The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands

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Robert Michael Ballantyne. The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands

Preface

Chapter One. Particular Inquiries

Chapter Two. The Floating Light Becomes the Scene of Floating Surmises and Vague Suspicions

Chapter Three. A Disturbed Night; a Wreck and an Unexpected Rescue

Chapter Four. A New Character Introduced

Chapter Five. More New Characters Introduced

Chapter Six. The Tempter and the Tempted

Chapter Seven. Treats of Queeker and Others—also of Youthful Jealousy, Love, Poetry, and Confusion of Ideas

Chapter Eight. The Sloop Nora—Mr Jones Becomes Communicative, and Billy Towler, for the First Time in his Life, Thoughtful

Chapter Nine. Mr Jones Takes Strong Measures to Secure his Ends, and Introduces Billy and his Friends to some New Scenes and Moments

Chapter Ten. Treats of Tender Subjects of a Peculiar Kind, and Shows how Billy Towler got into Scrapes and out of Them

Chapter Eleven. The Ancient Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond

Chapter Twelve. Strange Sights and Scenes on Land and Sea

Chapter Thirteen. Bob Queeker Comes out Very Strong Indeed

Chapter Fourteen. The Lamplighter at Home, and Threatening Appearances

Chapter Fifteen. A Night of Wreck and Disaster—The Gull “Comes to Grief.”

Chapter Sixteen. Getting Ready for Action

Chapter Seventeen. The Battle

Chapter Eighteen. Shows that there are no Effects without Adequate Causes

Chapter Nineteen. Confidences and Cross Purposes

Chapter Twenty. Mysterious Doings

Chapter Twenty One. On the Scent

Chapter Twenty Two. Mr Jones is Outwitted, and Nora is left Desolate

Chapter Twenty Three. Tells of an Unlooked-for Return, and Describes a Great Feast

Chapter Twenty Four. Conclusion

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A light—clear, ruddy and brilliant, like a huge carbuncle—uprose one evening from the deep, and remained hovering about forty feet above the surface, scattering its rays far and wide, over the Downs to Ramsgate and Deal, along the coast towards Dover, away beyond the North Foreland, across the Goodwin Sands, and far out upon the bosom of the great North Sea.

It was a chill November evening, when this light arose, in the year—well, it matters not what year. We have good reasons, reader, for shrouding this point in mystery. It may have been recently; it may have been “long, long ago.” We don’t intend to tell. It was not the first time of that light’s appearance, and it certainly was not the last. Let it suffice that what we are about to relate did happen, sometime or other within the present century.

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The vessel in which he found himself was not by any means what we should style clipper-built—quite the reverse. It was short for its length, bluff in the bows, round in the stern, and painted all over, excepting the mast and deck, of a bright red colour, like a great scarlet dragon, or a gigantic boiled lobster. It might have been mistaken for the first attempt in the ship-building way of an infatuated boy, whose acquaintance with ships was founded on hearsay, and whose taste in colour was violently eccentric. This remarkable thing had one immense mast in the middle of it, supported by six stays, like the Norse galleys of old, but it had no yards; for, although the sea was indeed its home, and it incessantly braved the fury of the storm, diurnally cleft the waters of flood and ebb-tide, and gallantly breasted the billows of ocean all the year round, it had no need of sails. It never advanced an inch on its course, for it had no course. It never made for any port. It was never either homeward or outward bound. No streaming eyes ever watched its departure; no beating hearts ever hailed its return. Its bowsprit never pointed either to “Greenland’s icy mountains, or India’s coral strand,” for it had no bowsprit at all. Its helm was never swayed to port or starboard, although it had a helm, because the vessel turned submissive with the tides, and its rudder, being lashed hard and fast amidships—like most weather-cocks—couldn’t move. Its doom was to tug perpetually, day and night, from year to year, at a gigantic anchor which would not let go, and to strain at a monster chain-cable which would not snap—in short, to strive for ever, like Sisyphus, after something which can never be attained.

A sad destiny, some may be tempted to exclaim. No, reader, not so sad as it appears. We have presented but one side of the picture. That curious, almost ridiculous-looking craft, was among the aristocracy of shipping. Its important office stamped it with nobility. It lay there, conspicuous in its royal colour, from day to day and year to year, to mark the fair-way between the white cliffs of Old England and the outlying shoals—distinguished in daylight by a huge ball at its mast-head, and at night by a magnificent lantern with argand lamps and concave reflectors, which shot its rays like lightning far and wide over the watery waste, while, in thick weather, when neither ball nor light could be discerned, a sonorous gong gave its deep-toned warning to the approaching mariner, and let him know his position amid the surrounding dangers. Without such warnings by night and by day, the world would suffer the loss of thousands of lives and untold millions of gold. Indeed the mere absence of such warnings for one stormy night would certainly result in loss irreparable to life and property. As well might Great Britain dispense with her armies as with her floating lights! That boiled-lobster-like craft was also, if we may be allowed to say so, stamped with magnanimity, because its services were disinterested and universal. While other ships were sailing grandly to their ports in all their canvas panoply, and swelling with the pride of costly merchandise within, each unmindful of the other, this ship remained floating there, destitute of cargo, either rich or poor, never in port, always on service, serene in all the majesty of her one settled self-sacrificing purpose—to guide the converging navies of the world safely past the dangerous shoals that meet them on their passage to the world’s greatest port, the Thames, or to speed them safely thence when outward-bound. That unclipperly craft, moreover, was a gallant vessel, because its post was one of danger. When other ships fled on the wings of terror—or of storm trysails—to seek refuge in harbour and roadstead, this one merely lengthened her cable—as a knight might shake loose the reins of his war-horse on the eve of conflict—and calmly awaited the issue, prepared to let the storm do its worst, and to meet it with a bold front. It lay right in the Channel, too, “i’ the imminent deadly breach,” as it were, prepared to risk encounter with the thousands of ships, great and small, which passed to and fro continually;—to be grazed and fouled by clumsy steersmen, and to be run into at night by unmanageable wrecks or derelicts; ready for anything in fact—come weal come woe, blow high blow low—in the way of duty, for this vessel was the Floating Light that marked the Gull-stream off the celebrated and fatal Goodwin Sands.

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