CHAPTER XIV.

THE RESCUE.

On came the beautiful ship, with all her white canvas shining in the setting sun. Her deck, on which, from his fearful perch, Morley could look completely down, was spotless, and her crew seemed pigmies, herself a toy, but one, nevertheless, instinct with life, as she flew before the breeze, careening gracefully over, with the white foam curling under the bows, and sweeping past her counter, to form a long grey wake in the green sea astern.

Frantically Morley waved his impromptu banner, his signal of distress; and long he continued to do so, bathed in perspiration, and enduring an agony of hope and anxiety, before he could perceive the crew hastening to the bows, the forecastle bitts, and some ascending into the fore-rigging, as if to have a better look at him.

"Hurrah! and blessed be God, they have seen me!" he exclaimed.

At that moment up went the scarlet ensign to the gaff-peak, from whence it was dipped once, and hoisted again, as a signal that he had been observed.

On she comes; and now she is about half a mile distant from the rocks of Acton Chine. A man is heaving the lead in the fore-chains, but no soundings are there for more than forty fathoms; and borne over the water, and upward through the ambient air, the words of command came clearly to Morley's excited ear.

Now the headsails shiver, heavily flap the jib, forestaysail, and foretopmast-staysail, round swings the main and maintopsail yards sharp to windward, and now she lies to, with her broadside to the shore.

A quarter-boat is lowered; six men--Morley can count them--drop into her; something is thrown in, Morley knows not what, but a telescope would have revealed that it is a coil of stout rope.

Now the oars are shipped. Bravo! she is shoved off, and the dripping blades flash in the last rays of the setting sun, as she darts from the ship's side, and sweeps round the promontory, and out of sight, towards the little cove, where Morley knew there was a landing-place and little strip of white sand.

Morley waited nearly an hour--it seemed an age--after this. The ship still lay off the rocky shore, rolling heavily on the ground swell--so heavily, that the cracking flap of her loose canvas reached his ear sometimes. Once the mainyard was slued round, and sail was made on her for a little way, as if she had been drifted by wind and current rather too close in shore; but again the yard was backed, and, as before, she lay to, motionless and still.

The sun had gone down, dusk was stealing over the land, and the warm saffron flush that bathed the western sea and sky became obscured by masses of copper-coloured clouds.

Morley's heart beat wildly; he listened, but heard only the boom of the eternal breakers in the horrid grave that yawned below, and the screaming of the sea-birds around him.

Suddenly he heard a cheer--the mingled shout of several voices--ring in mid-air above him. Oh, how his poor heart bounded at the sound!

He looked upward, as he had done a hundred times before, but saw nothing, save the impending rock, for a time, till suddenly something appeared to swing over it, between him and the sky.

Down it came, and soon he grasped it, and the rope to which it was attached.

Wrapped round with a seaman's neckerchief, it proved to be a pint bottle, with a memorandum, written in pencil, twisted round the neck.

"_Take a pull at the bottle, to give you strength, and lash the line round you; tie the knot well, for your life depends on it. Then pass up the word to hoist away, and never fear but we shall pull you up._"

Such were the directions pencilled on the scrap of paper.

With a sigh of joy and gratitude, Morley, faint, weary, and trembling in every limb and every nerve, uncorked the bottle, which contained brandy-grog--stiff half-and-half. As directed, he took a hearty "pull" thereat, for strength and coolness were alike necessary now.

He then cast the bottle into the profundity below. No sound followed its descent: and the fall of a sixty-four-pound shot would have caused none there.

He tied the rope round his body, under the arm-pits, but with considerable difficulty, as his hands trembled like aspen leaves.

"All ready? heave away!" he shouted.

After a time the rope was tightened from above; a few sharp tugs followed, as if those who sought to save him wished to assure themselves that all was secure below.

Then followed the familiar "Yeo-heo!" of merchant seamen when pulling together, and Morley felt his scalp bristling as he was lifted off his feet and swung into mid-air.

The hated ledge of rock--hated, though, but for its lucky intervention, he must long ago have "slept the sleep that knows no waking"--receded below him, and he was dragged up the face of the bluff so speedily that all his care was requisite, by the use of hands and feet, to save his face and knees from being bruised and torn.

At last he reached the verge--that awful verge, close to where the tufts of grass had parted in his seeming death-grasp. Here a stoppage, a trivial delay, occurred; Morley was too blind and giddy to know why or wherefore, but he was not without fear that the knot his feeble hands had tied might break loose, or that the chafed cord might part, here, as it were, upon the threshold of the world and a new lease of existence; nor did he feel secure until he felt himself grasped bodily by the strong hands of several sturdy seamen, dragged in, as it were, and landed like a huge fish on the grass. Pale, panting, weak, weary, and becoming breathless, he fainted outright.

"Here's a coil, mate," said one of the seamen. "The poor fellow has gone right off into a swound, and is as useless as a wet swab."

"What's to be done now, Mr. Morrison?" asked another.

"We can't leave him, dying, it may be, of starvation," replied the seaman addressed--one in authority, apparently, and who spoke English correctly, but with a Scottish accent. "No house is nearer than yonder hamlet. He is well rigged, and don't look like a poor samphire gatherer, after all. How the dickens did he get up or get down there, unless on a grey gull's back?"

"Take a leg and an arm, Bill. Heave ahead. We must get him down from this 'tarnal steep bluff, somehow."

And, carrying Morley as carefully as they could, the seamen, who were six in number, proceeded downwards by the narrow path which led to the beach.

So intent had these worthy fellows been on their humane operations, that they had completely failed to observe how the dense clouds had been banking up to seaward; how the waves were curling up, white and frothy, and how the wind was freshening, till it swept the spoon-drift off each foaming crest, into the trough between; or how the ship had doused her royals, and handed her topgallant-sails, to make all snug for the coming blast.

"We have not a moment to lose," said Morrison, the mate. "It is almost dark already, lads--very dark for a May night. A breeze in shore is coming on fast. Let's be off to the ship without delay."

"But this poor fellow, sir."

"Can't be left to die upon the beach. It would be clear murder, mates."

"Let us take him aboard with us, and send him ashore with the first in-shore craft we overhaul after he gets his sea-legs."

"In, in! Here comes the gale! Out oars! Shove off!"

And thus Morley Ashton, still insensible, or completely stupefied and passive, in three minutes more was speeding over the rising waves, as fast as six oars could bear him, towards the unknown ship.