Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen! - William Clark Russell - Страница 6

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There was plenty of lightning, some of the flashes near, and the sky overhead was soot. But the thunder was not constant. It growled at intervals afar, now and again burst at the distance of a mile, but without tropic noise. It seemed to me that the electric mess was silting away north, and that there would come a clear sky in the south presently, with a breeze from that quarter.

This being my notion, I stepped out vigorously, with a punch-inspired lift of my feet, as I made for the sand hills, singing a jolly sailor’s song as I marched, but not thinking of the words I sang. No, nothing while I marched and sang aloud could I think of but the snug and fragrant parlor I had quitted and Uncle Joe’s hearty reception and his promises.

When I was got upon the sand hills I wished I had stuck to the road. It was the hills, not the sand, that bothered me. I soared and sank as I went, and presently my legs took a feeling of twist in them, as though they had been corkscrews; but I pushed on stoutly, making a straight course for the sea, where the lightning would give me a frequent sight of the scene of Downs; where I should be able to taste the first of the air that blew and hit its quarter to a point; and where, best of all, the sand hardened into beach.

But oh, my God, now, as I walked along! think! it flung out of the darkness within pistol shot, clear in the wild blue of a flash of lightning. It stood right in front of me. I was walking straight for it; I should have seen it, without the help of lighting, in a few more strides; the sand went away in a billowy glimmer to the wash of the black water, and a kind of light of its own came up out of it, in which the thing would have shown, had I advanced a few paces.

It was a gibbet with a man hanging at the end of the beam, his head coming, according to the picture printed upon my vision by that flash of lightning, within a hand breadth of the piece of timber he dangled at, whence I guessed, with the velocity of thought, that he had been cut down and then tucked up afresh in irons or chains.

I came to a stand as though I had been shot, waiting for another glance of lightning to reveal the ghastly object afresh. I had forgotten all about this gibbet. Had a thought of the horror entered my head—that head which had been too full of the fumes of rum punch to yield space for any but the cheeriest, airiest imaginations—I should have given these sand hills the widest berth which the main road provided. I was no coward; but, Lord! to witness such a sight by a stroke of lightning! I say it was as unexpected a thing to my mood, at that moment of its revelation by lightning, as though not a word had been said about it at my uncle’s, and as though I had entered the sand hills absolutely ignorant that a man hung in chains on a gibbet, within shy of a stone from the water.

This ignorance it was that dyed the memorable rencounter to a complexion of darkest horror to every faculty that I could collect. While I paused, breathing very short, hearing no sound but the thunder and the pitting of the rain on the sand, and the whisper of the surf along the beach, a vivid stroke of lightning flashed up the gibbet; there was an explosion aloft; rain fell with a sudden fury, and the hail so drummed upon my hat that I lost the noise of the surf in the sound. A number of flashes followed in quick succession, and by the dazzle I beheld the gibbet and its ghastly burden as clearly as though the sun was in the sky.

The figure hung in chains; the bight of the chain passed under the fork betwixt the thighs, and a link on either hand led through an iron collar, which clasped the neck of the body, the head lolling over and looking sideways down, and the two ends of the chain met in a ring, held by a hook, secured by a nut on top of the timber projection. But what was that at the foot of the gibbet? I believed, at first, that it was a strengthening piece, a big block or pile of wood designed to join and secure the bare, black, horrible post from which the beam pointed like some frightful spirit finger, seaward, as though death’s skeleton arm held up a dead man to the storm.

This was my belief. I was now fascinated and stood gazing, watching the fearful thing as it came and went with the lightning.

Do you know those Deal sand hills? A desolate, dreary waste they are, on the brightest of summer mornings, when the lark’s song falls like an echo from the sky, when the pale and furry shadows of rabbits blend with the sand, till they look mere eyes against what they watch you from, when the flavor of seaweed is shrewd in the smell of the warm and fragrant country. But visit them at midnight, stand alone in the heart of the solitude of them and realize then—but, no, not even then could you realize—the unutterably tragic significance imported into those dim heaps of faintness, dying out at a short distance in the blackness, by such a gibbet and such a corpse as I had lighted upon, as I now stood watching by the flash and play of near and distant lightning.

But what was that at the foot of the gibbet? I took a few steps, and the object that I had supposed to be a balk of timber, serving as a base-piece, arose. It was a woman. I was near enough now to see her without the help of the lightning. The glimmering sand yielded sufficient light, so close had I approached the gibbet. She was a tall woman, dressed in black, and her face in the black frame of her bonnet, that was thickened by a wet veil, showed as white as though the light of the moon lay upon it. I say again that I am no coward, but I own that when that balk of timber, as I had supposed the thing to be, arose and fashioned itself, hard by the figure of the hanging dead man, into the shape of a tall woman, ghastly white of face, nothing but horror and consternation prevented me from bolting at full speed. I was too terrified to run. My knees seemed to give way under me. All the good of the rum punch was gone out of my head.

The woman approached me slowly, and halted at a little distance. There might have been two yards between us and five between me and the gibbet.

“What have you come to do?” she exclaimed in a voice that sounded raw—I can find no other word to express the noise of her speech—with famine, fatigue, fever; for these things I heard in her voice.

“I have come to do nothing; I am going to Deal,” I answered, and I made a step.

“Stop! I am the mother of that dead man. Show me how to take him down. I cannot reach his feet with my hands. You are tall, and strong and hearty, and can unhook him. For God’s sake, take him down and give him to me, sir.”

“His mother!” cried I, finding spirit, on a sudden, in the woman’s speech and dreadful avowal; “God help thee! But it is not a thing for me to meddle with.”

“He was my son, he was innocent and he has been murdered. He must not be left up there, sir. Take him down, and give him to me who am his mother, and who will bury him.”

“It is not a thing for me to meddle with,” I repeated, looking at the body, and all this time it was lightning sharply, and the thunder was frequent and heavy, and it rained pitilessly. “It would need a ladder to unhook him, and suppose you had him, what then? Where is his grave? Would you dig it here? And with what would you dig it? And if you buried him here, they would have him up again and hook him up again.”

“Oh, sir, take him down, give him to me,” she cried in a voice that would have been a shriek but for her weakness.

“How long have you been here?” said I, moving so as to enable me to confront her, and yet have my back on the gibbet, for the end of my tongue seemed to stick like a point of steel into the roof of my mouth, every time the lightning flashed up the swinging figure and I saw it.

“I was here before it fell dark,” she answered.

“Where do you come from?”

“From Harwich.”

“You have not walked from Harwich?”

“I came by water to Margate, and have walked from Margate. Oh, take him down—oh, take him down!” she cried, stretching her arms up at the body. “Think of him helpless there! Jimmy, my Jimmy! He is innocent—he is a murdered man!” she sobbed; and then continued, speaking swiftly, and drawing closer to me: “He was my only son. His wife does not come to him. Oh, my Jim, mother is with thee, thy poor old mother is with thee, and will not leave thee. Oh, kind, dear Christian sir”—and she extended her hand and put it upon the sleeve of my coat—“take him down and help me to bury him, and the God of Heaven, the friend of the widow, shall bless thee, and I will watch, but at a distance from his grave, until there shall be no fear of his body being found.”

“I can do nothing,” said I. “If I had the will, I have not the means. I should need a ladder, and we should need a spade, and we have neither. Come you along with me to Deal; come you away out of this wet and from this sight. You have little strength. If you linger here, you’ll die. I will get you housed for the night, and,” cried I, raising my voice, that she might hear me above a sudden roll of thunder, “if my ship does not sail out of the Downs to-morrow, I may so work it for you as to get your son’s body unhooked, and removed, and buried, where it will not be found. Come away from this,” and I grasped her soaking sleeve.

Now at this instant, there happened that which makes this experience the most awful and astonishing of any that I have encountered, in a life that, Heaven knows, has not been wanting in adventure. I am not a believer in latter-day miracles; I am not a fool—not that I would quarrel with a man for believing in latter-day miracles. We are all locked up in a dark room, and I blame no man for believing that he—and perhaps he only—knows the way out. I do not believe in latter-day miracles; but I believe in the finger of God. I believe that often He will answer the cry of the broken heart. This is what now happened, and you may credit my relation or not, as you please.

I have said that I grasped the woman’s soaking sleeve, intending to draw her away from the gibbet; and it was at that moment that the body and the gibbet were struck by lightning; they were clothed with a flash of sunbright flame. In the same instant of the flash, there was a burst and shock of thunder, the most deafening and frightful explosion I have ever heard. The motionless atmosphere was thick, sickening, choking with the smell of sulphur. I was hurled backward, but not so as to fall; it was as though I had been struck by the wind of a cannon-ball. For some time the blackness stood like a wall against my vision; more lightning there was at that time, one or two of the flashes tolerably vivid, but the play on my balls of sight, temporarily blinded, glanced dim as sheet lightning when it winks palely past the rim of the sea.

Presently I could see. I looked for the woman, scarce knowing whether I might behold her dead in a heap on the sand. No; she stood at a little distance from me. Like me, she was unable to get her sight. She stood with her white face turned toward Sandwich—that is to say, away from the gibbet; but even as I regained my vision so hers returned to her. She looked around, uttered an extraordinary cry, and, in a moment, was under the gibbet, kneeling, fondling, clasping, hugging, wildly talking to the chained and lifeless figure, whose metal fastening had been sheared through by the burning edge of the terrific scythe of fire!

Yes; the eye or the hook by which the corpse had hung had been melted, and there lay the body, ghastly in its chains, but how much ghastlier had there been light to yield a full revelation of feature and of such injury as the stroke of flame may have dealt it! There it lay in its mother’s arms! She held its head with the iron collar about its neck to her breast; she rocked it; she talked to it; she blessed God for giving her son to her.

The rain ceased, and over the sea the black dye of tempest thinned, a sure sign of approaching wind, driving the heavy, loose wings of vapor before it. In another minute I felt a draught of air. It was out of the south. Standing on those sand hills, a familiar haunt of mine, indeed, in the olden times, I could as readily hit the quarter of the wind—yea, to the eighth of a point—as though I took its bearings with the compass before me. I might be very sure that this was a breeze to freshen rapidly, and that even now the boatswain of the Royal Brunswicker was thumping with a handspike upon the fore-scuttle, bidding all hands tumble up to man the windlass. Spalding must not be suffered to stare over the side in search of me while he went on giving orders to make sail. It was very late. How late, I knew not. I had heard no clock. Maybe it was one in the morning.

Now, what was I to do? I must certainly miss the ship if I hung about the woman and the body of her son. Even though I should set off at full speed for Deal beach, I might not immediately find a boatman. Yet hurry I must. I went up to the woman, almost loathing the humanity that forced me closer to the body, and exclaimed:

“Come away with me to Deal. You shall be housed if I can manage it; but you must rise and come with me at once, for I cannot stay.”

She was seated on the sand under the arm of the gibbet, and half of the body lay across her, with its head against her breast. One of her arms was around it. She caressed its face and, as I spoke, she put her lips to its forehead. There was no cap over the face. Doubtless a cap had been drawn over the unhappy wretch when he was first turned off, but when they hung a man in irons they removed his cap and sheathed the body in pitch to render it weatherproof. Pirates, however, and such seafaring sinners as this man, were mainly strung up in irons in their clothes; and this body was dressed, but he was without a hat.

The woman looked round and up at me, and cried very piteously:

“Dear Christian gentleman, whoever you may be, help me to seek some place where I may hide my child’s body, that his murderers shall not be able to find him. O Jim, God hath given thee to thy mother. Sir, for the sake of thine own mother, stay with me and help me.”

“I cannot stay,” I cried, breaking in. “If you will not come I must go.”

She talked to the body.

On this, seeing how it must be and hoping to be of some use to the poor creature before embarking, I said not another word, but started for Deal beach, walking like one in a dream, full of horror and pity and astonishment, but always sensible that it was growing lighter and yet lighter to windward, and that the wind was freshening in my face as I walked. Indeed, before I had measured half the distance to Deal, large spaces of clear sky had opened among the clouds, with stars sliding athwart them; and low down southeast was a corner of red moon creeping along a ragged black edge of vapor.

When I came to the north end of the town, where Beach Street began and ended in those days, I paused, abreast of a tall capstan used for heaving up boats, and looked about me. I had thought, at odd moments as I walked along, of how my uncle had explained the silence that lay upon Deal by speaking of the press-gang; but, first, I had no fear for myself, for I was mate of a ship, and, as mate, I was not to be taken; and next, putting this consideration apart, the press-gang was scarcely likely to be at work at such an hour—at least at Deal, the habits of whose seafaring people would be well known to the officers of His Majesty’s ships stationed in the Downs or cruising in the Channel. But the general alarm might render it difficult for me to find a man to take me off to the ship, and more difficult still to find anyone willing to adventure a lonely walk by moonlight out on to the sand hills to help the woman I had left there.

I stood looking about me. A number of vessels were getting their anchors in the Downs. The delicate distant noise of the clinking of revolving pawls came along in the wind, with dim cries and faint chorusings, and under the moon I spied two or three vessels under weigh standing up Channel. This sight filled me with an agony of impatience, and I got upon the shingle and crunched, sweating along, staring eagerly ahead.

A great number of boats lay upon the beach, some of them big luggers, and in the dusk they loomed up to twice their real size. Nothing living stirred. This was truly astonishing. About half a mile along the shingle, toward Walmer, lay a boat close to the wash of the water; I could not tell at that distance, and by that light, whether there was a man in her or near her, but I supposed she might be a galley-punt, ready to “go off,” as the local term is and I walked toward her. A minute later I came to a small, black wooden structure, one of several little buildings used by the Deal boatmen for keeping a lookout in. I saw a light shining upon a bit of a glazed window that faced me, and stepping to this window, I peered through and beheld an old man seated on a bench, with an odd sort of three-cornered hat on his head, and dressed in gray worsted stockings and a long frieze coat. An inch of sooty pipe forked out from his mouth, and I guessed that he was awake by seeing smoke issuing from his lips, though his head was hung, his arms folded, his eyes apparently closed. I stepped round to the door, beat upon it, and looked in.

“I am mate of the Royal Brunswicker,” said I. “She’s getting her anchor in the Downs, and I want to get aboard before she’s off and away. Where shall I find a couple of men to put me aboard?”

He lifted up his head after the leisurely manner of old age, took his pipe out of his mouth with a trembling hand, and surveyed me steadfastly, as though he was nearly blind.

“Where are ye from?” said he.

“From the house of my uncle, Captain Joseph Round.”

“Captain Joseph Round, is it?” exclaimed the old fellow suspiciously. “I can remember Joe Round—Joey Round was the name he was known by—man and boy fifty-eight year. He’ll be drawing on to sixty-five, I allow. What might be yower name?”

By this time I had recollected the old fellow, and his name had come to me with my memory of him.

“Martin—Tom Martin,” said I, “you are going blind, old man, or you would know me. My name is William Fielding—Bill Fielding sometimes along the beach here, among such of you drunken, smuggling swabs as I chose to be familiar with. Now, see here, I must get aboard my ship at once, and there’ll be another job wants doing also, for the which I shall be willing to pay a guinea. Tell me instantly, Tom, of three men—two to row me aboard, and one to send on a guinea’s worth of errand.”

“Gi’s your hand, Mr. Fielding. Bless me, how you’re changed! But aint that because my sight aint what it was? You want three men? Two to put ye aboard, and——”

“And one to send on a guinea’s worth of errand—on a job I needn’t explain to you here. Now bear a hand, or I shall lose my ship.”

On this, he blew out the rushlight by which he had been sitting, shut the door of the old cabin, and moved slowly and somewhat staggeringly over the shingle up into Beach Street, along which we walked for, I daresay, fifty yards. He then turned into a sort of alley, and pausing before the door of a little house, lifted his arm as though in search of the knocker, then bade me knock for myself, and knock loud.

I knocked heartily, but all remained silent for some minutes. I continued to knock, and then a window just over the doorway was thrown up, and a woman put her head out. A crazy old lamp, burning a dull flame of oil, stood at the corner of the alley or side street and enabled me to obtain a view of the woman.

“Who are ye?” said she, in a voice of alarm, “and what d’ye want?”

“Is Dick in?” quavered old Martin, looking up at her.

“Why, it’s old Tom!” exclaimed the woman. “Who’s that along with ye?”

“Capt’n Round’s nevvy, Master Billy Fielding, as we used to call him. His ship’s in the Downs, there’s a slant o’ air out of the south, and he wants to be set aboard. Is Dick in, I ask ye?”

“What’s that to do with you?” answered the woman, drawing her head in with a movement of misgiving, and putting her hands upon the window as though to bring it down. “No, he aint in, so there; neither him nor Tom, so there. You go on. I don’t like the looks of your friend Mr. Billy Fielding; a merchantman with hepaulets, is it? And what’s an old man like you a-doing out of his bed at this hour? Garn home, Tom, garn home;” and down went the window.

“Is that woman mad?” cried I. “What does she take me to be? And does she suppose that you, whom she must have known all her life—— I’ll tell you what, Tom Martin, I’m not going to lose my ship for the want of a boat. If I can’t find a waterman soon I shall seize the first small punt I can launch with mine own hands. Hark!”

I heard footsteps; a sound of the tread of feet came from Beach Street. I walked up the alley to the entrance of it, not for a moment doubting that the fellows coming along were Deal boatmen, fresh from doing business out at sea. Old Tom Martin called after me; I did not catch what he said; in fact I had no chance to hear; for when I reached the entrance of the alley, a body of ten or twelve men came right upon me, and in a breath I was collared, to a deep roaring cry of “Here’s a good sailor!”