Читать книгу A Dream of the North Sea - James Runciman - Страница 11

Table of Contents

A NEAR THING.

Ferrier was anything but a fatalist, yet he had a happy and useful way of taking short views of life. In times of extreme depression he used to say to himself, "Things seem black just now, but I know when I get over the trouble I shall look over the black gap of misery and try to imagine what is on the other side." It is a good plan. Many a suicide would have been averted if the self-slain beings had chosen to take a short view instead of harbouring visions of huge banked-up troubles.

No young fellow was ever in a much more awkward position than that of Ferrier. The Haughty Belle smack, in spite of her highly fashionable name, was one of the ramshackle tubs which still contrive to escape the censure of the Board of Trade; and Bill Larmor, the skipper, skilful as he was, could not do himself justice in a craft that wallowed like a soaked log. Then poor Withers, the maimed man, was a constant care; all the labour of two hands at the pumps was of little avail, and, last of all, the unhappy little boy could hardly count at all as a help.

But the bricklayer's saying, "It's dogged as does it," holds all over the world, and brave men drive death and despair back to their fastnesses. Ferrier thought, "I'm all well except for the active inhabitants of the cabin. They seem to be colonizing my person and bringing me under cultivation; barring that I'm not so ill off. If I can ease my patient, that is something to the good." So he claimed the boy's assistance for the night, and determined to divide his time between soothing Withers and lending a hand on deck. Skipper Larmor was composed, as men of his class generally are; you rarely hear them raise their voices, and they seldom show signs of being flurried. As quietly as though he had been wishing his passenger good evening, he said—

"We're blowing away from them, sir, and we can't du much. I hope the yacht will be able to stand by us. Later on we'll show them a few flares, and if things get over and above bad I must send some rockets up."

"I'm mainly anxious about my man below. If we only had any kind of easy mattress for him I should not be so anxious, but he's thrown about, and every bad jerk that comes wakes him out of his doze. A healthy life-guardsman would be helpless after one night like this!"

"As I said, sir; Lord, help us; we must bear what's sent."

The Haughty Belle became more and more inert, and the breeze grew more and more powerful. The Mediterranean is like a capricious woman; the North Sea is like a violent and capricious man. The foredoomed smack was almost like a buoy in a tideway; the sea came over her, screaming as it met her resistance, like the back-draught among pebbles. Ferrier found to his dismay that, even if he wanted to render any assistance, he was too much of a landsman to keep his feet in that inexorable cataract, and he saw, too, that the vessel was gradually rolling more and more to starboard. The pumps were mastered, and even on deck the ugly squelch, squelch of the mass of water below could be heard. Every swing of that liquid pendulum smote on our young man's heart, and he learned, in a few short hours, the meaning of Death.

Can a seaman be other than superstitious or religious? The hamper of ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes of a mortal's life. The Cockney poet sings—

"A cheer for the hard, glad weather,

The quiver and beat of the sea!"

Shade of Rodney! What does the man know about it? If his joints were aching and helpless with the "hardness," he would not think the weather so "glad"; if the "beat of the sea" made every nerve of him quiver with the agony of salt-water cracks, I reckon he would want to go home to his bath and bed; and if the savage combers gnashed at him like white teeth of ravenous beasts, I take it that his general feelings of jollity would be modified; while last of all, if he saw the dark portal—goal of all mortals—slowly lifting to let him fare on to the halls of doom, I wager that poet would not think of rhymes. If he had to work!—But no, a real sea poet does not work.

Ferrier was a good and plucky man, but the moments went past him, leaving legacies of fear. Was he to leave the kindly world? Oh! thrilling breath of spring, gladness of sunlight, murmur of trees, gracious faces of women! Were all to be seen no more? Every joyous hour came back to memory; every ungrateful thought spoken or uttered was now remembered with remorse. Have you looked in the jaws of death? I have, and Ferrier did so. When the wheels of being are twirling slowly to a close, when the animal in us is cowed into stupor, then the spirit craves passionately for succour; and let a man be never so lightsome, he stretches lame hands of faith and gropes, even though he seem to gather but dust and chaff.

Roar on roar, volley on volley, sweep on sweep of crying water—so the riot of the storm went on; the skipper waited helplessly like a dumb drudge, and a hand of ice seemed to clutch at Ferrier's heart.

He went down to see Withers and found him patient as before.

"She du seem to have got a lot of water in her, sir. I never felt quite like this since once I was hove down. Say, here, sir."

The man spoke with a husky voice.

"If so be you has to try the boat, don't you mind me. If you try to shove me aboard you'll lose your lives. I've thought it round, and, after all, they say it's only three minutes."

"But, my man, we won't leave you; besides, she's not gone yet. A tub will float in a seaway; why shouldn't the vessel?"

"I knows too much, sir, too much. Excuse me, sir, have you done what they call found Christ? I'm not much in that line myself, but don't you think maybe an odd word wouldn't be some help like in this frap? I'm passin' away, and I don't want to leave anything out."

Lewis slipped up on deck and signed for Larmor.

"Our man wants to pray. Don't you think we may all meet? You can do nothing more than let the vessel drift. Leave one hand here ready to show a flare, and come down." "I don't much understand it, sir; but Bob and me will come."

Then, knee deep in water, the forlorn little company prayed together. I do not care to report such things—it verges on vulgarism; but I will tell you a word or two that came from the maimed man. "O Lord, give me a chance if you see fit; but let me go if any one is to go, and save my commerades. I've been a bad 'un, and I haven't no right to ask nothing. Save the others, and, if I have no chance in this world of a better life, give me a look in before you take me."

Who could smile at the gruff, innocent familiarity? A very great poet has said, "Consort much with powerful uneducated persons." Fellows like Withers make one believe this.

The prayer was not, perhaps, intelligent; but He who searches the hearts would rightly appraise those words, "I've been a bad 'un." Ferrier felt lightened, and he shook hands with Larmor before they once more faced the war of the night.

The fire was out, it was bitter chill, yet hope was left— a faint sparkle—but still a stay for the soul of the tempest-tossed men. The climax of the breeze seemed approaching at four o'clock; and, as Larmor said, "it couldn't be very much worse." The skipper was then hanging as he best could to the mizen rigging; Lewis had his arms tightly locked on the port side round the futtock shrouds, and was cowering to get clear of the scourging wind. There was a wild shriek forward.

"Water, skipper!"

Lewis looked up. There it was, as high as the mast-head, compact as a wall, and charging with the level velocity of a horse regiment. The doctor closed his eyes and thought, "Now for the grand secret." Then came the immense pressure—the convulsive straining, the failing light, the noise in the ears. First the young man found himself crushed under some strangling incubus; then, with a shrieking gasp, he was in the upper air. But he was under a hamper of ropes that strung him down as if he were in a coop, and his dulled senses failed for a moment to tell what ailed him. At last, after seconds that seemed like ages, it dawned on him; the masts had snapped like carrots, both were over the side, and the hulk was only a half-sunken plaything for the seas to hurl hither and thither. Larmor? Gone! How long? These things chased each other through his dim mind; he slipped his arm out and crept clear; then a perception struck him with the force of a material thing; a return wave leaped up with a slow, spent lunge on the starboard side, and a black something—wreckage? No. A shudder of the torn nerves told the young man what it was. He slid desperately over and made his clutch; the great backwash seemed as though it would tear his arm out of the socket, but he hung on, and presently a lucky lift enabled him to haul Larmor on board! All this passed in a few lying instants, but centuries— aeons—could not count its length in the anguish-stricken human soul.

I once knew a sailor who was washed through a port in a Biscay gale; the return sea flung him on board again. I asked, "What did you think?"

He answered, "I thought, 'I'm overboard.'"

"And when you touched deck again, what did you think?"

"I thought, 'Blowed if I'm not aboard again.'"

"Did the time seem long?"

"Longer than all my lifetime."

Not more than half a minute had passed since the hulk shook herself clear, but Larmor and Lewis had lived long. The doctor took out the handy flask and put it to the skipper's lips; the poor man's eyes were bright and conscious, but his jaw hung. He pointed to his chin, and the doctor knew that the blow of falling mast or wreckage had dislocated the jaw.

In all the wide world was there such another drama of peril and tenor being enacted? Lewis's hands almost refused their office; he was unsteady on his legs, but he gathered his powers with a desperate effort of the will, and set the man's jaw. "Stop, stop! You mustn't speak. Wait." With a dripping handkerchief and his own belt Ferrier bound Larmor's jaw up; then for the first time he looked for the fellows forward.

Both gone! Oh! friends who trifle cheerily with that dainty second course, what does your turbot cost? Reckon it up by rigid arithmetic, and work out the calculation when you are on your knees if you can. All over the North Sea that night there were desolate places that rang to the cry of parting souls; after vain efforts and vain hopes, the drowning seamen felt the last lethargy twine like a cold serpent around them; the pitiless sea smote them dumb; the pitiless sky, rolling over just and unjust, lordly peer and choking sailor, gave them no hope; there was a whole tragedy in the breasts of all those doomed ones—a tragedy keen and subtle as that enacted when a Kaiser dies. You may not think so, but I know. Forlorn hope of civilization, they met the onset of the sea and quitted themselves like men; and, when the proud sun rose at last, the hurrying, plundering, throbbing, straining world of men went on as usual; the lovers spoke sweet words; the strong man rejoiced exceedingly in his strength; the portly citizen ordered his fish for dinner, and the dead fishermen wandered hither and thither in the dark sea-depths, their eyes sealed with the clammy ooze.

That is an item in the cost of fish which occurs to a prosaic arithmetician.

Lewis Ferrier had certainly much the worst so far in his defensive battle with wind and wave. Here was a landsman on a swept hulk with a dumb captain, a maimed man; two hands overboard, and a boy as the available ship's company. Never mind. He got Larmor below, and the dogged skipper made signs by hissing and moving his fist swiftly upward. "The rockets?" Larmor nodded, and pointed to a high locker. Lewis found the rockets easily enough; he also found a ginger-beer bottle full of matches; but of what use would matches be in that torrent of blown spray? The cabin was worse awash than ever, and there was no possibility of making a fire. Ferrier felt in his inside breast pocket. Ah! the tin box of fusees was there—all dry and sound inside. He beckoned Larmor, and signed to him expressively; then he crouched under the hatch and pressed the flaming ball to the root of the rocket. One swing, and the rushing messenger was through the curtain of drift, and away in the upper air. Larmor clapped his poor hands and bowed graciously. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes they waited; no reply came. With steadiness born of grim despair the doctor sent away another rocket. With fiercely eager eyes he and Larmor strove to pierce the lashing mist, and then!—oh, yes, the long crimson stream flew, wavered in the gale, and broke into scattered star-drift. Larmor and the doctor put their arms round each other and sobbed. Then they told poor death-like Withers, and his wan eyes flickered with the faint image of a smile. Ferrier gave him the remainder of the wine, and the helpless seaman patted his benefactor's hand like a pleased child.

The gale dropped as suddenly as it had risen, but it left an immense smooth sea behind, for the whole impetus of two successive breezes had set the surface water hurling along, and it mostly takes a day to smooth the tumult down.

To say that the Haughty Belle was in danger would be to put the matter mildly; the wonder was that she did not settle sooner. The only hope was that the wind might bring the signalling vessel down before it fell away altogether.

Larmor pointed to the boat (which had remained sound for a mercy), and the doctor saw that he wanted her got ready. He sung out to the boy, "Ask Withers to steady himself the best way he can, and you come up and tell me how to clear the boat." Only one of the wire ropes needed to be thrown off; then the boy squeaked shrilly, "Make the painter fast to a belaying-pin for fear a sea lifts the boat over," and then Ferrier was satisfied. His strength was like the strength of madness, and he felt sure that he could whirl the boat over the side himself without the aid of the falls. His evolutions while he was working on the swashing deck were not graceful or dignified, but he was pleased with himself; the fighting spirit of Young England was roused in him, and, in spite of numbing cold, the bite of hunger, and all his bruises, he sang out cheerily, "Never mind, skipper; I'll live to be an old salt yet."

Only one quarter of an hour passed, and then a vessel came curtseying gracefully down.

"What's that?" shouted Ferrier.

Larmor pointed to the questioner.

"Do you mean it's the yacht?"

The skipper nodded. The doctor would have fallen had he not brought all his force to bear; the strain was telling hard, and soon Lewis Ferrier's third stage of education was too be completed.

The schooner swam swiftly on, like a pretty swan. Ah! sure no ship come to bear the shipwrecked men to fairyland could have seemed lovelier than that good, solid yacht. Right alongside she came, on the leeward quarter of the hulk. Four ladies were on deck.

"Ah! the invalid ghosts are up. That ship hasn't suffered very much," said Lewis.

When Tom Lennard caught sight of Ferrier he gathered his choicest energies together for the production of a howl. This vocal effort is stated by competent critics to have been the most effective performance ever achieved by the gifted warbler. He next began a chaste but somewhat too vigorous war-dance, but this original sign of welcome was soon closed by a specially vindictive roll of the vessel, and Thomas descended to the scuppers like another Icarus.