Читать книгу The Island Providence - Frederick Niven - Страница 9

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On the morrow there was great to-do on the north coast. The people were flocking shoreward like vultures to a carcase; for in the night a ship had been driven on to the Abbotsbury rocks, and there was spoil to be obtained. Early in the day a lad went posting south past the Upcott farm, coming from the cliffs. He was breathing hard with haste and anger and Mrs. Upcott saw him and asked the cause of his disarrangement.

He spluttered some words about a fight on the shore and how he had secured a couple of hogsheads, of what he did not say; how two brothers of a neighbouring family had wrested his trove from him by weight of numbers. "We'll show en," he ended and ran on grunting to summon his kin.

From any vantage point you could see, all morning, the people coming by lane and across country, hurrying nearer to the roar of the sea and to the sea's offering.

Upcott senior snatched his hat. "By God," said he, "if there be all them cooming over she be worth pillaging."

"Tom!" said Mrs. Upcott, distressed—the father's name, which the oldest son also bore—"Tom!" she said again and looked on her husband with speaking eyes.

"Well 'ooman," he cried, for he understood her; and then: "What for do you think God gave we a rough foreshore if it wasn't to have the wreckings?" For he loved to wound her, soul and body. "Anyhow, if the rest be pillagin' you don't find Upcott hangin' back."

She moved toward him and laid hands timidly and yet bravely on his shoulders.

"Tom," she said. "Would a Shebbeare or a Rawleigh, or a Leigh, or a Stucley do the like of this?"

"Those are gentry names," he growled; "I'm not gentry. You'm a kind of a half-gentry 'ooman yourself; and what's the good of half-gentry? What's the good of a thing that gives you big ideas and nothing more?"

That was the man! She had known it for long; but to hear his own voice speak so, growl it so upon her, his credo, gave her a sense of hopelessness. She thought he had not always been like that.

"Of course they'd go wrecking—if they wasn't gentry," he said moving from her.

"I can tell you," she replied, "that on this very shore a Stucley has gone down with one or two lads that he had sworn expressly, at the first sign of a wreck, to protect the stranger within our gates. Yes, he has stood over the goods washed ashore with a brave, trusty lad or two, musket and cutlass in hand, for no prize, for no prize—for nothing—as you say. And you know that, for you have seen it; and you have seen how Shebbeare of Abbotsbury——"

"Talking about muskets and cutlasses puts me in mind," said Upcott. "It is sometimes rough at a wrecking;" and so saying he took his fowling piece from the rack and brought the butt down with a clash on the ash-lime floor. He saw to the priming in silence, his bearing uncouth, he feeling uncouth, like a shaggy, whipped dog; but looking at his wife now and then as he made his preparation, his pale eyes blinking at her.

Then he threw the piece into the crook of his left arm and flung up his right, half turned to go, as though to deliver a backward blow on his wife. But she did not waver. Then he swung out and was gone.

Meanwhile on the shore the wreckage was coming with every wave.

The ship lay, piled up, side on to the rocks. There was a waterfall running over her waist, for so quickly did surging wave follow on surging wave that you might have thought she gushed a fountain from her holds. You could count her pierces from the land: she was pierced for twenty guns but, with the list she had and the way she was broken, you could see she had but six carriage guns. As like as not she never had more than these six; for a formidable exterior did not necessarily imply a formidable armament. Or perhaps some of her guns had gone by the board in the sea-battle of the night—the ship's battle with the sea.

Of her cargo one could tell now, for it was piled upon the shingle here and there, beyond the clutching, grasping waves, by the clutching, grasping hands of the wreckers, such of it as had come ashore.

There were as many as five hundred persons under cliff already and others a-top. These were principally the women-folk, for the women of Devon are the purse-holders. A man may toil but woman will see that there be no foolish spending and she will see to the storage and the increase. And new arrivals came constantly. The little bay was black with them; they were in the very waves, borne from their feet fighting for the spoils. "Up over cliff" the colleagues of those below were dragging up with the ship's own ropes—cut from her beached masts and rigging—their trove, and guarding it, each over his kindred's spoil to keep and hold, if he had the power. The excitement grew more intense.

"Get back from our rope!" screamed two men, father and son, as they strove to pull up a too heavy load and helpers came towards them; for they knew that if a man helped he would demand his share. But those who had run forward to assist stood back straightway—again because they saw the task was too great for the two. And sure enough they had the amusement of beholding father and son jerked from their legs and going over cliff to scatter their brains with the scattered spoil.

So things went on. And with the shore in such a state one is hardly surprised to know that though a barrel was worth the grappling a mariner swept cliffwards could look after himself.

One of these chance comers lightened the tedium of toil: a score of times he grasped a rock near shore; a score of times the sea dragged him back. At last he held; and then, when the wave swung back unsuccessful, he leapt for the further shingle and began to move his legs as one trying to run. But he ran like a squirrel on a revolving wheel. He was too exhausted to run; he but marked time; and the next wave flung him down, drew him back in the undertow, throttled him and made an end of his playing the part of the clown who gets hurt for the delectation of the onlookers.

The ship was a trader, laden with coffee, chocolate, staves, sugar and rum, but her main lading was tobacco. The rum was already broached, to warm the wreckers.

The master of the vessel had been washed from the wreck, a lean, gesticulating Frenchman, with a face then like a death's head, and his collar bones showing like the crossed bones on tombs. He was worn with the night and the morning, and God knows how he dragged himself from the beach, clutching at the great pebbles, stumbled upward, came to his feet. No mortal aided him.

"Get out o' my way," cried one, thrusting aside the master, and plunging, clattering, after a shore-coming cask. The Frenchman tottered. He understood, to the full, his position.

His chin was on his chest with exhaustion, but he rose brokenly to his knees, to his feet. He drew plaintively, brokenly erect. His legs were tottering; but he looked with his brown-red eyes on the wreckers and waved his arm to them, crooked it out like a tentacle, snapped his ringers and showed gripping jaws and the sneer of his people.

"Dogs! English dogs!" he cried, and Thomas Upcott smote him over the head so that he fell dead on the pebbles.

Meanwhile up at the farm was another scene.

Mrs. Upcott sat staring before her with dull eyes. John went to her.

"Mother," he said; "I know how you feel."

"We had gentry blood in our veins—my people," she said.

"Then it is in mine," said he.

"Iss, boy," she said. Was it the gentry blood in her veins that caused her in that moment of all moments to "talk Devonsheer?" For the gentry blood loves its land with a great, simple love.

"I will go down to the cliffs and see what I can do," said John resolutely.

Her heart lightened at that. Lightened! In a flash she saw that her son was not going to disappoint her prayers. For the son who plunged his teeth in an adversary's neck once—though she had never heard that tale—was a son she had seen and taken note of—and laid before the Lord in prayers when she woke at dawn, and in the white but not yet crimsoned sky saw the white of the buttresses of the Throne. Then came an idea.

"I shall go down," she said, for she made a quick mental picture of the lad, her stripling, at the beach, and she feared he could do but little. But a woman? A woman? Was not here the high place of woman? Was not it in such passes that woman took her place, not by might, not by right even, but by the divinity in her and touched the God in men?

"No, no, mother!" cried Sis, coming forward. "No, no; you cannot, mother."

And indeed the mother could not, for she but took a step and fell in a swoon into the arms of her children.

They brought restoratives and as she came round, her eyes fluttering open saw John standing over her anxiously. "I am all right," she said. "Go, lad—to help the stranger within our gates and to uphold the honour of your mother's name, and of Devon."

So John went out and hastened to his counsellor's cot.

First he would go to Uncle's for advice. In the last resort—his heart leapt and then beat evenly and the God in him stirred—in the last resort he would go down alone and say the things he knew his mother would have him say—and be killed; and there was a kind of balm, despite his eager years, in the thought that so would he have an end not inglorious. O, youth!

Shaggy fellows were running and panting on the slopes and all with that heavy, intent look of men very keenly bent upon their own affairs—and devil take you!

An old crone tottering downward in the rough lane (drawn thither in what design?) as he passed her, turned her head to see who came. She curtseyed when she saw his face.

"Pretty youth," said she, "there will be fortunes to be told to-day."

He was about to hurry on when her voice arrested him:

"Tell your fortune, pretty youth?"

"I am in haste," he said.

"It will but take a moment or two," she said.

Well, he was going out into he knew not what of to-day's occurrences, and was on the threshold of unknown life.

He stopped to know his fate, or at least to hear what the woman had to say and judge if there were any value in her words.

She took his hand in her old gnarled and brown one.

"There be foreign blood in your veins," she said. "You am come of a mixed race. You have but newly left a mother ill. Be I right?"

"Yes," he said, half interested.

"She 'm some better now. Your sister tends her."

Upcott looked keenly on the old dame's face. She smiled wanly. "Be I right?" she said.

"Yes."

"You have an elder brother. Be I right?"

"Yes."

"He has gone over the seas."

"No, he hasn't," said Upcott, relieved to find her in error for some reason; "he is over to Hartland."

"Oh," she said, "is that where he was? Well, he be gone now—with a silver crucifix on his hairy breast."

"Oh, not he. We are not Papists."

The dame paid no heed.

"You will never speak to him again but you will see him and not know him."

"Oh, that will do," said he and made to withdraw his hand from this folly. But the old dame arrested him again with:

"He has gone away with a young man a little older than you, a man with high cheek bones and little peeping eyes and rough hair, a big made, cheery, masterless kind of a lad."

The picture would fit Ravenning, and Upcott delayed, held again. He bethought him that he had not seen Ravenning for some days.

"You have a soft place in your heart for a fair girl; you have quarrelled—no, you have not quarrelled; but for some cause you do not understand—you do not see much of each other now, and when you do you feel a something between. You will come together again—iss, come together again—years after. You will go over the sea first—come together—iss—come together again—why, bhoy, you have a curious line, you have. You will love two other women. One you will never say but three words to and the other you will know. You am a strange lad. You do have a strange hand. Eh! But you have a far ways to travel!" She paused, gazing on the hand, not at all dreaming, but with a kind of concentration of gaze that seemed not for the hand but for something beyond. "God save us!" she ejaculated suddenly.

"What is it, good woman?" he cried, for she impressed him.

"You will be the death of one near to you," she said.

"Who?" he cried almost roughly.

"One near to you," she said with a tone as of impregnable indifference. He felt that he need not try to have an answer to his question. She dropped his hand and her face was transformed. She was but, again, as when he had made up on her, an old whining beldam with lice in her matted hair.

"Pretty sir, give me something," she said.

He gave her all he had and ran on to Uncle's, through a world that did not matter much either way, and wished he had not seen the old crone.

By the door of Uncle's cot were leant two fowling-pieces and for a moment a dread came to Upcott that the wreckers running to their Domdaniel along the cliffs, had, in their demoniac mood, set on the old man. And then he heard a voice in the cot, high and resonant and masterful in a kind of wild glee. Then the voice stopped; and anon Upcott, as he came to the door, heard it begin again, the same voice, but now recognisable for Uncle's own, declaiming:

"Give me my scallop shell of quiet

My staff of Faith to walk upon."

And looking into the place—there was the old man buckling on "the Turk's sword" that had hung for ornament on his wall, a sword found on the Portledge shore.

Then the old man heard him and turned about, head thrown back, his mane flung from his brows as waves from a galleon prow, his whole sturdy and ageing figure squared and resolute.

"Ah," said he and having buckled his sword he lifted his musket, intent on his employ, and set about loading from his powder horn.

"What's this?" said Upcott.

"Rawleigh," answered the old man ramming home the charge, "would have gone down and stopped that," he indicated with a jerk of his head the trouble westwards. "Rawleigh was a poet. I have been talking over to myself some of his verses, the wonderful things he wrote. Poetry, sir, is not inimical to action but is the spring of every noble action, as it is of every high renunciation. Fools live in a world of confused thoughts. They do not understand the secrets of life."

"You were going——?" began Upcott.

"I am going, sorr," said the old man, broadening his speech in the way he had that the Irish had taught him. And he shouldered his musket and at the door caught up in the other hand the two fowling-pieces.

"Alone?" said Upcott.

"As you please," said Uncle. "I had thought to go down and talk to them sanely and wisely; but what avail sanity and wisdom to men who have left their souls in the devil's closet till they come home a-Sunday. I am glad you are not with them," he added.

"I?" cried John.

The old man made an inclination of his head as of deference.

"I am old enough," said he, "to have lost all faiths. I live among their ruins."

Then Upcott in his quick, jerky way told his tale. The old man blinked his eyes of their moisture.

"I am glad," he said. "Oh, this has all happened before. It happens every winter. Last winter there were fifteen such wrecks, mostly Bristol ships and Barnstaple and Bideford, one Dutchman and one French, of the French trading people. It made no difference here. What are blood and country? The sea is more salt than blood." The old man flung up his head. "Last time I swore after it was over that I would go down and see if I could not help in the next disaster. I spoke to some afterwards, but what was that? The coward's way. Shebbeare came over from Northam once and stopped them and they railed on him—told him time was the gentry took the gentry's share. But he had his way. The sailors were rescued and he took them up and fed them and tended them. But still the spectacle of the grasping, to say no more, was bad—ah, bad sir, bad. The grasping spirit is to me a more repulsive sin than most of those we call the major sins. After all, you find that what men have called sins are the things that may hit back on them—things with a penalty. It won't do, sir. It won't do. Believe me—the clutching spirit, the grasp all we can and look for more is a hideous, repulsive sin. Now I am going down. I shall try talk, and if that fails, well, I shall use force—use force." He must have here felt the ridiculous side of it. "And I shall die at least and not live on ashamed. I swore last storm to do this with the first wreck that came ashore, English, or Scots trader, or French, or Dutch—aye, were it a rover of Salee. Come! I see you are armed with your pistols. Here is a fowling-piece. It is loaded with about twenty slugs."

They marched briskly along and athwart the slopes, the old man in a divine madness, the youth in a mortal coldness; and as they came in sight of the wreck threshing itself to death on Abbotsbury Reef and saw the moving concourse on the pebbles and the cliffs the old man whipped round.

"We shall have to use skilful tactics," said he. "We shall give them but one offer of peace else our case is lost. Once we show our hand we are lost if they get round us. We shall get upon this nigh point, which is, as you might say, a strategic position, one difficult on which to attempt the escalada. From thence we shall hail them; and if they meet our suggestions with derision we shall let them see our armament and inform them that if they do not make the saving of the seamen, instead of the salving of the wreckage, their main endeavour, we shall fire on the first man to touch so much as a hogshead."

A chance of peace! Two against five hundred! And give them a chance of peace! Still—that was Grenville's way. And who knows what may not be done with a rough crew when the right man comes on deck?