Part 7

“Pile in, boys!” cried the minister, in a ringing voice. He sprang into one of the carts, and it filled in a moment. One of the horses became frightened at the hubbub and reared. Men swore and women shrieked. In the momentary delay, a hand reached over the wheel, and plucked at Bayard’s sleeve. He flashed the lantern in his hand, and saw a woman’s strained, set face. It was Job Slip’s wife, Mari, with the little boy crying at her skirts.

“Sir,” she said hoarsely, “if it’s the Clara Em, he’s aboard of her--for they shipped him at five o’clock, though they see the storm a-comin’--and him as drunk as death. But it’s true--he got it at Trawl’s--I see ’em lift him acrost the wharf an’ sling him over int’ the dory.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Bayard with set teeth. He reached over the wheel as the horses started, plunging, and wrung the hand of the drunkard’s wife. He could not trust himself to say more. Such a vision of what life meant to such a woman swept through Angel Alley upon the wings of the gale, that he felt like a man whose eyes have beheld a panorama on a stage in hell.

Many people, as the carts rolled through the town, followed on foot, among them a few women whose husbands, or lovers, or brothers were known to be aboard the Clara Em.

“Here’s an _old_ woman with a boy aboard! Seems you might find room in one them wagons for her!” cried a young voice. It was the girl known to Windover only by the name of Lena; she for whom the “terrible sea” could have no horrors; the one woman of them from whom no betrothed lover could sail away; to whom no husband should return.

“She’s right about that. We must manage somehow!” called Bayard. Strong hands leaned out and swept the old woman up over the wheel, and the horses galloped on.

There was neither rain nor snow; but the storm, in the seaman’s sense of the word, was approaching its height. The wind had now become a gale, and blew southeast. The sky was ominously black. To Bayard’s sensitive and excited imagination, as he looked out from the reeling wagon, the mouth of the harbor seemed to gape and grin; the lights of the fleet, furled and anchored for dear life, lost their customary pleasant look, and snapped and shone like teeth in the throat of a monster.

The wagons rolled on madly; the horses, lashed to their limit of speed, leaped down Windover Point. They had now left the road, and were dashing across the downs which stretched a mile farther to the eastern shore. The roughness of the route had become appalling, but a Cape horse is as used to boulders as a Cape fisherman; neither wagon overset, though both rolled like foundering ships. The lanterns cut swathes of light in the blackness which bounding wheels and racing heels mowed down before them.

Walls of darkness rose ahead, and at its outermost, uttermost margin roared the sea. It seemed to Bayard as if the rescuing party were plunging into eternal mystery.

The old woman whose son was aboard the Clara Em crouched at the minister’s feet. Both sat in the dory, which filled the wagon, and which was packed with passengers. The old woman’s bare hands were clenched together, and her lips shut like iron hinges. Bayard wondered at her massive silence. It was something primeval, solemn, outside of his experience. The women of the shore, in stress like hers, would weep, would sob, or shriek. But to the women of the sea this anguish was as old as life itself: to it they were born, and of it they were doomed to die; they bore it as they did the climate of the freezing Cape.

“That there saving service couldn’t ha’ done nothin’ agin’ a wreck on Ragged Rock if they wanted to,” observed the old captain (they called him Captain Hap), peering from the wagon towards the harbor shore. “It’s jest’s I told ye; they’re too fur--five mile across.”

“But why is there no station nearer?” demanded Bayard with the warmth of inexperience. “Why is nothing put over here--if this reef is so bad--where it is needed?”

“Wall,” said Captain Hap, with deliberation, “that’s a nateral question for a land-lubber. Every seaman knows there ain’t no _need_ of gettin’ wrecked on that there reef. It’s as plain as the beard on your face. Windover Light to the west’ard, Twin Lights to the east’ard,--a fog bell, and a bell-buoy, and a whistlin’-buoy,--Lord! why, _everybody_ knows how to keep off Ragged Rock!”

“Then how did this vessel happen to strike?” persisted Bayard. The men interchanged glances, and no one answered him.

“Hi there! Look, look! I see her! I see her spars!” yelled a young fellow on the front seat of the wagon. “It’s her! It’s the Clara Em!... Lord A’mighty! what in ---- was they thinkin’ of? She’s got on full canvas! See her! see her! see her! See her lights! It’s _her_, and she’s bumpin’ on the reef!”

Cries of horror ran from lip to lip. The driver lashed his horses onward, and the men in the wagons flung their lanterns to and fro in uncontrollable excitement. Some leaped over the wheels and ran shouting against the gale.

“Clara Em, ahoy! Clara Em, aho--o--oy!”

But the old woman at Bayard’s feet sat still. Her lips only moved. She stared straight ahead.

“Is she praying? or freezing? Perhaps she’s out of her mind,” thought Bayard.

He gently pulled her blanket-shawl closer over her bare head, and wrapped it around her before he sprang from the wagon.

VIII.

There was but little depth of snow upon the downs and cliffs, but such as remained served to reflect and to magnify all possible sources of light. These were few enough and sorely needed. The Windover Light, a revolving lantern of the second power, is red and strong. It flashed rapidly, now blood-red and now lamp-black. Bayard thought of the pillar of fire and cloud that led the ancient people. There should have been by rights a moon; and breaks in battalions of clouds, at rare intervals, let through a shimmer paler than darkness, though darker than light. Such a reduction of the black tone of the night had mercifully befallen, when the staggering wagons clattered and stopped upon the large, oval pebbles of the beach.

The fog, which is shy of a gale, especially at that season of the year, had not yet come in, and the vessel could be clearly seen. She lay upon the reef, broadside to the breakers; she did not pitch, but, to a nautical eye, her air of repose was the bad thing about her. She was plainly held fast. Her red port-light, still burning, showed as each wave went down, and the gray outlines of her rigging could be discerned. Her foremast had broken off about five feet from the deck, and the spar, held by the rigging, was ramming the sides of the vessel.

The astonishing rumor was literally true. The Clara Em--one of the famous fishermen of which Windover was too proud to be vain; the Clara Em, newly-built and nobly furnished, none of your old-time schooners, clumsy of hulk and rotten of timbers, but the fastest runner on the coast, the stanchest keel that cleft the harbor, fine in her lines as a yacht, and firm in her beams as an ocean steamer--the Clara Em, fearing neither gods nor men nor weather, and bound for Georges’ on a three weeks’ fresh-fishing trip, had deliberately weighed anchor in the teeth of a March southeaster, and had flung all her clean, green-white sails to the gale. As nearly as could be made out from the shore, she had every stitch up, and not a reef to her face, and she lay over against the rock like a great eagle whose wings were broken. Even a landsman could comprehend the nature of this dare-devil act; and Bayard, running to lend a hand to slide the dory from the wagon, uttered an exclamation of indignant horror.

“How did this happen? Were they mad?”

“Full,” replied the old captain laconically.

“Yes, I see she’s under full sail. But why?” he persisted innocently.

The old captain, with a curious expression, flashed a lantern in the young minister’s face, but made no reply.

Cries could now be heard from the vessel; for the wind, being dead off, bore sounds from sea to shore which could by no means travel from shore to sea. Ragged Rock was a rough spot in the kindest weather; and in that gale, and with the wind in that direction, the roar and power of the surf were great. But it should be remembered that the blow had not been of long duration; hence the sea was not what it would be in a few hours if the gale should hold. In this fact lay the only possible chance of extending rescue in any form to the shipwrecked crew.

“Clara Em! Aho--oy--oy!” yelled a dozen voices. But the united throats of all Windover could not have made themselves articulate to the straining ears upon the schooner.

“Where’s yer crew? Show up, there! Can’t ye do _nothin’_ for yerselves? Where’s yer dories? Hey? What? Clara Em! Aho--oy--oy!”

“They’re deef as the two years’ drownded,” said the old captain. “An’ they ain’t two hundred feet from shore.”

“Why, then, surely we can save them!” cried Bayard joyfully. But no man assented to the cheerful words.

The dory, a strong specimen of its kind, was now out of the wagon, and a score of arms dragged it over the pebbles. The surf dashed far up the beach, splashing men, boat, wagon, horses. Against the cliff the spray rose a hundred feet, hissing, into the air. The old captain eyed the sea and measured the incoming rollers with his deep-set eye.

“Ye cayn’t do it,” he pronounced. “There ain’t a dory in Windover can live in _that_”--he pointed his gaunt arm at the breakers.

“Anyhow, we’ll try!” rang out a strong voice. Cries from the wreck arose again. Some of the younger men pushed the dory off. Bayard sprang to join them.

“I can row!” he cried with boyish eagerness; “I was stroke at Harvard!”

“This ain’t Charles River,” replied one of the men; “better stand back, Parson.”

They kindly withstood him, and leaped in without him, four of them, seamen born and bred. They ran the dory out into the surf. He held his lantern high to light them. In their wet oil-skins their rough, wild outlines looked like divers, or like myths of the deep. They leaped in and seized the oars with one of the wild cries of the sailor who goes to his duty, his dinner, or his death, by the rhythm of a song or the thrill of a shout. The dory rose on a tremendous comber, trembled, turned, whirled, and sank from sight. Then came yells, and a crash.

“There!” howled Captain Hap, stamping his foot, “I told ye so!”

“She’s over!”

“She’s busted!”

“She’s smashed to kindlin’ wood!”

“Here they be! Here they come! Haul ’em in!”

The others ran out into the surf and helped the brave fellows, soaked and discomfited, up the beach. They were badly bruised, and one of them was bleeding.

The pedestrians from the town had now come up; groups of men, and the few women; and a useless crowd stood staring at the vessel. A big third wave rolled over and smashed the port light.

“It’s been going on all these ages,” thought Bayard,--“the helpless shore against the almighty sea.”

“Only two hundred feet away!” he cried; “I _can’t_ see why _something_ can’t be done! I say, something _shall_!--Where are your ropes? Where are your wits? Where is all your education to this kind of thing? Are you going to let them drown before your eyes?”

“There ain’t no need of goin’ so far’s that,” said the old captain with the aggravating serenity of his class. “If she holds till it ebbs they can clomber ashore, every man-jack of ’em. Ragged Rock ain’t an island except at flood. It’s a long, pinted tongue o’rock runnin’ along,--so. You don’t onderstand it, Parson. Why, they could eeny most _walk_ ashore, come mornin’, if she holds.”

“It’s a good pull from now till sun-up,” objected a fisherman. “And it’s the question if she don’t break up.”

“Anyhow, I’m going to try,” insisted Bayard. A rope ran out through his hands,--shot high into the air,--fell into the wind, and dropped into the breakers. It had carried about ten feet. For the gale had taken the stout cable between its teeth, and tossed it, as a dog does a skein of silk, played with it, shook it to and fro, and hurled it away. The black lips of the clouds closing over the moon, seemed to open and grin as the old captain said:--

“You ken keep on tryin’ long’s you hev the inclination. Mebbe the women-folks will feel better for’t; but you cay--n’t do it.”

“Can’t get a rope to a boat two hundred feet away?” demanded Bayard.

“Not without apparatus,--no, sir! Not in a blow like this here.” The old seaman raised his voice to a bellow to make himself audible twelve feet away. “Why, it’s reelly quite a breeze o’ wind,” he said.

“Then what _can_ we do?” persisted Bayard, facing the beach in great agitation. “What are we here for, anyhow?”

“We ken watch for ’em to come ashore,” replied the captain grimly.

Turning, in a ferment half of anger, half of horror, to the younger men, Bayard saw that some one was trying to start a bonfire. Driftwood had been collected from dry spots in the rocks--or had a bucket of coal-tar been brought by some thoughtful hand? And in a little cave at the foot of the cliff, a woman, upon her knees in the shallow snow, was sheltering a tiny blaze within her two hands. It was the girl Lena. She wore a woolen cap, of the fashion called a Tam o’ Shanter, and a coarse fur shoulder cape. Her rude face showed suddenly in the flaming light. It was full of anxious kindliness. He heard her say:--

“It’ll hearten ’em anyhow. It’ll show ’em they ain’t deserted of God and men-folks too.”

“Where’s my old lady?” added the girl, looking about. “I want to get her up to this fire. She’s freezing somewheres.”

“Look alive, Lena! Here she is!” called one of the fishermen. He pointed to the cliff that hung over Ragged Rock. The old woman stood on the summit and on the edge. How she had climbed there, Heaven knew; no one had seen or aided her; she stood, bent and rigid, with her blanket shawl about her head. Her gray hair blew back from her forehead in two lean locks. Black against the darkness, stone carved out from stone, immovable, dumb, a statue of the storm, she stared out straight before her. She seemed a spirit of the wind and wet, a solemn figure-head, an anathema, or a prayer; symbol of a thousand watchers frozen on a thousand shores:--woman as the sea has made her.

The girl had clambered up the cliff like a cat, and could be seen putting her arms around the old woman, and pleading with her. Lena did indeed succeed so far as to persuade her down to the fire, where she chafed the poor old creature’s hands, and held to her shrunken lips a bottle of Jamaica ginger that some fisherman’s wife had brought. But the old woman refused.

“Keep it for Johnny,” she said, “till he gets ashore.” It was the only thing she had been heard to say that night.

She pushed the ginger away, and crawled back to her solitary station on the cliff. Some one said: “Let be! Let her be!”

And some one else said:--

“Whar’s the use?”

At that moment a voice arose:--

“There’s the cap’n! There’s Joe Salt, cap’n of the Clara Em! He’s acrosst the bowsprit signalin’! He’s tryin’ to communicate!”

“We haven’t seen another living figure moving across that vessel,” said Bayard, whose inexperience was as much perplexed as his humanity was distressed and thwarted by the situation. “I see one man--on the bows--yes. But where are the rest? You don’t suppose they’re washed overboard already?--Oh, this is horrible!” he cried.

He was overwhelmed at the comparative, almost indifferent calmness of his fellow-townsmen.

The light-keeper and the old captain had run out upon the reef. They held both hands to their ears. The shouts from the vessel continued. Every man held his breath. The whirling blast, like the cone of a mighty phonograph, bore a faint articulation from the wreck.

“Oh!” cried the young minister. “He says they’re all sunk!”

He was shocked to hear a laugh issue from the lips of Captain Hap, and to see, in the light of the fire, something like a smile upon the keeper’s face.

“You don’t understand, sir,” said one of the fishermen respectfully. “He says they’re all--”

“May as well out with it, Bob,” said another. “The parson’s got to get his initiation someways. Cap’n Salt says they’re drunk, sir. The crew of the Clara Em is all drunk.”

At this moment a terrible shriek rang above the roar of the storm. It came from the old woman on the top of the cliff.

Her eyes had been the first, but they were not the only ones now, to perceive the signs of arousing life upon the wreck.

A second man was seen to climb across the bows, to pause for an instant, and then to plunge. He went out of sight in a moment. The inrolling surf glittered in the blaze of the bonfires like a cataract of flame. The swimmer reappeared, struggled, threw up his arms and disappeared.

“I have stood this as long as I can,” said Bayard in a low, firm voice. “Give me a rope! Tie it around me, some of you, and hold on! I’m going to try to save that man.”

“I’ll go, myself,” said one of the fishermen slowly.

“Bob,” replied the minister, “how many children have you?”

“Eleven, sir.”

“Stay where you are, then,” said Bayard. “Such things are for lonely men.”

“Bring the rope!” he commanded. “Tie it yourselves--you know how--in one of your sailor’s knots; something that will hold. I’m a good swimmer. I saved a man once on a yachting trip. Quick, there! Faster!”

“There’s another!” cried the light-keeper. “There’s a second feller jumped overboard--swimming for his life! Look, look, look! He’s sunk--no he ain’t, he ain’t! He’s bearing down against the rocks--My God! Look at him, look, look, look!”

Busy hands were at the rope about the minister’s waist; they worked slowly, from sheer reluctance to do the deed. Bayard stamped the beach with divine impatience. His head whirled with such exaltation that he scarcely knew who touched him; he made out to perceive that Ben Trawl was one of the men who offered to tie the bow-line; he heard the old captain say, shortly:--

“I’ll do it myself!”

He thought he heard little Jane Granite cry out; and that she begged him not to go, “for his people’s sake,” and that Ben Trawl roughly silenced her. Strangely, the words that he had been reading--what ages since!--in the hall in Angel Alley spun through his mind.

“‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered. ‘And his wife and child. Hush. Yes!’”

* * * * *

So! This is the “terrible sea!” This is what drowning means; this mortal chill, this crashing weight upon the lungs, the heart, this fighting for a man’s breath,--this asphyxia--this conflict with wind and water, night and might--this being hurled out into chaos, gaining a foot, and losing three--this sight of something human yonder hurtling towards you on the billow which bears you back from it--this struggling on again, and sweeping back, and battling out!

Blessing on the “gentleman’s muscle,” trained in college days to do man’s work! Thanks to the waters of old Charles River and of merry Newport for their unforgotten lessons! Thank God for that wasted liberal education,--yes, and liberal recreation,--if it teach the arm, and fire the nerve, and educate the soul to save a drunken sailor now.

But save? Can human power save that sodden creature--only wit enough left in him to keep afloat and drift, dashing inward on the rocks? He swirls like a chip. But his cry is the mortal cry of flesh and blood.

Bayard’s strangling lips move:--

“_Now Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth_”--

There were mad shouts upon the beach. A score of iron hands held to the line; and fifty men said to their souls: “That is a hero’s deed.” Some one flung the rest of the pailful of tar upon the fire, and it blazed up. The swimmer saw the yellow color touch the comber that broke above his head. The rope tightened like the hand of death upon his chest. Caught, perhaps? Ah, there! It has grazed the reef, and the teeth of the rock are gnawing at it; so a mastiff gnaws at the tether of his chained foe, to have the fight out unimpeded.

“If it cuts through, I am gone,” thought Bayard.--“_And Jesus Christ Thy Son, our Lord and Saviour._”--

“Haul in! Haul in, I say! Quick! Haul ’em in for life’s sake, boys!--She tautens to the weight of two. _The parson’s got him!_”

The old captain jumped up and down on the pebbles like a boy. Wet and glittering, through hands of steel, the line sped in.

“Does she hold? Is she cut? Haul in, haul in, haul in!”

The men broke into one of their sudden, natural choruses, moving rhythmically to the measure of their song:--

“Pull for the shore, sailor, Pull for the shore!”

As he felt his feet touch bottom, Bayard’s strength gave way. Men ran out as far as they could stand in the undertow, and seized and held and dragged--some the rescuer, some the rescued; and so they all came dripping up the beach.

The rope dropped upon the pebbles--cut to a single strand.

Bayard was with difficulty persuaded to release his rigid clutch from the shoulder of the fisherman, who fell in a shapeless mass at his preserver’s feet. The light of the tar fire flared on the man’s bloated face. It was Job Slip.

“Where’s the other?” asked Bayard faintly. “There were two.”

He dimly saw through streams of water, that something else had happened; that men were running over the rocks and collecting in a cleft, and stooping down to look, and that most of them turned away as soon as they had looked.

The old woman’s was the only quiet figure of them all. She had not left her place upon the cliff, but stood bent and stiff, staring straight ahead. He thought he heard a girl’s voice say:--

“Hush! Don’t talk so loud. She doesn’t know--it’s Johnny; and he’s been battered to jelly on the rocks.”

* * * * *

“Mr. Bayard, sir,” said Job, who had crawled up and got as far as his knees, “I wasn’t wuth it.”

“That’s so,” said a candid bystander with an oath.

“Then _be_ worth it!” said Bayard in a loud voice. He seemed to have thrown all that remained to him of soul and body into those four words; as he spoke them, he lifted his dripping arms high above his head, as if he appealed from the drunkard to the sky; then he sank.

The gentlest hands in the crowd caught him, and the kindest hearts on the coast throbbed when the old captain called:--

“Boys! Stand back! Stir up the fire! Where’s the dry blankets? There’s plenty to ’tend to Johnny. Dead folks can bury their dead folks. Hurry up them dry clo’es an’ that there Jamaiky ginger! This here’s a livin’ man. Just a drop, sir--here. I’ll hold ye kinder easy. Can’t? _What?_--Sho!... Boys, the parson’s hurt.”

At that moment a sound solemn and sinister reverberated from the tower of the lighthouse. The iron lips of the fog bell opened and spoke.

IX.

Captain Hap had reached the years when a trip to the Grand Banks is hard work, dory fishing off the coast a doubtful pleasure, and even yachting in an industrial capacity is a burden. He had a quick eye, a kind heart, a soft foot, and the gentle touch strangely enough sometimes to be found in hands that have hauled in the cod-line and the main-sheet for fifty years. In short, Captain Hap made an excellent nurse, and sometimes served his day and generation in that capacity.

Bayard lay on the straw mattress under the photograph of Leonardo’s Christ, and thoughtfully watched Captain Hap. It was the first day that conversation had presented itself to the sick man in the light of a privilege; and he worked up to the luxury slowly through intervals of delicious silence.

“Captain Hap, I am quite well now--as you see. I must speak next Sunday.”

“Call it Sunday arter,” suggested Captain Hap.

“It was only a scratch on the head--wasn’t it, Cap’n? And this cold. It _is_ a bad cold.”