Читать книгу Walladmor, Vol. I (of 2) - Alexis Willibald - Страница 5

Perhaps the reader may still remember the following article in the Times newspaper, which about a year or two ago raised a powerful interest on the Welch coast.

"Carnarvon. – Yesterday the inhabitants of this city were witnesses to a grand but afflicting spectacle from the highlands of the coast. The steam-vessel, Halcyon, from the Isle of Wight, and bound to the north coast of Wales, was suddenly in mid-channel-when not a breath of wind ruffled the surface of the sea-driven into our bay. Scarcely had she rounded the point of Harlech when we beheld a column of smoke rising; and in a moment after a dreadful report, echoing from the mountains, made known that the powder magazine was blown up, and the ship shattered into fragments. The barks, which crowded to the spot from all quarters, found nothing but floating spars; and were soon compelled to return by the coming-on of a dreadful hurricane. Of the whole crew, and of sixty passengers (chiefly English people returning from France), not one is saved. It is said that a very atrocious criminal was on board the Halcyon. We look with the utmost anxiety for the details of this melancholy event."

To the grief of several noble families in England, this account was confirmed in its most dreadful circumstances. Some days after the bodies of Lord W-, and of Sir O- (that distinguished ornament for so long a period of the House of Commons), were found upon the rocks. So much were they disfigured, that it was with difficulty they were recognized.

On that day there stood upon the deck of the Halcyon a young man, who gazed on the distant coasts of Wales apparently with deep emotion. From this reverie he was suddenly roused as the ship whirled round with a hideous heaving. He turned, as did all the other passengers who had been attracted on deck by the beauty of the evening, to the man at the helm. He was in the act of stretching out his arms to the centre of the ship, whence a cloud of smoke was billowing upwards in voluminous surges: the passengers turned pale: the sailors began to swear: "It's all over!" they shouted: "old Davy has us. So huzza! let's have some sport as long as he leaves us any day-light." Amidst an uproar of voices the majority of the crew rushed below; stove in the brandy-casks; drank every thing they could find; and paid no sort of regard to the clamorous outcries of the passengers for help! help! except that here and there a voice replied-Help? There is no help: Old Nick will swallow us all; so let us swallow a little comfort first.

The master of the vessel, who retained most presence of mind, hurried on deck. With his sabre he made a cut at the ropes which suspended the boat: and, as he passed Bertram, the young man already mentioned (who in preparation for the approaching catastrophe had buckled about his person a small portmanteau and stood ready to leap into the boat), with a blow of his fist he struck him overboard. All this was the work of a minute.

Scarcely had the young man been swept to a little distance by a wave, when the ship blew up with a tremendous crash. The shattered ruins were carried aloft to an immense elevation: Bertram was stunned by the explosion: and, upon recovering his senses, he saw no object upon the surface of the waters: the ship had vanished; and nothing remained but a few spars floating in the offing.

Urgent distress throws us back upon our real and unfanciful wants. In the peril of the moment Bertram forgot all the prospects, sad or gay-painful or flattering, which had occupied his thoughts on board the ship; and exerted his utmost force to swim through the tumbling billows to a barrel at a little distance which appeared and disappeared at intervals, sometimes riding aloft, and sometimes hidden by the waves. At the moment when his powers began to fail him, he succeeded in reaching the barrel. – But scarcely had he laid hold of the outermost rim with both hands, when the barrel was swayed down from the opposite side. A shipwrecked man, whose long wet hair streamed down over his face, fixed his nails, as it were the talons of a vulture, on the hoops of the barrel; and by the energy of his gripe-it seemed as though he would have pressed them through the wood itself. – He was aware of his competitor: and he shook his head wildly to clear the hair out of his eyes-and opened his lips, which displayed his teeth pressed firmly together.

"No: though the d-l himself, – thou must down into the sea: for the barrel will not support both."

So speaking he shook the barrel with such force-that the young man, had he not been struggling with death, would have been pushed under water. Both pulled at the barrel for some minutes, without either succeeding in hoisting himself upon it. – In any further contest they seemed likely to endanger themselves or to sink together with the cask. They agreed therefore to an armistice. Each kept his hold by his right hand, – each raised his left aloft, and shouted for succour. But they shouted in vain; for the storm advanced, as if it heard and were summoned by the cry; the sky was black and portentously lurid; thunder now began to roll; and the waves, which had hardly moved before the explosion, raised their heads crested with foam more turbulently at every instant. "It is in vain," said the second man; "Heaven and Earth are against us: one or both must perish: Messmate, shall we go down together?"

At these words the wild devil all at once left loose of the barrel; by which means the other, who had not anticipated this movement, lost his balance, and was sinking. His antagonist made use of his opportunity. He dashed at the sinking man's throat-in order to drag him entirely under the water; but he caught only his neck-handkerchief, which luckily gave way. The other thus murderously assaulted, on finding himself at liberty for an instant, used his time, and sprang upon the barrel; and just as his desperate enemy was hazarding a new attack, in a death struggle he struck him with his clenched fist upon the breast; the wild man threw up his arms; groaned; sank back; – and the waves swallowed him up.

In the moments of mortal agony and conflict human laws cease, for punishments have lost their terrors; even higher laws are then silent. But, in the pauses of the struggle, the voice of conscience resumes its power, – and the heart of man again relents. As Bertram went rocking over the waves numbed in body and exhausted in spirits, all about him hideous gloom, and the fitful flashes of lightning serving but to light up the great world of terrors-this inner voice was not so silenced but that he felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of having destroyed the partner of his misfortunes. A few minutes however had scarcely passed before he heard a groaning near him. Happily at this instant a flash of lightning illuminated the surrounding tract of water; and he descried his antagonist still fighting with the waves: he was holding by a spar too weak to support his weight, but capable of assisting him in swimming. His powers were apparently failing him, as he looked up to his more fortunate enemy: He stretched out his hand to him, and said:

"Stranger! show me this pity. All is over with me; or in a moment will be: should you have a happier fate, take from my pocket-book this letter-and convey it to the lady. Oh! if thou hast ever loved, I beseech thee to do this: tell her that I never ceased to think of her-that I thought of her only when I was at the point of death: and, whatsoever I may have been to man, that to her I have been most faithful." With frantic efforts he strove to unclasp his pocket-book: but could not succeed. Bertram was deeply touched by the pallid and ghastly countenance of the man (in whose features however there was a wild and licentious expression which could not be mistaken); and he said to him:

"Friend below, if I should have better luck, I will endeavour to execute your commission. Meantime I can swim; and I have now rested myself. Give me your hand. You may come aloft; and I will take a turn in the waters until I am tired. In this way, by taking turn about, possibly both of us may be saved."

"What!" cried the other-"are you crazy? Or are there really men upon this earth such as books describe?"

"No matter: " said Bertram, "give me your hand; and spring up. I will catch at the barrel when I feel weak."

The other grasped the outstretched hand; and, supporting himself for a few moments upon his elbows, gradually ascended the barrel. Bertram, on his part, resigning the portmanteau to his companion, slipped off into the waves.

Meanwhile the storm continued, and the natural darkness of night was now blended with the darkness of tempest. After some minutes, the man, who was at present in possession of the barrel, began thus:

"You fool, below there, are you still alive?"

"Yes: but I am faint, and would wish to catch hold of the barrel again."

"Catch away then: – Do you know any thing of the sea hereabouts?"

"No: it was the first time in my life that I was ever on shipboard."

The other laughed. "You don't know it? Well! now I do: and I can tell you this: there's no manner of use in our plaguing ourselves, and spending the last strength we have in keeping ourselves afloat. I know this same sea as well as I know my own country: and I am satisfied that no deliverance is possible. There is not a spot of shore that we can reach-not a point of rock big enough for a sea-mew; and the only question for us is-whether we shall enter the fishes' maw alive or dead."

"It is still possible," said the other-"that some human brother may come to our assistance."

The other laughed again and said-"Human brother, eh? Methinks, my friend, you should be rather young in this world of ours-and have no great acquaintance with master man: I know the animal: and you may take my word for it, that, on such a night as this, no soul will venture out to sea. What man of sense indeed would hazard his life-for a couple of ragamuffins like you and me? and suppose he would, who knows but that it might be worse to fall into the hands of some men of sense than into the tender mercies of the sea? But I know a trick worth two of that."

"Tell it then."

"Let us leave fooling: This cask, on which I sit, to my knowledge contains rum; or arrack; which is as good. We can easily knock a hole in it; then make ourselves happy and bouzy-fling our arms about each other like brothers, and go down together to the bottom: after that, I think we shall neither trouble nor be troubled; for we shall hardly come up again, if we go down groggy."

"Shocking? why that's suicide!"

"Well! is your conscience so delicate and scrupulous? However as you please: for any thing I care, and as you like it better, some dog of a fish may do for us what we might as well have done for ourselves. But now come aloft, my darling. I'll take my turn at swimming-as long as the state of things will allow it; and wait for you below." They changed situations. – But even upon the barrel, Bertram began to feel his powers sinking. He clung as firmly as he could. But the storm grew more and more terrific: and many times he felt faint in his wild descents from the summit of some mounting wave into the yawning chasm below: Nature is benign even in the midst of her terrors: and, when horrors have been accumulated till man can bear no more, then his sufferings are relieved for a time by insensibility. On awakening it is true that the horrors will return; but the heart has gained fresh strength to support them.

So it fared with Bertram, who continued to grow fainter and fainter; until at length in the midst of silent prayer he finally lost all consciousness.

When Bertram next awoke from his fainting fit, he heard the sea no longer thundering about him, and no longer felt himself tossing upon its waves. There was darkness around him, but not the darkness of that mighty night which the elements in uproar form. What first met his eyes was the obscure outline of a rude hut. For a long time he stared without consciousness upon the rafters of the ceiling, on which fish and ragged aprons were hung up to dry, and swinging to and fro in the current of air. This monotonous motion, which under other circumstances might have lulled him to sleep like the ticking of a clock, gradually awoke him to entire consciousness. The awful scene, which had just passed over him, came up to his mind in sudden contrast with that bright moment on the deck of the Halcyon in which he had first beheld the coasts of Wales lying in sunshine before him; and his thoughts soon took a coherent arrangement; though he could not yet make out the connexion between the barrel on which he had navigated the ocean and his present bed, nor between that fearful night abroad and the dried herrings and patched aprons which now dangled above him. These thoughts however gave way at this moment to anxiety about his portmanteau. This to his great satisfaction he found beneath his head; and he now turned his attention to the other objects about him.

The cottage was of that humble order which in this kingdom are found only at the extremities of the Scotch Highlands, and tenanted by a race of paupers who gain a scanty subsistence from the limpits and other marine products which they take at low water. The frame-work of the hovel was rudely put together of undressed pine-boughs: the walls were a mixed composition of clay, turf, sea-weed, muscle-shells, and flints: timbers had been laid for the main-beams of a ceiling; but they were not connected by joists, nor covered in; so that the view was left open to the summit of the roof, which being composed of sedge and moss allowed a passage to the wind and rain. In the little room were hanging all kinds of utensils, but in so confused an arrangement and in so dubious a light that Bertram could make out but little of what he saw. The sole light in the hut proceeded from a fire in the corner. But this fire was so sparingly fed, that it seldom blazed up or shot forth a tongue of flame except when a draught of wind swept through; which however happened pretty often. The smoke escaped much less through the chimney than through the chinks of the wall; enveloping every object in a dusky shade, and deepening the gloom. Perfect silence reigned in the house; and no living creature appeared to be present. But once, when the fire happened to shoot forth a livelier gleam, the clouds of smoke parted and discovered a female countenance-old, and with striking features, and fixing a pair of large dark-grey eyes upon a pan or cauldron which hung over the fire. Sometimes, when a cloud of vapour arose from the pan, and collected in a corner into fantastic wreaths, she pursued it with her eyes, and a smile played over her withered cheeks: but, when it dispersed or escaped through the chinks, a low muttering and sometimes a moaning might be distinguished. She had, as Bertram observed, a spinning-wheel between her feet: but busy as her hands seemed, and mechanically in motion, it was evident that she did little or no work. At intervals she sang: but what she sang was more like a low muttered chaunt, than a regular song: at least Bertram understood not a word of it, if words they were that escaped her.

After one of these chaunts, the old woman rose suddenly from her seat, wrung her hands, seemed to trace strange circles in the air, and then scattered some substance into the fire which raised a sudden burst of flames that curled over the cauldron, lit up the house for a few moments, and then roaring up the chimney left all in greater darkness than before. During these few moments however Bertram had time to observe the whole appearance of the woman with some distinctness. She seemed to have the stature of a well-grown man; but her flesh had fallen away so remarkably that the red frieze gown which she wore hung in loose folds about her. Much as Bertram was shocked at first by the spectacle of her harsh bony lineaments, her fiery eye, and her grey disheveled hair, – he yet perceived in her face the traces of former beauty. She raised her bony arms, as if in supplication, to that quarter of the room where Bertram was lying: he perceived however that it was not himself, but some object near him which drew her attention. To his great alarm he now discovered close to himself a chair-the only one in the room, – and sitting upon it some motionless figure in the attitude of a living man. The old woman stretched out her hands with more and more earnestness to this object, as though she looked for some sign from it: but, receiving none, she struck her hands violently together; in a transport of rage upset the spinning-wheel; and fell back into her seat. If Bertram had at first felt compassion on witnessing the expressions of her grief and the anguish of her expectation, this feeling was soon put to flight by the frantic explosion of anger which followed. So great was his consternation that he resolved to attempt escaping unobserved from the cottage; and he first hoped to recover his full self-possession when he should find himself at liberty and in the open air. With this intention, it may be readily imagined how much his consternation was increased on finding himself unable to stir either hand or foot. His head even moved with difficulty: and it seemed as though no faculty had been left unaffected but that of eye-sight, which served but to torment him by bringing before him this scene of terror. He could almost have wished to exchange his present situation for his recent exposure to the fury of the elements. He attempted to sleep; but found himself unable; and after the lapse of two long hours he heard a knocking at the door.