Grace had reason to pray at least, for the soldiers who were going to the war. For as she prayed, the Orinoco, Ripon, and Manilla, were steaming down Southampton Water, with the Guards on board; and but that morning little Lord Scoutbush, left behind at the depôt, had bid farewell to his best friend, opposite Buckingham Palace, while the bearskins were on the bayonet-points, with—
"Well, old fellow, you have the fun, after all, and I the work;" and had been answered with—
"Fun? there will be no fighting; and I shall only have lost my season in town."
Was there, then, no man among them that day, who
"As the trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,Heard in the wild March morning the angels call his soul"?
* * * * *
Verily they are gone down to Hades, even many stalwart souls of heroes.
Penalva Court, about half a mile from the quay, is "like a house in a story;"—a house of seven gables, and those very shaky ones; a house of useless long passages, useless turrets, vast lumber attics where maids see ghosts, lofty garden and yard walls of grey stone, round which the wind and rain are lashing through the dreary darkness; low oak-ribbed ceilings; windows which once were mullioned with stone, but now with wood painted white; walls which were once oak-wainscot, but have been painted like the mullions, to the disgust of Elsley Vavasour, poet, its occupant in March 1854, who forgot that, while the oak was left dark, no man could have seen to read in the rooms a yard from the window.
He has, however, little reason to complain of the one drawing-room, where he and his wife are sitting, so pleasant has she made it look, in spite of the plainness of the furniture. A bright log-fire is burning on the hearth. There are a few good books too, and a few handsome prints; while some really valuable nick-nacks are set out, with pardonable ostentation, on a little table covered with crimson velvet. It is only cotton velvet, if you look close at it; but the things are pretty enough to catch the eye of all visitors; and Mrs. Heale, the Doctor's wife (who always calls Mrs. Vavasour "my lady," though she does not love her), and Mrs. Trebooze, of Trebooze, always finger them over when they have any opportunity, and whisper to each other half contemptuously,—"Ah, poor thing! there's a sign that she has seen better days."
And better days, in one sense, Mrs. Vavasour has seen. I am afraid, indeed, that she has more than once regretted the morning when she ran away in a hack-cab from her brother Lord Scoutbush's house in Eaton Square, to be married to Elsley Vavasour, the gifted author of "A Soul's Agonies and other Poems." He was a lion then, with foolish women running after him, and turning his head once and for all; and Lucia St. Just was a wild Irish girl, new to London society, all feeling and romance, and literally all; for there was little real intellect underlying her passionate sensibility. So when the sensibility burnt itself out, as it generally does; and when children, and the weak health which comes with them, and the cares of a household, and money difficulties were absorbing her little powers, Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper. So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man, and honourable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious, over-sensitive, craving for admiration and distinction; and it was not enough for him that his wife loved him, and bore him children, kept his accounts, mended and moiled all day long for him and his; he wanted her to act the public for him exactly when he was hungry for praise; and that not the actual, but an altogether ideal, public; to worship him as a deity, "live for him and him alone," "realise" his poetic dreams of marriage bliss, and talk sentiment with him, or listen to him talking sentiment to her, when she would much sooner be safe in bed burying all the petty cares of the day, and the pain in her back too, poor thing! in sound sleep; and so it befell that they often quarrelled and wrangled, and that they were quarrelling and wrangling this very night.
Who cares to know how it began? Who cares to hear how it went on,—the stupid, aimless skirmish of bitter words, between two people who had forgotten themselves? I believe it began with Elsley's being vexed at her springing up two or three times, fancying that she heard the children cry, while he wanted to be quiet, and sentimentalise over the roaring of the wind outside. Then—she thought of nothing but those children. Why did she not take a book and occupy her mind? To which she had her pert, though just answer, about her mind having quite enough to do to keep clothes on the children's backs, and so forth,—let who list imagine the miserable little squabble;—till she says,—"I know what has put you out so to-night; nothing but the news of my sister's coming." He answers,—"That her sister is as little to him as to any man; as welcome to come now as she has been to stay away these three years."
"Ah, it's very well to say that; but you have been a different person ever since that letter came." And so she torments him into an angry self-justification (which she takes triumphantly as a confession) that "it is very disagreeable to have his thoughts broken in on by one who has no sympathy with him and his pursuits—and who" and at that point he wisely stops short, for he was going to throw down a very ugly gage of battle.
Thrown down or not, Lucia snatches at it.
"Ah, I understand; poor Valentia! You always hated her."
"I did not: but she is so brusque, and excited, and—"
"Be so kind as not to abuse my family. You may say what you will of me; but—"
"And what have your family done for me, pray?"
"Why, considering that we are now living rent-free in my brother's house, and—" She stops in her turn; for her pride and her prudence also will not let her tell him that Valentia has been clothing her and the children for the last three years. He is just the man to forbid her on the spot to receive any more presents, and to sacrifice her comfort to his own pride. But what she has said is quite enough to bring out a very angry answer, which she expecting, nips in the bud by—
"For goodness' sake, don't speak so loud; I don't want the servants to hear."
"I am not speaking loud"—(he has not yet opened his lips). "That is your old trick to prevent my defending myself, while you are driving one mad. How dare you taunt me with being a pensioner on your brother's bounty? I'll go up to town again and take lodgings there. I need not be beholden to any aristocrat of them all. I have my own station in the real world,—the world of intellect; I have my own friends; I have made myself a name without his help; and I can live without his help, he shall find!"
"Which name were you speaking of?" rejoins she looking up at him, with all her native Irish humour flashing up for a moment in her naughty eyes. The next minute she would have given her hand not to have said it; for, with a very terrible word, Elsley springs to his feet and dashes out of the room.
She hears him catch up his hat and cloak, and hurry out into the rain, slamming the door behind him. She springs up to call him back, but he is gone;—and she dashes herself on the floor, and bursts into an agony of weeping over "young bliss never to return"? Not in the least. Her principal fear is, lest he should catch cold in the rain. She takes up her work again, and stitches away in the comfortable certainty that in half an hour she will have recovered her temper, and he also; that they will pass a sulky night; and to-morrow, by about mid-day, without explanation or formal reconciliation, have become as good friends as ever. "Perhaps," says she to herself, with a woman's sense of power, "if he be very much ashamed and very wet, I'll pity him and make friends to-night."
Miserable enough are these little squabbles. Why will two people, who have sworn to love and cherish each other utterly, and who, on the whole, do what they have sworn, behave to each other as they dare for very shame behave to no one else? Is it that, as every beautiful thing has its hideous antitype, this mutual shamelessness is the devil's ape of mutual confidence? Perhaps it cannot be otherwise with beings compact of good and evil. When the veil of reserve is withdrawn from between two souls, it must be withdrawn for evil, as for good, till the two natures, which ought to seek rest, each in the other's inmost depths, may at last spring apart, confronting each other recklessly with,—"There, you see me as I am; you know the worst of me, and I of you; take me as you find me—what care I?"
Elsley and Lucia have not yet arrived at that terrible crisis: though they are on the path toward it,—the path of little carelessnesses, rudenesses, ungoverned words and tempers, and, worst of all, of that half-confidence, which is certain to avenge itself by irritation and quarrelling; for if two married people will not tell each other in love what they ought, they will be sure to tell each other in anger what they ought not. It is plain enough already that Elsley has his weak point, which must not be touched; something about "a name," which Lucia is to be expected to ignore,—as if anything which really exists could be ignored while two people live together night and day, for better for worse. Till the thorn is out, the wound will not heal; and till the matter (whatever it may be) is set right, by confession and absolution, there will be no peace for them, for they are living in a lie; and, unless it be a very little one indeed, better, perhaps, that they should go on to that terrible crisis of open defiance. It may end in disgust, hatred, madness; but it may, too, end in each falling again upon the other's bosom, and sobbing out through holy tears,—"Yes, you do know the worst of me, and yet you love me still. This is happiness, to find oneself most loved when one most hates oneself! God, help us to confess our sins to Thee, as we have done to each other, and to begin life again like little children, struggling hand in hand out of this lowest pit, up the steep path which leads to life, and strength, and peace."
Heaven grant that it may so end! But now Elsley has gone raging out into the raging darkness; trying to prove himself to himself the most injured of men, and to hate his wife as much as possible: though the fool knows the whole time that he loves her better than anything on earth, even than that "fame," on which he tries to fatten his lean soul, snapping greedily at every scrap which falls in his way, and, in default, snapping at everybody and everything else. And little comfort it gives him. Why should it? What comfort, save in being wise and strong? And is he the wiser or stronger for being told by a reviewer that he has written fine words, or has failed in writing them; or to have silly women writing to ask for his autograph, or for leave to set his songs to music? Nay,—shocking as the question may seem,—is he the wiser and stronger man for being a poet at all, and a genius?—provided, of course, that the word genius is used in its modern meaning, of a person who can say prettier things than his neighbours. I think not. Be it as it may, away goes the poor genius; his long cloak, picturesque enough in calm weather, fluttering about uncomfortably enough, while the rain washes his long curls into swabs; out through the old garden, between storm-swept laurels, beneath dark groaning pines, and through a door in the wall which opens into the lane.
The lane leads downward, on the right, into the village. He is in no temper to meet his fellow-creatures,—even to see the comfortable gleam through their windows, as the sailors close round the fire with wife and child; so he turns to the left, up the deep stone-banked lane, which leads towards the cliff, dark now as pitch, for it is overhung, right and left, with deep oak-wood.
It is no easy matter to proceed, though, for the wind pours down the lane as through a funnel, and the road is of slippery bare slate, worn here and there into puddles of greasy clay, and Elsley slips back half of every step, while his wrath, as he tires, oozes out of his heels. Moreover, those dark trees above him, tossing their heads impatiently against the scarcely less dark sky, strike an awe into him,—a sense of loneliness, almost of fear. An uncanny, bad night it is; and he is out on a bad errand; and he knows it, and wishes that he were home again. He does not believe, of course, in those "spirits of the storm," about whom he has so often written, any more than he does in a great deal of his fine imagery; but still in such characters as his, the sympathy between the moods of nature and those of the mind is most real and important; and Dame Nature's equinoctial night wrath is weird, gruesome, crushing, and can be faced (if it must be faced) in real comfort only when one is going on an errand of mercy, with a clear conscience, a light heart, a good cigar, and plenty of Mackintosh.
So, ere Elsley had gone a quarter of a mile, he turned back, and resolved to go in, and take up his book once more. Perhaps Lucia might beg his pardon; and if not, why, perhaps he might beg hers. The rain was washing the spirit out of him, as it does out of a thin-coated horse.
Stay! What was that sound above the roar of the gale? a cannon?
He listened, turning his head right and left to escape the howling of the wind in his ears. A minute, and another boom rose and rang aloft. It was near, too. He almost fancied that he felt the concussion of the air.
Another, and another; and then, in the village below, he could see lights hurrying to and fro. A wreck at sea? He turned again up the lane. He had never seen a wreck. What an opportunity for a poet; and on such a night too: it would be magnificent if the moon would but come out! Just the scene, too, for his excited temper! He will work on upward, let it blow and rain as it may. He is not disappointed. Ere he has gone a hundred yards, a mass of dripping oil-skins runs full butt against him, knocking him against the bank; and, by the clank of weapons, he recognises the coast-guard watchman.
"Hillo!—who's that? Beg your pardon, sir," as the man recognisesElsley's voice.
"What is it?—what are the guns?"
"God knows, sir! Overright the Chough and Crow; on 'em, I'm afeard. There they go again!—hard up, poor souls! God help them!" and the man runs shouting down the lane.
Another gun, and another; but long ere Elsley reaches the cliff, they are silent; and nothing is to be heard but the noise of the storm, which, loud as it was below among the wood, is almost intolerable now that he is on the open down.
He struggles up the lane toward the cliff, and there pauses, gasping, under the shelter of a wall, trying to analyse that enormous mass of sound which fills his ears and brain, and flows through his heart like maddening wine. He can bear the sight of the dead grass on the cliff-edge, weary, feeble, expostulating with its old tormentor the gale; then the fierce screams of the blasts as they rush up across the layers of rock below, like hounds leaping up at their prey; and far beneath, the horrible confused battle-roar of that great leaguer of waves. He cannot see them, as he strains his eyes over the wall into the blank depth,—nothing but a confused welter and quiver of mingled air, and rain, and spray, as if the very atmosphere were writhing in the clutches of the gale: but he can hear,—what can he not hear? It would have needed a less vivid brain than Elsley's to fancy another Badajos beneath. There it all is:—the rush of columns to the breach, officers cheering them on,—pauses, breaks, wild retreats, upbraiding calls, whispering consultations,—fresh rush on rush, now here, now there,—fierce shouts above, below, behind,—shrieks of agony, choked groans and gasps of dying men,—scaling-ladders hurled down with all their rattling freight,—dull mine-explosions, ringing cannon-thunder, as the old fortress blasts back its besiegers pell-mell into the deep. It is all there: truly enough there, at least, to madden yet more Elsley's wild angry brain, till he tries to add his shouts to the great battle-cries of land and sea, and finds them as little audible as an infant's wail.
Suddenly, far below him, a bright glimmer;—and, in a moment, a blue-light reveals the whole scene, in ghastly hues,—blue leaping breakers, blue weltering sheets of foam, blue rocks, crowded with blue figures, like ghosts, flitting to and fro upon the brink of that blue seething Phlegethon, and rushing up towards him through the air, a thousand flying blue foam-sponges, which dive over the brow of the hill and vanish, like delicate fairies fleeing before the wrath of the gale:—but where is the wreck? The blue-light cannot pierce the grey veil of mingled mist and spray which hangs to seaward; and her guns have been silent for half an hour and more.
Elsley hurries down, and finds half the village collected on the long sloping point of down below. Sailors wrapped in pilot-cloth, oil-skinned coast-guardsmen, women with their gowns turned over their heads, staggering restlessly up and down, and in and out, while every moment some fresh comer stumbles down the slope, thrusting himself into his clothes as he goes, and asks, "Where's the wreck!" and gets no answer, but a surly advice to "hold his noise," as if they had hope of hearing the wreck which they cannot see; and kind women, with their hearts full of mothers' instincts, declare that they can hear little children crying, and are pooh-poohed down by kind men, who, man's fashion, don't like to believe anything too painful, or, if they believe it, to talk of it.
"What were the guns from, then, Brown?" asks the Lieutenant of the head-boatman.
"Off the Chough and Crow, I thought, sir. God grant not!"
"You thought, sir!" says the great man, willing to vent his vexation on some one. "Whydidn't you make sure?"
"Why, just look, Lieutenant," says Brown, pointing into the "blank height of the dark;" "and I was on the pier too, and couldn't see; but the look-out man here says—" A shift of wind, a drift of cloud, and the moon flashes out a moment.—"There she is, sir!"
Some three hundred yards out at sea lies a long curved black line, beautiful, severe, and still, amid those white wild leaping hills. A murmur from the crowd, which swells into a roar, as they surge aimlessly up and down.
Another moment, and it is cut in two by a white line—covered—lost—all hold their breaths. No; the sea passes on, and still the black curve is there; enduring.
"A terrible big ship!"
"A Liverpool clipper, by the lines of her."
"God help the poor passengers, then!" sobs a woman. "They're past our help: she's on her beam ends."
"And her deck upright toward us."
"Silence! Out of the way you loafing long-shores!" shouts theLieutenant. "Brown—the rockets!"
What though the Lieutenant be somewhat given to strong liquors, and stronger language? He wears the Queen's uniform; and what is more, he knows his work, and can do it; all make a silent ring while the fork is planted; the Lieutenant, throwing away the end of his cigar, kneels and adjusts the stick; Brown and his mates examine and shake out the coils of line.
Another minute, and the magnificent creature rushes forth with a triumphant roar, and soars aloft over the waves in a long stream of fire, defiant of the gale.
Is it over her? No! A fierce gust, which all but hurls the spectators to the ground; the fiery stream sweeps away to the left, in a grand curve of sparks, and drops into the sea.
"Try it again!" shouts the Lieutenant, his blood now up. "We'll see which will beat, wind or powder."
Again a rocket is fixed, with more allowance for the wind; but the black curve has disappeared, and he must wait awhile.
"There it is again! Fly swift and sure," cries Elsley, "thou fiery angel of mercy, bearing the saviour-line! It may not be too late yet."
Full and true the rocket went across her; and "three cheers for theLieutenant!" rose above the storm.
"Silence, lads! Not so bad, though;" says he, rubbing his wet hands."Hold on by the line, and watch for a bite, Brown."
Five minutes pass. Brown has the line in his hand, waiting for any signal touch from the ship: but the line sways limp in the surge.
Ten minutes. The Lieutenant lights a fresh cigar, and paces up and down, smoking fiercely.
A quarter of an hour; and yet no response. The moon is shining clearly now. They can see her hatchways, the stumps of her masts, great tangles of rigging swaying and lashing down across her deck; but that delicate upper curve is becoming more ragged after every wave; and the tide is rising fast.
"There's a pull!" shouts Brown…. "No, there ain't … God have mercy, sir! She's going!"
The black curve boils up, as if a mine had been sprung on board, leaps into arches, jagged peaks, black bars crossed and tangled; and then all melts away into the white seething waste; while the line floats home helplessly, as if disappointed; and the billows plunge more sullenly and sadly towards the shore, as if in remorse for their dark and reckless deed.
All is over. What shall we do now? Go home, and pray that God may have mercy on all drowning souls? Or think what a picturesque and tragical scene it was, and what a beautiful poem it will make, when we have thrown it into an artistic form, and bedizened it with conceits and analogies stolen from all heaven and earth by our own self-willed fancy?
Elsley Vavasour—through whose spectacles, rather than with my own eyes, I have been looking at the wreck, and to whose account, not to mine, the metaphors and similes of the last two pages must be laid—took the latter course; not that he was not awed, calmed, and even humbled, as he felt how poor and petty his own troubles were, compared with that great tragedy: but in his fatal habit of considering all matters in heaven and earth as bricks and mortar for the poet to build with, he considered that he had "seen enough;" as if men were sent into the world to see and not to act; and going home too excited to sleep, much more to go and kiss forgiveness to his sleeping wife, sat up all night, writing "The Wreck," which may be (as the reviewer in "The Parthenon" asserts) an exquisite poem; but I cannot say that it is of much importance.
So the delicate genius sate that night, scribbling verses by a warm fire, and the rough Lieutenant settled himself down in his Mackintoshes, to sit out those weary hours on the bare rock, having done all that he could do, and yet knowing that his duty was, not to leave the place as long as there was a chance of saving—not a life, for that was past all hope—but a chest of clothes, or a stick of timber. There he settled himself, grumbling, yet faithful; and filled up the time with sleepy maledictions against some old admiral, who had—or had not—taken a spite to him in the West Indies thirty years before, else he would have been a post captain by now, comfortably in bed on board a crack frigate, instead of sitting all night out on a rock, like an old cormorant, etc. etc. Who knows not the woes of ancient coast-guard lieutenants?
But as it befell, Elsley Vavasour was justly punished for going home, by losing the most "poetical" incident of the whole night.
For with the coast-guardsmen many sailors stayed. There was nothing to be earned by staying: but still, who knew but they might be wanted? And they hung on with the same feeling which tempts one to linger round a grave ere the earth is filled in, loth to give up the last sight, and with it the last hope. The ship herself, over and above her lost crew, was in their eyes a person to be loved and regretted. And Gentleman Jan spoke, like a true sailor—
"Ah, poor dear! And she such a beauty, Mr. Brown; as any one might see by her lines, even that way off. Ah, poor dear!"
"And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not ready, Mr. Beer," says the serious elderly chief boatman. "Eh, Captain Willis?"
"The Lord has had mercy on them, I don't doubt." answers the old man, in his quiet sweet voice. "One can't but hope that he would give them time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead—that is, once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,—why, I know well how quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning, and the light of conscience, too, all one's life in one minute, like—"
"It arn't the men I care for," says Gentleman Jan; "they're gone to heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle: but the poor dear ship, d'ye see, Captain Willis, she ha'n't no heaven to go to, and that's why I feel for her so."
Both the old men shake their heads at Jan's doctrine, and turn the subject off.
"You'd better go home, Captain, 'fear of the rheumatics. It's a rough night for your years; and you've no call, like me."
"I would, but my maid there; and I can't get her home; and I can't leave her." And Willis points to the schoolmistress, who sits upon the flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.
"Make her go; it's her duty—we all have our duties. Why does her mother let her out at this time of night? I keep my maids tighter than that, I warrant." And disciplinarian Mr. Brown makes a step towards her.
"Ah, Mr. Brown, don't now! She's not one of us. There's no saying what's going on there in her. Maybe she's praying; maybe she sees more than we do, over the sea there."
"What do you mean? There's no living body in those breakers, be sure!"
"There's more living things about on such a night than have bodies to them, or than any but such as she can see. If any one ever talked with angels, that maid does; and I've heard her, too; I can say I have—certain of it. Those that like may call her an innocent: but I wish I were such an innocent, Mr. Brown. I'd be nearer heaven then, here on earth, than I fear sometimes I ever shall be, even after I'm dead and gone."
"Well, she's a good girl, mazed or not; but look at her now! What's she after?"
The girl had raised her head, and was pointing, with one arm stretched stiffly out toward the sea.
Old Willis went down to her, and touched her gently on the shoulder.
"Come home, my maid, then, you'll take cold, indeed;" but she did not move or lower her arm.
The old man, accustomed to her fits of fixed melancholy, looked down under her bonnet, to see whether she was "past," as he called it. By the moonlight he could see her great eyes steady and wide open. She motioned him away, half impatiently, and then sprang to her feet with a scream.
"A man! A man! Save him!"
As she spoke, a huge wave rolled in, and shot up the sloping end of the point in a broad sheet of foam.
And out of it struggled, on hands and knees, a human figure. He looked wildly up, and round, and then his head dropped again on his breast; and he lay clinging with outspread arms, like Homer's polypus in the Odyssey, as the wave drained back, in a thousand roaring cataracts, over the edge of the rock.
"Save him!" shrieked she again, as twenty men rushed forward—and stopped short. The man was fully thirty yards from them: but close to him, between them and him, stretched a long ghastly crack, some ten feet wide, cutting the point across. All knew it: its slippery edge, its polished upright sides, the seething cauldrons within it; and knew, too, that the next wave would boil up from it in a hundred jets, and suck in the strongest to his doom, to fall, with brains dashed out, into a chasm from which was no return.
Ere they could nerve themselves for action, the wave had come. Up the slope it went, one half of it burying the wretched mariner, and fell over into the chasm. The other half rushed up the chasm itself, and spouted forth again to the moonlight in columns of snow, in time to meet the wave from which it had just parted, as it fell from above; and then the two boiled up, and round, and over, and swirled along the smooth rock to their very feet.
The schoolmistress took one long look; and as the wave retired, rushed after it to the very brink of the chasm, and flung herself on her knees.
"She's mazed!"
"No, she's not!" almost screamed old Willis, in mingled pride and terror, as he rushed after her. "The wave has carried him across the crack and she's got him!" And he sprang upon her, and caught her round the waist.
"Now, if you be men!" shouted he, as the rest hurried down.
"Now, if you be men; before the next wave comes!" shouted Big Jan. "Hands together, and make a line!" And he took a grip with one hand of the old man's waistband, and held out the other for who would to seize.
Who took it? Frank Headley, the curate, who had been watching all sadly apart, longing to do something which no one could mistake.
"Be you man enough?" asked big Jan doubtfully.
"Try," said Frank.
"Really, you ben't, sir," said Jan, civilly enough. "Means no offence, sir; your heart's stout enough, I see; but you don't know what'll be." And he caught the hand of a huge fellow next him, while Frank shrank sadly back into the darkness.
Strong hand after hand was clasped, and strong knee after knee dropped almost to the rock, to meet the coming rush of water; and all who knew their business took a long breath,—they might have need of one.
It came, and surged over the man, and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered with the strain: but when the cataract had disappeared, the chain was still unbroken.
"Saved!" and a cheer broke from all lips, save those of the girl herself; she was as senseless as he whom she had saved. They hurried her and him up the rock ere another wave could come; but they had much ado to open her hands, so firmly clenched together were they round his waist.
Gently they lifted each, and laid them on the rock; while old Willis, having recovered his breath, set to work crying like a child, to restore breath to "his maiden."
"Run for Dr. Heale, some good Christian!" But Frank, longing to escape from a company who did not love him, and to be of some use ere the night was out, was already half-way to the village on that very errand.
However, ere the Doctor could be stirred out of his boozy slumbers, and thrust into his clothes by his wife, the schoolmistress was safe in bed at her mother's house; and the man, weak, but alive, carried triumphantly up to Heale's door; which having been kicked open, the sailors insisted in carrying him right upstairs, and depositing him on the best spare bed.
"If you won't come to your patients, Doctor, your patients shall come to you. Why were you asleep in your liquors, instead of looking out for poor wratches, like a Christian? You see whether his bones be broke, and gi'un his medicines proper; and then go and see after the schoolmistress; she'm worth a dozen of any man, and a thousand of you! We'll pay for 'un like men; and if you don't, we'll break every bottle in your shop."
To which, what between bodily fear and real good-nature, old Heale assented; and so ended that eventful night.
About nine o'clock the next morning, Gentleman Jan strolled into Dr. Heale's surgery, pipe in mouth, with an attendant satellite; for every lion, poor as well as rich,—in country as in town, must needs have his jackal.
Heale's surgery—or, in plain English, shop—was a doleful hole enough; in such dirt and confusion as might be expected from a drunken occupant, with a practice which was only not decaying because there was no rival in the field. But monopoly made the old man, as it makes most men, all the more lazy and careless; and there was not a drug on his shelves which could be warranted to work the effect set forth in that sanguine and too trustful book, the Pharmacopoeia, which, like Mr. Pecksniff's England, expects every man to do his duty, and is, accordingly (as the Lancet and Dr. Letheby know too well), grievously disappointed.
In this kennel of evil savours, Heale was slowly trying to poke things into something like order; and dragging out a few old drugs with a shaky hand, to see if any one would buy them, in a vague expectation that something must needs have happened to somebody the night before, which would require somewhat of his art.
And he was not disappointed. Gentleman Jan, without taking his pipe out of his mouth, dropped his huge elbows on the counter, and his black-fringed chin on his fists; took a look round the shop, as if to find something which would suit him; and then—
"I say, Doctor, gi's some tackleum."
"Some diachylum plaster, Mr. Beer?" says Heale, meekly. "What for, then?"
"To tackle my shins. I barked 'em cruel against King Arthur's nose last night. Hard in the bone he is;—wish I was as hard."
"How much diachylum will you want, then, Mr. Beer?"
"Well, I don't know. Let's see!" and Jan pulls up his blue trousers, and pulls down his grey rig and furrows, and considers his broad and shaggy shins.
"Matter of four pennies broad: two to each leg;" and then replaces his elbows, and smokes on.
"I say, Doctor, that 'ere curate come out well last night. I shall go to church next Sunday."
"What," asks the satellite, "after you upset he that fashion yesterday?"
"I don't care what you thinks;" says Jan, who, of course, bullies his jackal, like most lions: "but I goes to church. He's a good 'un, say I,—little and good, like a Welshman's cow; and clapped me on the back when we'd got the man and the maid safe, and says,—'Well done our side, old fellow!' and stands something hot all round, what's more, in at the Mariner's Rest.—I say, Doctor, where's he as we hauled ashore? I'll go up and see 'un."
"Not now, then, Mr. Beer; not now, then. He's sleeping, indeed he is, like any child."
"So much the better. We wain't be bothered with his hollering. But go up I will. Do ye let me now; I'll be as still as a maid."
And Jan kicked off his shoes, and marched on tip-toe through the shop, while Dr. Heale, moaning professional ejaculations, showed him the way.
The shipwrecked man was sleeping sweetly; and little was to be seen of his face, so covered was it with dark tangled curls and thick beard.
"Ah! a 'Stralian digger, by the beard of him, and his red jersey," whispered Jan, as he bent tenderly over the poor fellow, and put his head on one side to listen to his breathing. "Beautiful he sleeps, to be sure!" said Jan: "and a tidy-looking chap, too. 'Tis a pity to wake 'un, poor wratch; and he, perhaps, with a sweetheart aboard, and drownded; or else all his kit lost.—Let 'un sleep so long as he can: he'll find all out soon enough, God help him!"
And big Jan stole down the stairs gently and reverently, like a true sailor; and took his diachylum, and went off to plaster his shins.
About ten minutes afterwards, Heale was made aware that his guest was awake, "by sundry grunts and ejaculations, which ended in a series of long and doleful whistles, and then broke out into a song. So he went up, and found the stranger sitting upright in bed, combing his curls with his fingers, and chaunting unto himself a cheerful ditty.
"Good morning, Doctor," quoth he, as his host entered. "Very kind of you, this. Hope I haven't turned a better man than myself out of his bed."
"Delighted to see you so well. Very near drowned, though. We were pumping at your lungs for a full half hour."
"Ah? nothing, though, for an experienced professional man like you!"
"Hum! speaks well for your discrimination," says Heale, flattered. "Very well-spoken young person, though his beard is a bit wild.—How did you know, then, that I was a doctor?"
"By the reverend looks of you, sir. Besides, I smelt the rhubarb and senna all the way up-stairs, and knew that I'd fallen among professional brethren;—
"'Oh, then this valiant mariner,Which sailed across the sea,He came home to his own sweetheart,With his heart so full of glee;
With his heart so full of glee, sir,And his pockets full of gold,And his bag of drugget, with many a nugget,As heavy as he could hold.'
"Don't you wish yours was, Doctor?"
"Eh, eh, eh," sniggered Heale.
"Mine was last night. Now, Doctor, let's have a glass of brandy-and-water, hot with, and an hour's more sleep; and then kick me out, and into the workhouse. Was anybody else saved from the wreck last night?"
"Nobody, sir," said Heale; and said "sir," because, in spite of the stranger's rough looks, his accent,—or rather, his no-accent,—showed him that he had fallen in with a very different, and probably a very superior stamp of man to himself; in the light of which conviction (and being withal a good-natured old soul), he went down and mixed him a stiff glass of brandy-and water, answering his wife's remonstrances by—
"The party up-stairs is a bit of a frantic party, certainly; but he is certainly a very superior party, and has the true gentleman about him, any one can see. Besides, he's shipwrecked, as you and I may be any day; and what's like brandy-and-water?"
"I should like to know when I'm like to be shipwrecked, or you either;" says Mrs. Heale, in a tone slightly savouring of indignation and contempt. "You think of nothing but brandy-and-water." But she let the doctor take the glass upstairs, nevertheless.
A few minutes afterwards, Frank came in, and inquired for the shipwrecked man.
"Well enough in body, sir; and rather requires your skill than mine," said the old time-server. "Won't you walk up?"
So up Frank was shown.
The stranger was sitting up in bed. "Capital, your brandy is, Doctor,—Ah, sir," seeing Frank, "it is very kind of you, I am sure, to call on me! I presume you are the clergyman?"
But before Frank could answer, Heale had broken forth into loud praises of him, setting forth how the stranger owed his life entirely to his superhuman strength and courage.
"'Pon my word, sir," said the stranger,—looking them both over and over, through and through, as if to settle how much of all this he was to believe,—"I am deeply indebted to you for your gallantry. I only wish it had been employed on a better subject."
"My good sir," said Frank, blushing, "you owe your life not to me. I would have helped if I could; but was not thought worthy by our sons of Anak here. Your actual preserver was a young girl."
And Frank told him the story.
"Whew! I hope she won't expect me to marry her as payment.—Handsome?"
"Beautiful," said Frank.
"Money?"
"The village schoolmistress."
"Clever?"
"A sort of half-baked body," said Heale.
"A very puzzling intellect," said Frank
"Ah—well—that's a fair excuse for declining the honour. I can't be expected to marry a frantic party, as you called me down stairs just now, Doctor."
"I, sir?"
"Yes, I heard; no offence, though, my good sir,—but I've the ears of a fox. I hope really, though, that she is none the worse for her heroic flights."
"How is she this morning, Mr. Heale?"
"Well—poor thing, a little light-headed last night: but kindly when I went in last."
"Whew! I hope she has not fallen in love with me. She may fancy me her property—a private waif and stray. Better send for the Coast-guard officer, and let him claim me as belonging to the Admiralty, as flotsom, jetsom, and lagend; for I was all three last night."
"You were, indeed, sir," said Frank, who began to be a little tired of this levity; "and very thankful to Heaven you ought to be."
Frank spake this in a somewhat professional tone of voice; at which the stranger arched his eyebrows, screwed his lips up, and laid his ears back, like a horse when he meditates a kick,
"You must be better acquainted with my affairs than I am, my dear sir, if you are able to state that fact.—Doctor! I hear a patient coming into the surgery."
"Extraordinary power of hearing, to be sure," said Heale, toddling down stairs, while the stranger went on, looking Frank full in the face.
"Now that old fogy's gone down stairs, my dear sir, let us come to an understanding at the beginning of our acquaintance. Of course, you're bound by your cloth to say that sort of thing to me, just as I am bound by it not to swear in your company: but you'll allow me to remark, that it would be rather trying even to your faith, if you were to be thrown ashore with nothing in the world but an old jersey and a bag of tobacco, two hundred miles short of the port where you hoped to land with fifteen hundred well-earned pounds in your pocket."
"My dear sir," said Frank, after a pause, "whatsoever comes from our Father's hand must be meant in love. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.'"
A quaint wince passed over the stranger's face.
"Father, sir? That fifteen hundred pounds was going to my father's hand, from whosesoever hand it came, or the loss of it. And now what is to become of the poor old man, that hussy Dame Fortune only knows—if she knows her own mind an hour together, which I very much doubt. I worked early and late for that money, sir; up to my knees in mud and water. Let it be enough for your lofty demands on poor humanity, that I take my loss like a man, with a whistle and a laugh, instead of howling and cursing over it like a baboon. Let's talk of something else; and lend me five pounds, and a suit of clothes. I shan't run away with them, for as I've been thrown ashore here, here I shall stay."
Frank almost laughed at the free and easy request, though he felt at once pained by the man's irreligion, and abashed by his Stoicism;—would he have behaved even as well in such a case?
"I have not five pounds in the world."
"Good! we shall understand each other better."
"But the suit of clothes you shall have at once."
"Good again! Let it be your oldest; for I must do a little rock-scrambling here, for purposes of my own."
So off went Frank to fetch the clothes, puzzling over his new parishioner. The man was not altogether well bred, either in voice or manner; but there was an ease, a confidence, a sense of power, which made Frank feel that he had fallen in with a very strong nature; and one which had seen many men, and many lands, and profited by what it had seen.
When he returned, he found the stranger busy at his ablutions, and gradually appearing as a somewhat dapper, handsome fellow, with a bright grey eye, a short nose, a firm, small mouth, a broad and upright forehead, across the left side of which ran a fearful scar.
"That's a shrewd mark," said he, as he caught Frank's eye fixed on it, while he sat coolly arranging himself on the bedside. "I got it in fair fight, though, by a Crow's tomahawk in the Rocky Mountains. And here's another token (lifting up his black curls), which a Greek robber gave me in the Morea. I've another under my head, for which I have to thank a Tartar, and one or two more little remembrances of flood and field up and down me. Perhaps they may explain to you why I take life and death so coolly. I've looked too often at the little razor-bridge which parts them, to care much for either. Now, don't let me trouble you any longer. You have your flock to see to, I don't doubt. You'll find me at church on Sunday. I always do at Rome as Rome does."
"Then you will stay away," said Frank, with a sad smile.
"Ah? No. Church is respectable and aristocratic; and there one don't get sent to a place unmentionable, ten times an hour, by some inspired tinker. Beside, country people like the Doctor to go to church with their betters; and the very fellows who go to the Methodist meeting themselves would think itinfra dig.in me to walk in there. Now, good-bye—though I haven't introduced myself—not knowing the name of my kind preserver."
"My name is Frank Headley, Curate of the Parish," said Frank, smiling: though he saw the man was rattling on for the purpose of preventing his talking on serious matters.
"And mine is Tom Thurnall, F.R.C.S., Licentiate of the Universities of Paris, Glasgow, and whilome surgeon of the good clipper Hesperus, which you saw wrecked last night. So, farewell!"
"Come over with me, and have some breakfast."
"No, thanks; you'll be busy. I'll screw some out of old bottles here."
"And now," said Tom Thurnall to himself, as Frank left the room, "to begin life again with an old penknife and a pound of honeydew. I wonder which of them got my girdle. I'll stick here till I find out that one thing, and stop the notes by to-day's post if I can but recollect them all;—if I could but stop the nugget, too!"
So saying, he walked down into the surgery, and looked round. Everything was in confusion. Cobwebs were over the bottles, and armies of mites played at bo-peep behind them. He tried a few drawers, and found that they stuck fast; and when he at last opened one, its contents were two old dried-up horse-balls, and a dirty tobacco-pipe. He took down a jar marked Epsom salts, and found it full of Welsh snuff; the next, which was labelled cinnamon, contained blue vitriol. The spatula and pill-roller were crusted with deposits of every hue. The pill-box drawer had not a dozen whole boxes in it; and the counter was a quarter of an inch deep in deposit of every vegetable and mineral matter, including ends of string, tobacco ashes, and broken glass.
Tom took up a dirty duster, and set to work coolly to clear up, whistling away so merrily that he brought in Heale.
"I'm doing a little in the way of business, you see."
"Then you really are a professional practitioner, sir, as Mr. Headley informs me: though, of course, I don't doubt the fact?" said Heale, summoning up all the little courage he had, to ask the question with.
"F.R.C.S. London, Paris, and Glasgow. Easy enough to write and ascertain the fact. Have been medical officer to a poor-law union, and to a Brazilian man-of-war. Have seen three choleras, two army fevers, and yellow-jack without end. Have doctored gunshot wounds in the two Texan wars, in one Paris revolution, and in the Schleswig-Holstein row; beside accident practice in every country from California to China, and round the world and back again. There's a fine nest of Mr. Weekes's friend (if not creation), Acarus Horridus," and Tom went on dusting and arranging.
Heale had been fairly taken aback by the imposing list of acquirements, and looked at his guest awhile with considerable awe: suddenly a suspicion flashed across him, which caused him (not unseen by Tom) a start and a look of self-congratulatory wisdom. He next darted out of the shop, and returned as rapidly, rather redder about the eyes, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"But, sir, though, though"—began he—"but, of course you will allow me, being a stranger—and as a man of business—all I have to say is, if—that is to say—"
"You want to know why, if I've had all these good businesses, why I haven't kept them?"
"Ex—actly," stammered Heale much relieved.
"A very sensible and business-like question: but you needn't have been so delicate about asking it as to want a screw before beginning."
"Ah, you're a wag, sir," keckled the old man,
"I'll tell you frankly; I have an old father, sir,—a gentleman, and a scholar, and a man of science; once in as good a country practice as man could have, till, God help him, he went blind, sir—and I had to keep him, and have still. I went over the world to make my fortune and never made it; and sent him home what I did make, and little enough too. At last, in my despair, I went to the diggings, and had a pretty haul—I needn't say how much. That matters little now; for I suppose it's at the bottom of the sea. There's my story, sir, and a poor one enough it is,—for the dear old man, at least." And Tom's voice trembled so as he told it, that old Heale believed every word, and, what is more, being—like most hard drinkers—not "unused to the melting mood," wiped his eyes fervently, and went off for another drop of comfort; while Tom dusted and arranged on, till the shop began to look quite smart and business-like.
"Now, sir!"—when the old man came back—"business is business, and beggars must not be choosers. I don't want to meddle with your practice; I know the rules of the profession: but if you'll let me sit here and mix your medicines for you, you'll have the more time to visit your patients, that's clear,"—and, perhaps (thought he), to drink your brandy-and-water,—"and when any of them are poisoned by me, it will be time to kick me out. All I ask is, bed and board. Don't be frightened for your spirit-bottle, I can drink water; I've done it many a time, for a week together, in the prairies, and been thankful for a half-pint in the day."
"But, sir, your dignity as a—"
"Fiddlesticks for dignity; I must live, sir. Only lend me a couple of sheets of paper and two queen's heads, that I may tell my friends my whereabouts,—and go and talk it over with Mrs. Heale. We must never act without consulting the ladies."
That day Tom sent off the following epistle:—
"ToCHARLES SHUTER, Esq., M.D,St. Mumpsimus's Hospital, London.
"'I do adjure thee, by old pleasant days,Quartier Latin, and neatly-shod grisettesBy all our wanderings in quaint by-ways,By ancient frolics, and by ancient debts,'
"Go to the United Bank of Australia forthwith, and stop the notes whose numbers—all, alas! which I can recollect—are enclosed. Next, lend me five pounds. Next, send me down, as quick as possible, five pounds' worth of decent drugs, as per list; and—if you can borrow me one—a tolerable microscope, and a few natural history books, to astound the yokels here with: for I was shipwrecked here last night, after all at a dirty little west-country port, and what's worse, robbed of all I had made at the diggings, and start fair, once more, to run against cruel Dame Fortune, as Colston did against the Indians, without a shirt to my back. Don't be a hospitable fellow, and ask me to come up and camp with you. Mumpsimus's and all old faces would be a great temptation: but here I must stick till I hear of my money, and physic the natives for my daily bread."
To his father he wrote thus, not having the heart to tell the truth:—
"ToEDWARD THURNALL, Esq., M.D.,Whitbury.
"My Dearest Old Father—I hope to see you again in a few weeks, as soon as I have settled a little business here, where I have found a capital opening for a medical man. Meanwhile let Mark or Mary write and tell me how you are—and for sending you every penny I can spare, trust me. I have not had all the luck I expected; but am as hearty as a bull, and as merry as a cricket, and fall on my legs, as of old, like a cat. I long to come to you; but I mustn't yet. It is near three years since I had a sight of that blessed white head, which is the only thing I care for under the sun, except Mark and little Mary—big Mary I suppose she is now, and engaged to be married to some 'bloated aristocrat.' Best remembrances to old Mark Armsworth.
"Your affectionate son,
"Mr. Heale," said Tom next, "are we Whigs or Tories here?"
"Why—ahem, sir, my Lord Scoutbush, who owns most hereabouts, and my Lord Minchampstead, who has bought Carcarrow moors above,—very old Whig connections, both of them; but Mr. Trebooze, of Trebooze, he, again, thorough-going Tory—very good patient he was once, and may be again—ha! ha! Gay young man, sir—careless of his health; so you see as a medical man, sir—"
"Which is the liberal paper? This one? Very good." And Tom wrote off to the liberal paper that evening a letter, which bore fruit ere the week's end, in the shape of five columns, headed thus:—
"The following detailed account of this lamentable catastrophe has been kindly contributed by the graphic pen of the only survivor, Thomas Thurnall, Esquire, F.R.C.S., &c. &c. &c., late surgeon on board the ill-fated vessel." Which five columns not only put a couple of guineas into Tom's pocket, but, as he intended they should, brought him before the public as an interesting personage, and served as a very good advertisement to the practice which Tom had already established in fancy.
Tom had not worked long, however, before the Coast-guard Lieutenant bustled in. He had trotted home to shave and get his breakfast, and was trotting back again to the shore.
"Hillo, Heale! can I see the fellow who was saved last night?"
"I am that fellow," says Tom.
"The dickens you are! you seem to have fallen on your legs quickly enough."
"It's a trick I've had occasion to learn, sir," says Tom. "Can I prescribe for you this morning?"
"Medicine?" roars the Lieutenant, laughing. "Catch me at it! No; I want you to come down to the shore, and help to identify goods and things. The wind has chopped up north, and is blowing dead on; and, with this tide, we shall have a good deal on shore. So, if you're strong enough—"
"I'm always strong enough to do my duty," said Tom.
"Hum! Very good sentiment, young man. Always strong enough for duty.—Hum! worthy of Nelson; said pretty much the same, didn't he? something about duty I know it was, and always thought it uncommon fine.—Now, then, what can you tell me about this business?"
It was a sad story; but no sadder than hundreds beside. They had been struck by the gale to the westward two days before, with the wind south; had lost their foretopmast and boltsprit, and become all but unmanageable; had tried during a lull to rig a jury-mast, but were prevented by the gale, which burst on them with fresh fury from the south-west, with very heavy rain and fog; had passed a light in the night, which they took for Scilly, but which must have been the Longships; had still fancied that they were safe, running up Channel with a wide berth, when, about sunset, the gale had chopped again to north-west;—and Tom knew no more. "I was standing on the poop with the captain about ten o'clock. The last words he said to me were,—'If this lasts, we shall see Brest harbour to-morrow,' when she struck, and stopped dead. I was chucked clean off the poop, and nearly overboard; but brought up in the mizen rigging. Where the captain went, poor fellow, Heaven alone knows; for I never saw him after. The mainmast went like a carrot. The mizen stood. I ran round to the cabin-doors. There were four men steering; the wheel had broke out of the poor fellows' hands, and knocked them over,—broken their limbs, I believe. I was stooping to pick them up, when a sea came into the waist, and then aft, washing me in through the saloon-doors, among the poor half-dressed women and children. Queer sight, Lieutenant! I've seen a good many, but never worse than that. I bolted to my cabin, tied my notes and gold round me, and out again."
"Didn't desert the poor things?"
"Couldn't if I'd tried; they clung to me like a swarm of bees. 'Gad, sir, that was hard lines! to have all the pretty women one had waltzed with every evening through the Trades, and the little children one had been making playthings for, holding round one's knees, and screaming to the doctor to save them. And how the —— was I to save them, sir?" cried Tom, with a sudden burst of feeling, which, as in so many Englishmen, exploded in anger to avoid melting in tears.
"Ought to be a law against it, sir," growled the Lieutenant; "against women-folk and children going to sea. It's murder and cruelty. I've been wrecked, scores of times; but it was with honest men, who could shift for themselves, and if they were drowned, drowned; but didn't screech and catch hold—I couldn't stand that! Well?"
"Well, there was a pretty little creature, an officer's widow, and two children. I caught her under one arm, and one of the children under the other;—said 'I can't take you all at once; I'll come back for the rest, one by one.'—Not that I believed it; but anything to stop the screaming; and I did hope to put some of them out of the reach of the sea, if I could get them forward. I knew the forecastle was dry, for the chief officer was firing there. You heard him?"
"Yes, five or six times; and then he stopped suddenly."
"He had reason.—We got out. I could see her nose up in the air forty feet above us, covered with fore-cabin passengers. I warped the lady and the children upward—Heaven knows how; for the sea was breaking over us very sharp—till we were at the mainmast stump, and holding on by the wreck of it. I felt the ship stagger as if a whale had struck her, and heard a roar and a swish behind me, and looked back—just in time to see mizen, and poop, and all the poor women and children in it, go bodily, as if they had been shaved off with a knife. I suppose that altered her balance; for before I could turn again she dived forward, and then rolled over upon her beam ends to leeward, and I saw the sea walk in over her from stem to stern like one white wall, and I was washed from my hold, and it was all over."
"What became of the lady?"
"I saw a white thing flash by to leeward,—what's the use of asking?"
"But the child you held?"
"I didn't let it go till there was good reason."
"Eh?"
Tom tapped the points of his fingers smartly against the side of his head, and then went on, in the same cynical drawl, which he had affected throughout—
"I heard that—against a piece of timber as we went overboard And, as a medical man, I considered after that, that I had done my duty. Pretty little boy it was, just six years old: and such a fancy for drawing."
The Lieutenant was quite puzzled by Tom's seeming nonchalance.
"What do you mean, sir? Did you leave the child to perish?"
"Confound you, sir! If you will have plain English, here it is. I tell you I heard the child's skull crack like an egg-shell! There, let's talk no more about it, or the whole matter. It's a bad business, and I'm not answerable for it, or you either; so let's go and do what we are answerable for, and identify—"
"Sir! you will be so good as to recollect," said the Lieutenant, with ruffled plumes.
"I do; I do! I beg your pardon a thousand times, I'm sure, for being so rude: but you know as well as I, sir, there are a good many things in the world which won't stand too much thinking over; and last night was one."
"Very true, very true; but how did you get ashore?"
"I get ashore? Oh, well enough! Why not?"
"'Gad, sir, you were near enough being drowned at last; only that girl's pluck saved you."
"Well; but it did save me: and here I am, as I knew I should be when I first struck out from the ship."
"Knew!—that is a bold word for mortal man at sea."
"I suppose it is: but we doctors, you see, get into the way of looking at things as men of science; and the ground of science is experience; and, to judge from experience, it takes more to kill me than I have yet met with. If I had been going to be snuffed out, it would have happened long ago."
"Hum! It's well to carry a cheerful heart; but the pitcher goes often to the well, and comes home broken at last."
"I must be a gutta-percha pitcher, I think, then, or else—
"'There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft,' etc.
as Dibdin has it. Now, look at the facts yourself, sir," continued the stranger, with a recklessness half true, half assumed to escape from the malady of thought. "I don't want to boast, sir; I only want to show you that I have some practical reason for wearing as my motto—'Never say die.' I have had the cholera twice, and yellow-jack beside: five several times I have had bullets through me; I have been bayoneted and left for dead; I have been shipwrecked three times—and once, as now, I was the only man who escaped; I have been fatted by savages for baking and eating, and got away with a couple of friends only a day or two before the feast. One really narrow chance I had, which I never expected to squeeze through: but, on the whole, I have taken full precautions to prevent its recurrence."
"What was that, then?"
"I have been hanged, sir," said the doctor quietly.
"Hanged?" cried the Lieutenant, facing round upon his strange companion with a visage which asked plainly enough—"You hanged? I don't believe you; and if you have been hanged, what have you been doing to get hanged?"
"You need not take care of your pockets, sir,—neither robbery nor murder was it which brought me to the gallows; but innocent bug-hunting. The fact is, I was caught by a party of Mexicans, during the last war, straggling after plants and insects, and hanged as a spy. I don't blame the fellows: I had no business where I was; and they could not conceive that a man would risk his life for a few butterflies."
"But if you were hanged, sir—"
"Why did I not die?—By my usual luck. The fellows were clumsy, and the noose would not work; so that the Mexican doctor, who meant to dissect me, brought me round again; and being a freemason, as I am, stood by me,—got me safe off, and cheated the devil."
The worthy Lieutenant walked on in silence, stealing furtive glances at Tom, as if he had been a guest from the other world, but not disbelieving his story in the least. He had seen, as most old navy men, so many strange things happen, that he was prepared to give credit to any tale when told, as Tom's was, with a straightforward and unboastful simplicity.
"There lives the girl who saved you," said he, as they passed GraceHarvey's door.
"Ah? I ought to call and pay my respects."
But Grace was not at home. The wreck had emptied the school; and Grace had gone after her scholars to the beach.
"We couldn't keep her away, weak as she was," said a neighbour, "as soon as she heard the poor corpses were coming ashore."
"Hum?" said Tom. "True woman. Quaint,—that appetite for horrors the sweet creatures have. Did you ever see a man hanged, Lieutenant?—No? If you had, you would have seen two women in the crowd to one man. Can you make out the philosophy of that?"
"I suppose they like it, as some people do hot peppers."
"Or donkeys thistles;—find a little pain pleasant! I had a patient once in France, who read Dumas' 'Crimes Célèbres' all the week, and the 'Vies des Saints' on Sundays, and both, as far as I could see, for just the same purpose,—to see how miserable people could be, and how much pinching and pulling they could bear."
So they walked on, along a sheep-path, and over the Spur, and down to the Cove.
It was such a morning as often follows a gale, when the great firmament stares down upon the ruin which it has made, bright and clear, and bold; and seems to say, with shameless smile,—"There, I have done it; and am as merry as ever after it all!" Beneath a cloudless sky, the breakers, still grey and foul from the tempest, were tumbling in before a cold northern breeze. Half a mile out at sea, the rough backs of the Chough and Crow loomed black and sulky in the foam. At their feet, the rocks and shingle of the Cove were alive with human beings—groups of women and children clustering round a corpse or a chest; sailors, knee-deep in the surf hauling at floating spars and ropes; oil-skinned coast-guardsmen pacing up and down in charge of goods, while groups of farmers' men, who had hurried down from the villages inland, lounged about on the top of the cliff, looking sulkily on, hoping for plunder: and yet half afraid to mingle with the sailors below, who looked on them as an inferior race, and refused, in general, to intermarry with them.
The Lieutenant plainly held much the same opinion; for as a party of them tried to descend the narrow path to the beach, he shouted after them to come back.
"Eh! you won't?" and out rattled from its scabbard the old worthy's sword. "Come back, I say, you loafing, miching, wrecking crow-keepers; there are no pickings for you here. Brown, send those fellows back with the bayonet. None but blue-jackets allowed on the beach!" And the labourers go up again, grumbling.
"Can't trust those landsharks. They'll plunder even the rings off a corpse's fingers. They think every wreck a godsend. I've known them, after they've been driven off, roll great stones over the cliff at night on the coast-guard, just out of spite; while these blue-jackets here—I can depend on them. Can you tell me the reason of that, as you seem a bit of a philosopher?"
"It is easy enough; the sailors have a fellow-feeling with sailors, and the landsmen have none. Besides, the sailors are finer fellows, body and soul; and the reason is that they have been brought up to face danger, and the landsmen haven't."
"Well," said the Lieutenant, "unless a man has been taught to look death in the face, he never will grow up, I believe, to be much of a man at all."
"Danger, my good sir, is a better schoolmaster than all your new model schools, diagrams, and scientific apparatus. It made our forefathers the masters of the sea, though they never heard of popular science; and I dare say couldn't, one out of ten of them, spell their own names."
This sentiment elicited from the Lieutenant a grunt of approbation, as Tom intended that it should do; shrewdly arguing that the old martinet was no friend to the modern superstition, that all which is required to cast out the devil is a smattering of the 'ologies.