indifferent strokes to increase the distance between us by some fathoms. I thought he was going to abandon us altogether and at once, and in an agony hailed him on my own account—
“Mr. Rampick! why don’t you come back? You aren’t going to leave us to drown here!”
He leaned forward, always watchful of us, and, groping under the thwarts, fetched up a black bottle, which he uncorked and put to his lips—a rejoicing swill. It gave him nerve and voice. He sagged down, between maudlin and triumphant, and answered, with a hoarse defiant laugh—
“I am, though!”
“Mr. Rampick!” I cried, “what have we done to you?”
He drank again. Every addition of this fuel made the devil roar in him.
“Done!” he yelled. “Seehowyou done—furyourselves, my hearties! You’d let him out, would you! You’d make the dead walktotestify agen me! I know you. You’ve plotted and schemed agen me from the first, you parson’s whelps—and here’s what it come to. I was on the way to salvation—tillyou crossed me—once too often. The sands ’ll keep my secretandyourn. Let him out to walk, you will; but not to swim—my God, I had you there—old Jole had you there, my bucks!”
He poured down more fire, and howled and drummed his feet in a gloating frenzy.
“Had you there!” he shrieked. “You may quicken him out of fire—outof rocks and fire; but youfurgot as water squenches fire. Thought old Jole crazy, did you—poor old Jole, whose fortunes went out in the spark as him there lighted. And all the time he lay lowtoget even with you.Hashe done it?Didhe choose his time crafty?Didany one see us? When your drownded corpses comes in with the tide, who’ll know the truth? Jole—and Jole can keep a secret, once all prying apes is laidfromforcing his hand.”
He shook to the roaring of his own voice. The reverberating fire in his brain deafened him to any reason, reassurance, protest. We cried to him in our distraction to listen, only to calm himself and listen. Our appeals could not penetrate the pandemonium in that maniac soul. In the midst Joshua, all amazed and at sea as he was, rose to add his entreaties to ours. The effect was disastrous. At the vision of him, strung as if to fly, his coat-tails spread, the madman gripped his oars convulsively.
“Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop! I never could abide the sight of it!”
And with the word he was pulling furiously away.
We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the moment I felt quite blind and delirious.
All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears, vanished and was gone.
And then at last we came together, and, halting, looked into one another’s pallid faces like dead souls meeting on the banks of Styx.
Thememory of that awful time is soothed and assuaged to me by virtue of the strong soul who, under Providence, was given to us to command it. If destiny had used him its instrument to precipitate the tragedy, long, I am sure, hanging over our heads, it had done so consciously, by higher command, in order to neutralize the effects of its own inexorable decree. So thought Mr. Sant presently; and gratefully we acquiesced, giving thanks to Providence. Like children, we had played with fire, not realizing, nor, I think, deserving the consequences. All honour, then, after God, to His little self-possessed deputy, who of his confidence and resolution helped us to the nerve to escape them.
For a time Harry and I—I may surely admit it without shame—were beside ourselves. To be thus cast away and abandoned on a sandbank in mid-ocean—for to all appearances, and intents and purposes, our fate seemed nothing less—it was horrible beyond words. An hour—perhaps two hours—and a lingering death must overtake us. Already—we could see by the near lines of foam, could gather from the changed whisper of the tide—the seaward surges were freshening to their return. We hurried to and fro, wringing our hands, crying for impossible help, never once in our distraction holding escape as conceivable save by external agency. The bank on which we stood stretched north and south, a sleek, hateful mockery. It were useless to traverse it up and down; yet we went, as if to hurry this way and that over it were to summon of our agonized need a causeway to the unseen shore five miles distant; we went, until the terror of ranging adrift, beyond recovery, from our one hope of resource, already grown a desolate phantom behind us in the mist, sent us frantically back to the side of the motionless figure, which had not once stirred since we parted from it raving.
“Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried. “Whatare we to do?”
“Ah!” he answered, sharp as an echo: “to command yourselves!”
It was like a tonic of steel served from a pistol.
“We will—we do,” said Harry, forcing down his terror in one great gulp. “Dick, don’t be a fool!”
Some shame, I think, stiffened me. The debility of despair conceded a hope to the mere prospect of discussion. What a courage was this to succumb without an effort; to have reason, and yield it to the shadow falling before the fact!
“All right,” I muttered. “I’m an ass. Only let him tell us what we’re to do. He brought this on us, you know.”
He showed no resentment of my bitterness.
“Yes,” he said, in a strong quiet voice. “I brought this on you, Richard; for you warned me and I overruled your warning, being sceptical without knowledge, which is the boast of fools. The man was mad, and I thought to control him with reason, having failed in that as in everything else. Now accursed shall I be in the eyes of my co-trustee, your dear uncle.”
His mention of Uncle Jenico quite upset me again.
“O!” I cried violently, “what doyoumatter! If you drown, you’ve only yourself to thank.Hewould have stopped my going, but I wouldn’t tell him anything about it, because I thought it was nonsense to be afraid. And now he’ll wait and wait, and we shall never come, and it will break his heart.”
He stood before me, dripping wet, a most wretched, pathetic expression on his face. It was due less, I knew, to despair than to sorrow over my revolt against him. At the vision of it I was moved even against my will to remorse.
“Well,” I said miserably, “I don’t want to put all the blame on you, though you might have given me credit for a reason. You don’t know what we know about the man, or his interest in shutting our mouths. I ought to have told you, perhaps; but the secret was saving for another who has more right to it. It doesn’t matter now. We only want to get out of this—Mr. Pilbrow, do you hear? O, please think of something! There must be a way! To stand here, and——”
“Richard!” he cried, in great emotion. He half advanced, holding out his hand, then suddenly commanded himself, let it fall, and became in a moment a figure of passionless resolution.
“You are right,” he said, dryly defining and articulating each word. “This is no time for recriminations. We must compose ourselves—must think. The way out of a trap is never the way in. That is where men waste themselves. Now, tell me: nobody knows of our coming here?”
“Nobody,” I said, “nor saw us take the boat. There isn’t a hope of our being rescued from the shore. We can’t see it, even; and ifwecould be made out here, who’s abroad to mark us? Besides, even if any one did, there’s bare time, even now, to put off and cover the distance before——”
“H’mph!” he pondered, frowning and fondling his gritty chin. Then he turned to my friend.
“How long have we?” he asked.
Harry gave a desperate glance seawards.
“Say an hour here—perhaps two, if we climbed the wreck. But there’s deep water between. Ah! you didn’t know that, did you? but there is—and you——”
Joshua made a gesture of dissent.
“No,” he said, “I can’t swim. Leave me out of the question. But you two can, I know. Why shouldn’tyoureach the shore?”
Harry shook his head.
“The tide’s running in, it’s true; but five miles, and in December!”
He ended with a despairing shrug.
“Very well,” said Joshua, so prompt and decided that he made us jump. “Then the wreck’s our one asset; and we’ll just go and see the best use we can make of it.”
With the word, he was striding over the sand, and, sprung to some sudden thrill of hope at his confidence, we followed him, our hearts thumping.
When we came down to the little strait, we found it already and undoubtedly widened. The cream of incoming surf showed more boldly over the lip of the further bank where the wreck lay; and between that and ourselves there was a sense of busier movement, as it might be water yawning and stretching after sleep.
“Now,” said Joshua, sharp as a lash, “swim across to her.”
“Swim! At once?” I exclaimed. “And what about you?”
“I’ve told you to leave me out,” he said, dry and composed. “You must swim, as you can’t jump. I’ll wait you here. Maybe you’ll find the means to float back on boards or such.”
Then we saw what was in his mind. It was a chance against all odds, and so poor a one, that we had hardly considered it, I think, in our agitation. The storm, we felt, must have gutted the carcase as clean as a dressed ox’s. Nothing detachable, but must have been wrenched and flung away. From where we stood, indeed, only the framework of the poop, gaunt, and inflexible, and rigid in its suggestion of ribs and spars shattered but unyielding, appeared to have survived its furious sacking by the waves. Moreover, a certain suspicion had come to us that Rampick had not now made his first acquaintance with the wreck; that, even perhaps so early as the serving of the last ebb, when fresh from hearing of our plans, he had rowed over to examine his ground by lantern-light, and to make sure—as so cunning a madman would—that no contingency of crate or cask or loosened plank should be allowed to mar his wicked purpose.
Though we might or might not be right in this (in point of fact, I believe, we were right), our hope, looking upon that lean account of ruin, was a very little hope. Still, for what it was, it lost nothing in inspiration from the self-confidence of our companion. I turned a desperate inquiring glance on Harry.
“Come!” he said, in answer; and, without another word between us, we had slipped down and taken the water.
As for that, it was chill enough, but, to traverse the interval, child’s play for swimmers so young and hardy. In five minutes we had emerged, sleek and dripping, on the further side, and the wreck was close before us.
We shook ourselves like dogs, and ran up the sand. The shivered frame of the thing lay pitched on the sharp back of the drift, where the poor ship must have dumped herself to be broken like a stick across a housemaid’s knee. What remained was a melancholy witness to the impotence of man’s bravest efforts to command Nature in her passions. She must have been a fine craft, of many thousand tons burden, by evidence of this fragment.Ex pede Herculem. Now, the forlorn remnant of her was so shattered as to look, at these close quarters, more like the wreck of a blown-down hoarding than of a gallant vessel. Wryed, and gaping, and burst apart, her ribs had been stripped, inside and out, of everything that could be torn away and swallowed; so that what survived, survived by virtue of a tenacity, which, inasmuch as it had defied the wrench of the storm, was little likely to yieldussalvage.
And, indeed, we reached her only to find our apprehensions confirmed. Shorn through her waist, it appeared, close off by the poop, and her fore-part lifted, and rolled, and ravished God knew whither, she had disgorged her vitals into the gulf to the last bolt, so that not one loose board of her remained to reward us, unless buried beyond our recovery in the sand, into which the jagged wound of her emptied trunk was plugged.
We climbed, and pulled, and tested, running hither and thither. We fell upon our knees, and with our hands dug frantically, until they bled, into the wedged drift. It yielded nothing. From time to time we desisted, and gazed, in a panic of fear, at the water, where, but a few yards beyond and below her stern, it rustled and curvetted, advancing and retreating, and advancing yet another step to play cat-like with our anguish.
At last, and for the last time of many, we mounted the slope of stubborn planks, to struggle with some fractured balk of timber, some broken rib end, which might seem to promise yielding to our frenzied blows and kicks. It was all of no avail. Like lost souls we paused, looking down on a litter of splinters, our great need’s only recompense; and, “O, my God!” whispered Harry, and staggered back where he stood, and flung himself, quite ill and overcome, upon the bulwarks.
He was up by the broken stern-post, and, sick to note the rising of the tide, he looked down. On the instant he uttered a wild exclamation, jumped to his feet, went over the side, and vanished.
I was poising myself a little below on the slope of the deck. At his cry I dropped and slipped, landed at the bottom, recovered my feet, and raced round to meet him. Then I, too, uttered a yell; for here, unnoticed by us before, was at least a straw of hope to catch at.
It was a great spar, which lay down the slope of the sand, with some wreck of tackle yet tangled about it, and its butt wedged under the stern of the ship.
“Lord!” shrieked my friend. “Come and pull, Dicky! O, Lord! Come and pull!”
He was skipping and sobbing as if he were cracked. “Get a purchase!” he screeched. “We must have it out if we bust ourselves!”
I had sprung and seized on it even as he spoke. To lift it was far beyond our strength; but straining and hauling our mightiest, we found we could shift it a little, right and left, like a colossal dead tooth in its socket.
“O, if we only had Uncle Jenico’s wrench!” I panted, as we paused a moment in exhaustion. We were quite breathless and white. The sweat, for all the weather, was running down our faces.
“Harry!” I groaned piteously, “if we can’t get it out now, after all this—this——”
The look in his eyes stopped me. The despair was quite gone from them, and the old breezy fearlessness returned.
“But we’re going to get it out,” he cried, “and without Uncle Jenico’s wrench, too.”
His gay new confidence was revivifying, amazing. My heart, for all its terror, was beginning to expand in the radiance of it.
“How?” I gasped. “Don’t keep me waiting, you—you old beast!”
“I’ll show you,” he said; and with the word was down among the tackle, unknotting and pulling.
I watched him breathless—helped him where I could. Between us, in a few minutes, we had disentangled many fathoms of unbroken rope, and still there was more to come. We wrought hurriedly, feverishly, with one eye always on the rising water.
“Let it only wait,” said Harry through his teeth, “till we’ve got this clear, and then it may come as fast as it likes.”
I worked on hard, not asking him why. Perhaps I had a lingering horror that his answer would disillusion me, show this shadow of hope a heart-breaking chimera. And still stealthily the tide crept up, and still we had not done.
But at length the last kink was unravelled, and we rose with a shout. One end of the rope was still fastened tight to a ring-bolt in the spar at its seaward end. The other Harry shouldered, and with it turned to run up the bank.
“Do you understand yet, gaby?” he demanded, grinning triumphant.
“You are going to get a haul on the thing, to one side and further up?”
“Yes, I am.”
My spirits sank a little.
“We shan’t be able to move it that way any more than we did before—anyhow, not to pull it out of its hold.”
“Shan’t we? Wait and see.”
“O, Harry! Don’t be such a fiend.”
“Why, Dicky, you stoopid, look here. I examined the thing, which you didn’t, no more than Rampick himself, if it’s true he’s been here already. He thought it wedged tight, maybe, and safe from us. Well, I tell you it’s only caught by the tip of its nose—far enough in to baffle us lying as it does,but easy enough to pull out floating.”
I stared at him a moment; then gave a wild hoot, and began to dance about as he had done before, and threw up my cap, and ended by hugging him.
“You beauty, you beauty! You dear old positive genius and darling! We shall get away, after all, with nothing but a ducking. And Uncle Jenico——”
A sudden choke stopped me. I turned away so that my friend shouldn’t see my shame.
“Dick, old man,” he said, soberly. “You mustn’t be too wild even now. It’s all right, I hope; only—well, it’s cold, and three of us to drift five miles on a spar——”
But I wouldn’t heed a word of his admonition. The recoil from despair had sent my wits toppling clean head over heels. If nothing but a bowl had offered, I should have been as joyous as a wise man of Gotham to commit our destinies to it. To have some means, any, to escape this hideous nightmare of enchainment to a living death!
“Hi! Gee-whoa! Get on!” I cried, chuckling hysteric, and drove Harry, holding the rope-end, up the sand before me. It paid out behind, and did not pull taut till we were well on the slope. Then, for the first time, we thought of Joshua, and turned to look for him.
He was standing, with some suggestion of agitation, on the edge of the further drift. The water had crept up since we left him, widening ominously the channel between. We waved our hands to him, and he responded.
“Look here,” said Harry. “He mustn’t be left in his ignorance; it’s torture. Besides—— Hold on, Dicky, while I go to him.”
“Why don’t you bawl across?”
“He’d never gather. We must have him ready, and I can’t explain here. Don’t drop the rope for a moment while I’m gone.”
“All right. But why not have a pull first, to see if it’ll come free without?”
“Mighty! Not for the world! It’s been rotting in the water: supposing it snapped? There’ll hardly be a strain when the tide lifts the thing, and gets under the seat of the old girl—you believe me. Did you see her name?”
“No.”
“Well, it’sThe Good Hope. Hurrah!”—and he scuttled from me, and the next moment was squattering through the water of the little strait. I watched his chestnut ball of a head lovingly as it drew a line across the channel; and I danced with excitement again to see his streaming shoulders emerge presently, and Joshua, as near wrought-up as I, run out knee-deep to help him ashore, and support him—as if he needed support—and kneel to wring out his clothes, while the faint gabble of their voices came to me. And then I turned to look seawards once more, and, behold! the comb of a little wave struck the spar-end, and seethed up and over it, and the sight made my heart flutter.
“Harry!” I screeched; and gripped the rope as if I feared some unnamable wickedness were seeking to snatch it out of my hands. I did not dare to turn again; but watched the hurrying tide fascinated; and, almost before I knew it, Harry was at my side.
“Lord, Dicky!” he whispered, his eyes glistening; “it comes, don’t it! Don’t let go! We mustn’t give it a chance.”
If it had only answered to our thoughts! How slow it crawled, without haste or flurry, sometimes seeming to drop dormant as if to take us off our guard. Presently, what with the strain and our shivering, we were fain to squat gingerly upon the sand, and grip, and watch, setting our chattering teeth. What if our expectations were to be cruelly baffled after all! What if the spar were anchored by some unexpected unseen grapnel to the bank! I turned sick at the thought. The water by now lipped along it, covering some three feet of its end. And still, to any gentle test of pulling it responded nothing.
Suddenly, eccentric as always in its motions, the tide bowled a succession of heavier wavelets shorewards. The first found us sitting, the rope taut between us and the spar, and left us sprawling backwards in a puddle of water. I thought the mere wash of it had upset us, till, in the midst of my spluttering and clutching to recover purchase, I heard my friend sing out—
“Get up! Hold on! Dick! O, come, come!”
Then, scrambling, gasping, to my feet, I saw what had happened. The spar, answering to our strain in the bobble of water, had swung towards us, the rope had slackened, and over we had tumbled. Chattering with excitement, we got hold once more, and pulled.
Still it did not come free, nor for long minutes yet. We tugged and hauled what we dared, and ceased, and tugged again. Not—to cut short that tale of agony and suspense—until we were ankle deep in water; not until the rush of little incoming waves foamed high on the stern ofThe Good Hope, kicking her up, and loosening her nip on that grim-held relic of her own; not until the sands were whelmed near and far, so that we seemed to sprout, three fantastic trunks of humanity, from the surface of the ocean itself, did a great surge and vortex, answering to our last despairing wrench, show us that we had been successful.
And even then some dreadful moments passed—moments of terror lest the rope had given—before the mass, rolling sluggishly to the surface, revealed itself.
We were panting and sobbing as we hauled it in. But Harry kept his wits through all.
“Get astride, Dick,” he said, “and help me to fasten this home.”
“This” was the running gear, which he wanted to dispose about the spar in such way as to give us all some hold to cling by. We wrought quick and hard, and in a little had it looped to our satisfaction. The wreckage consisted of a huge segment of a main lower and top-mast, with the step, pretty complete, and the whole of the over-lapping part bolted snug, on either side of which the great sticks had snapped. It was in all some twenty feet long, perhaps, with rings and shroud fastenings and cut ends of rigging yet attached; and it floated massive, on an even keel, so to speak, so that in places we could even walk on it without fear of upsetting in that tranquil sea.
“Now,” said Harry at last, “to get to Mr. Pilbrow!”
I swear till that moment we had realized no difficulty; and then, with the word, we were staring aghast at one another. The spar sat too deep to move; not till the tide had risen another two feet at least would she ride over the bank; we knew no way round. Could he plant himself firm in that hurrying sway of water until we reached him?
We stood up and waved and shouted: “We’re coming in a little! Hold on till we come!” I don’t know if he heard us. He stood there plunged to the knees—the oddest, most tragic sight. He waved back and screeched something—what, we could not understand. Every few minutes we dropped overboard, and heaved our utmost at the great hulk, only to have her ride a few feet and ground again. But at last, when the water was up to his shoulders, she gave a little dip and curtsey, and the following wave washed her on. We yelled, then, and slipped into the water for the last time, and, finding no bottom, kicked out frantic, holding each to a loop of the rope, and propelled her slowly before us, The tide took her now, and do what we would, we could not coax her in a direct course for our friend. We saw we should miss him by a full fathom; he was staggering, desperate to keep his foothold; we drove near.
“Fling yourself forward!” shrieked Harry. “It’s your only chance!” And with the word scrambled on to the spar again. I was on Joshua’s side; and I dwelt in an agony, holding on to the rope with one hand, while I strained to draw her closer.
It was no use, and seeing we must float past, I echoed Harry’s scream. Joshua sprang out and forward on the instant, and, with a mighty flounder of water, disappeared. But the impetus of his leap carried him towards me, and suddenly, like a crooked bough borne on a flood, an arm of him was stuck out within a yard of my reach. I let go my hold to dash and clutch it, and as I swerved, Harry, snapping down, caught at one of my kicking ankles and held on. My head went under; but I had the wrist like a vice; and in another minute I and my quarry were drawn to the spar side, and our noddles, gobbling and clucking and purple with suffocation, helped right way up.
We were saved! So far we had won free.Vogue la galère!