The Pillar of Light
by Louis Tracy · English · Gutenberg #40912 · 476,430 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Pillar of Light
Author: Louis Tracy
Release date: October 2, 2012 [eBook #40912]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PILLAR OF LIGHT ***
The Pillar of Light
By Louis Tracy
_Author of "The Wings of the Morning"_
"_And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house; and
it fell not; for it was founded
upon a rock._"
_Matthew vii: 25_
New York
EDWARD J. CLODE
156 Fifth Avenue
1904
Copyright 1904, by EDWARD J. CLODE
_All rights reserved_
May, 1904
_Plimpton Press Norwood Mass._
[Illustration: LOW WATER--THE REEF]
[Illustration: THE GULF ROCK LIGHTHOUSE SECTION]
CONTENTS
I _Flotsam_ 1
II _A Christening_ 19
III _The Signal_ 37
IV _The Voice of the Reef_ 57
V _The Hurricane_ 72
VI _The Middle Watch_ 92
VII _The Lottery_ 110
VIII _An Interlude_ 124
IX _Mrs. Vansittart_ 141
X _Pyne's Progress_ 156
XI _Mrs. Vansittart's Fear_ 172
XII _Preparations_ 188
XIII _Before the Dawn_ 206
XIV _The Way They Have in The Navy_ 223
XV _Enid's New Name_ 241
XVI _Stephen Brand Explains_ 258
XVII _Mrs. Vansittart Goes Home_ 281
XVIII _Enid Wears an Old Ornament_ 301
XIX _The House that Stood Upon a Rock_ 319
CHAPTER I
FLOTSAM
All night long the great bell of the lighthouse, slung to a stout beam
projecting seaward beneath the outer platform, had tolled its warning
through the fog. The monotonous ticking of the clockwork attachment that
governed it, the sharp and livelier click of the occulting hood's
machinery, were the only sounds which alternated with its deep boom. The
tremendous clang sent a thrill through the giant column itself and
pealed away into the murky void with a tremolo of profound diminutions.
Overhead, the magnificent lantern, its eight-ringed circle of flame
burning at full pressure, illumined the drifting vapor with an intensity
that seemed to be born of the sturdy granite pillar of which it was the
fitting diadem. Hard and strong externally as the everlasting rock on
which it stood,--replete within with burnished steel and polished brass,
great cylinders and powerful pumps,--the lighthouse thrust its glowing
torch beyond the reach of the most daring wave. Cold, dour, defiant it
looked. Yet its superhuman eye sought to pierce the very heart of the
fog, and the furnace-white glare, concentrated ten thousand-fold by the
encircling hive of the dioptric lens, flung far into the gloom a silvery
cloak of moon-like majesty.
At last an irresistible ally sprang to the assistance of the
unconquerable light. About the close of the middle watch a gentle breeze
from the Atlantic followed the tide and swept the shivering wraith
landward to the northeast, whilst the first beams of a June sun
completed the destruction of the routed specter.
So, once more, as on the dawn of the third day, the waters under the
heaven were gathered into one place, and the dry land appeared, and
behold, it was good.
On the horizon, the turquoise rim of the sea lay with the sheen of
folded silk against the softer canopy of the sky. Towards the west a
group of islands, to which drifting banks of mist clung in melting
despair, were etched in shadows of dreamy purple. Over the nearer
sea-floor the quickly dying vapor spread a hazy pall of opal tints.
Across the face of the waters glistening bands of emerald green and
serene blue quivered in fairy lights. The slanting rays of the sun threw
broadcast a golden mirage and gilded all things with the dumb gladness
of an English summer's day.
A man, pacing the narrow gallery beneath the lantern, halted for a
moment to flood his soul afresh with a beauty made entrancing by the
knowledge that a few brief minutes would resolve it into maturer and
more familiar charms.
He was engaged, it is true, in the unromantic action of filling his
pipe,--a simple thing, beloved alike of poets and navvies,--yet his eyes
drank in the mute glory of the scene, and, captive to the spell of the
hour, he murmured aloud:
"Floating on waves of music and of light,
Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light."
The small door beneath the glass fane was open. The worker within,
busily cleaning an eight-inch burner, ceased for an instant and popped
his head out.
"Did you hail me?" he inquired.
The matter-of-fact words awoke the dreamer. He turned with a pleasant
smile.
"To be exact, Jim, I did hail somebody, but it was Aurora, Spirit of the
Dawn, not a hard-bitten sailor-man like you."
"Oh, that's all right, cap'n. I thought I heard you singin' out for a
light."
The other man bent his head to shield a match from a puff of wind, thus
concealing from his companion the gleam of amusement in his eyes. His
mate sniffed the fragrant odor of the tobacco longingly, but the Elder
Brethren of the Trinity maintain strict discipline, and he vanished to
his task without a thought of broken rules.
He left a piece of good advice behind him.
"If I was you, cap'n," he said, "I'd turn in. Jones is feelin' Al this
mornin'. He comes on at eight. You ought to be dead beat after your
double spell of the last two days. I'll keep breakfast back until three
bells (9.30 A.M.), an' there's fresh eggs an' haddick."
"Just a couple of whiffs, Jim. Then I'll go below."
Both men wore the uniform of assistant-keepers, yet it needed not their
manner of speech to reveal that one was a gentleman, born and bred, and
the other a bluff, good-natured, horny-handed A.B., to whom new-laid
eggs and recently cured fish appealed far more potently than Shelley and
a summer dawn at sea.
He who had involuntarily quoted "Queen Mab" turned his gaze seaward
again. Each moment the scene was becoming more brilliant yet nearer to
earth. The far-off islands sent splashes of gray, brown and green
through the purple. The rose flush on the horizon was assuming a
yellower tinge and the blue of sky and water was deepening. Twenty miles
away to the southwest the smoke of a steamer heralded the advent of an
Atlantic liner, and the last shreds of white mist were curling forlornly
above the waves.
The presence of the steamship, a tiny dull spot on the glowing picture,
peopled the void with life and banished poetry with the thinly sheeted
ghosts of the fog. In a little more than an hour she would be abreast of
the Gulf Rock Light. The watcher believed--was almost certain, in
fact--that she was the _Princess Royal_, homeward bound from New York to
Southampton. From her saloon deck those enthusiasts who had risen early
enough to catch a first glimpse of the English coast were already
scanning the trimly rugged outlines of the Scilly Isles, and searching
with their glasses for the Land's End and the Lizard.
In a few hours they would be in Southampton; that afternoon in
London--London, the Mecca of the world, from which, two years ago, he
fled with a loathing akin to terror. The big ship out there, panting and
straining as if she were beginning, not ending, her ocean race of three
thousand miles, was carrying eager hundreds to the pleasures and follies
of the great city. Yet he, the man smoking and silently staring at the
growing bank of smoke,--a young man, too; handsome, erect, with the
clean, smooth profile of the aristocrat,--had turned his back on it all,
and sought, and found, peace here in the gaunt pillar on a lonely rock.
Strange, how differently men are constituted. And women! Bah! A hard
look came into his eyes. His mouth set in a stern contempt. For a little
while his face bore a steely expression which would have amazed the man
within the lantern, now singing lustily as he worked.
But as the harp of David caused the evil spirit to depart from Saul, so
did the music of the morning chase away the lurking devil of memory
which sprang upon the lighthouse-keeper with the sight of the vessel.
He smiled again, a trifle bitterly perhaps. Behind him the singer roared
genially:
"Soon we'll be in London Town,
Sing, my lads, yeo ho-o,
And see the King in his golden crown,
Sing, my lads, yeo ho."
The man on the platform seemed to be aroused from a painful reverie by
the jingle so curiously _à propos_ to his thoughts. He tapped his pipe
on the iron railing, and was about to enter the lantern--and so to the
region of sleep beneath--when suddenly his glance, trained to an
acuteness not dreamed of by folk ashore, rested on some object seemingly
distant a mile or less, and drifting slowly nearer with the tide.
At this hour a two-knot current swept to the east around and over the
treacherous reef whose sunken fangs were marked by the lighthouse. In
calm weather, such as prevailed just then, it was difficult enough to
effect a landing at the base of the rock, but this same smiling
water-race became an awful, raging, tearing fury when the waves were
lashed into a storm.
He pocketed his pipe and stood with hands clenched on the rail, gazing
intently at a white-painted ship's life-boat, with a broken mast and a
sail trailing over the stern. Its color, with the sun shining on it, no
less than the vaporous eddies fading down to the surface of the sea, had
prevented him from seeing it earlier. Perhaps he would not have noticed
it at all were it not for the flashing wings of several sea-birds which
accompanied the craft in aërial escort.
Even yet a landsman would have stared insolently in that direction and
declared that there was naught else in sight save the steamer, whose
tall masts and two black funnels were now distinctly visible. But the
lighthouse keeper knew he was not mistaken. Here was a boat adrift,
forlorn, deserted. Its contour told him that it was no local craft
straying adventurously from island or mainland. Its unexpected presence,
wafted thus strangely from ocean wilds, the broken spar and tumbled
canvas, betokened an accident, perchance a tragedy.
"Jim!" he cried.
His mate, engaged in shrouding the gleaming lenses from the sun's rays,
came at the call. He was lame--the result of a wound received in the
Egyptian campaign: nevertheless, he was quick on his feet.
"What do you make of that?"
The sailor required no more than a gesture. He shaded his eyes with his
right hand, a mere shipboard trick of concentrating vision and brain,
for the rising sun was almost behind him.
"Ship's boat," he answered, laconically. "Collision, I expect. There's
bin no blow to speak of for days. But they're gone. Knocked overboard
when she was took aback by a squall. Unless them birds--"
He spoke in a species of verbal shorthand, but his meaning was clear
enough, even to the sentence left unfinished. The craft was under no
control. She would drift steadily into the Bay until the tide turned,
wander in an aimless circle for half an hour thereafter, and then, when
the ebb restored direction and force to the current, voyage forth again
to the fabled realm of Lyonnesse.
For a little while they stood together in silence. Jim suddenly quitted
his companion and came back with a glass. He poised it with the
precision of a Bisley marksman, and began to speak again, jerkily:
"Stove in forrard, above the water-line. Wouldn't live two minutes in a
sea. Somethin' lyin' in the bows. Can't make it out. And there's a
couple of cormorants perched on the gunwale. But she'll pass within two
hundred yards on her present course, an' the tide'll hold long enough
for that."
The other man looked around. From that elevated perch, one hundred and
thirty feet above high-water mark, he could survey a vast area of sea.
Excepting the approaching steamer--which would flit past a mile away to
the south--and a few distant brown specks which betokened a shoal of
Penzance fishing-smacks making the best of the tide eastward--there was
not a sail in sight.
"I think we should try and get hold of her," he said.
Jim kept his eye glued to the telescope.
"'Tain't worth it, cap'n. The salvage'll only be a pound or two, not but
what an extry suvrin comes in useful, an' we might tie her up to the
buoy on the off chance until the relief comes or we signal a smack. But
what's the good o' talkin'? We've got no boat, an' nobody'd be such a
fool as to swim to her."
"That is what I had in mind."
Jim lowered the glass.
"That's the fust time I've ever heard you say a d----d silly thing,
Stephen Brand."
There was no wavering judgment in his voice now. He was angry, and
slightly alarmed.
"Why is it so emphatically silly, Jim?" was the smiling query.
"How d'ye know what's aboard of her? What's them fowl after? What's
under that sail? What's that lyin' crumpled up forrard? Dead men, mebbe.
If they are, she's convoyed by sharks."
"Sharks! This is not the Red Sea. I am not afraid of any odd prowler.
Once--Anyhow, I am going to ask Jones."
"Jones won't hear of it."
"That is precisely what he will do, within the next minute. Now, don't
be vexed, Jim. Stand by and sing out directions if needful when I am in
the water. Have no fear. I am more than equal to Leander in a sea like
this."
Jim, who trusted to the head-keeper's veto,--awed, too, by the reference
to Leander, whom he hazily associated with Captain Webb,--made no
rejoinder.
He focused the telescope again, gave a moment's scrutiny to the steamer,
and then re-examined the boat. The stillness of the morning was solemn.
Beyond the lazy splash of the sea against the Gulf Rock itself, and an
occasional heavy surge as the swell revealed and instantly smothered
some dark tooth of the reef, he heard no sound save the ring of Stephen
Brand's boots on the iron stairs as he descended through the oil-room,
the library and office, to the first bedroom, in the lower bunk of which
lay Mr. Jones, keeper and chief, recovering from a sharp attack of
sciatica.
During one fearful night in the March equinox, when the fierce heat of
the lamp within and the icy blast of the gale without had temporarily
deranged the occulting machinery, Jones experienced an anxious watch.
Not for an instant could he forego attendance on the lamp. Owing to the
sleet it was necessary to keep the light at full pressure. The surplus
oil, driven up from the tanks by weights weighing half a ton, must flow
copiously over the brass shaft of the burner, or the metal might yield
to the fervent power of the column of flame.
The occulting hood, too, must be helped when the warning click came, or
it would jam and fail to fall periodically, thus changing the character
of the light, to the bewilderment and grave peril of any unhappy vessel
striving against the exterior turmoil of wind and wave.
So Jones passed four hours with his head and shoulders in the
temperature of a Turkish bath and the lower part of his body chilled to
the bone.
He thought nothing of it at the time. This was duty. But at intervals,
throughout the rest of his life, the sciatic nerve would remind him of
that lonely watch. This morning he was convalescent after a painful
immobility of two days.
Watching the boat, Jim centered her in the telescopic field, and looked
anxiously for a sharp arrow-shaped ripple on the surface of the sea.
The breeze which had vanquished the fog now kissed the smiling water
into dimples, and his keen sight was perplexed by the myriad wavelets.
Each minute the condition of affairs on board became more defined.
Beneath some oars ranged along the starboard side he could see several
tins, such as contain biscuits and compressed beef. The shapeless mass
in the bows puzzled him. It was partly covered with broken planks from
the damaged portion of the upper works, and it might be a jib-sail
fallen there when the mast broke. The birds were busy and excited. He
did not like that.
Nearly half an hour passed. The _Princess Royal_, a fine vessel of
yacht-like proportions, sprinting for the afternoon train, was about
eight miles away, sou'west by west. According to present indications
steamer and derelict would be abreast of the Gulf Rock Light
simultaneously, but the big ship, of course, would give a wide berth to
a rock-strewn shoal.
At last the lighthouse-keeper heard ascending footsteps. This was not
Stephen Brand, but Jones. Jim, whose rare irritated moods found safety
in stolid silence, neither spoke nor looked around when his chief joined
him, binoculars in hand.
Jones, a man of whitewash, polish, and rigid adherence to framed rules,
found the boat instantly, and recapitulated Jim's inventory, eliciting
grunts of agreement as each item was ticked off.
A clang of metal beneath caught their ears--the opening of the stout
doors, forty feet above high-water mark, from which a series of iron
rungs, sunk in the granite wall, led to the rocky base.
"Brand's goin' to swim out. It's hardly worth while signalin' to the
Land's End," commented Jones.
No answer. Jim leaned well over and saw their associate, stripped to his
underclothing, with a leather belt supporting a sheath-knife slung
across his shoulders, climbing down the ladder.
This taciturnity surprised Jones, for Jim was the cheeriest nurse who
ever brought a sufferer a plate of soup.
"It's nothing for a good swimmer, is it?" was the anxious question.
"No. It's no distance to speak of."
"An' the sea's like a mill-pond?"
"Ay, it's smooth enough."
"Don't you think he ought to try it? Every fine mornin' he has a dip off
the rock."
"Well, if it's all right for him an' you it's all right for me."
Jim had urged his plea to the man whom it chiefly concerned. He was far
too sporting a character to obtain the interference of authority, and
Jones, whose maritime experiences were confined to the hauling in or
paying out of a lightship's cable, had not the slightest suspicion of
lurking danger in the blue depths.
A light splash came to them, and, a few seconds later, Brand's head and
shoulders swung into view. After a dozen vigorous breast strokes he
rolled over on to his side, and waved his left hand to the two men high
above him.
With a sweeping side stroke he made rapid progress. Jones, unencumbered
by knowledge, blew through his lips.
"He's a wonderful chap, is Brand," he said, contentedly. "It licks me
what a man like him wants messin' about in the service for. He's
eddicated up to the top notch, an' he has money, too. His lodgin's cost
the whole of his pay, the missus says, an' that kid of his has a
hospital nuss, if you please."
Jones was grateful to his mates for their recent attentions. He was
inclined to genial gossip, but Jim was watching the boat curving towards
the lighthouse. The high spring tide was at the full. So he only
growled:
"You can see with half an eye he has taken on this job for a change. I
wish he was in that blessed boat."
Jones was quite certain now that his subordinate harbored some secret
fear of danger.
"What's up?" he cried. "He'll board her in two ticks."
On no account would the sailor mention sharks. He might be mistaken, and
Jones would guffaw at his "deep-sea" fancies. Anyhow, it was Brand's
affair. A friend might advise; he would never tattle.
The head-keeper, vaguely excited, peered through his glass. Both boat
and swimmer were in the annular field. Brand had resumed the breast
stroke. The swing of the tide carried the broken bow towards him. He
was not more than the boat's length distant when he dived suddenly and
the cormorants flapped aloft. A black fin darted into sight, leaving a
sharply divided trail in the smooth patch of water created by the
turning of the derelict.
Jones was genuinely startled now.
"My God!" he cried, "what is it?"
"A shark!" yelled Jim. "I knew it. I warned him. Eh, but he's game is
the cap'n."
"Why didn't you tell me?" roared Jones. Under reversed conditions he
would have behaved exactly as Jim did.
But it was no time for words. The men peered at the sudden tragedy with
an intensity which left them gasping for breath. More than two hundred
yards away in reality, the magnifying glasses brought this horror so
close that they could see--they almost thought they could hear--its
tensely dramatic action. The rapidly moving black signal reached the
small eddy caused by the man's disappearance. Instantly a great sinuous,
shining body rose half out of the water, and a powerful tail struck the
side of the boat a resounding whack.
Jim's first expletive died in his throat.
"He's done it!" Jones heard him say. "He's ripped him. Oh, bully! May
the Lord grant there's only one."
For a single instant they saw the dark hair and face of the man above
the surface. The shark whirled about and rushed. Brand sank, and again
the giant man-eater writhed in agonized contortions and the sea showed
masses of froth and dark blotches. The flutterings of the birds became
irregular and alarmed. Their wheeling flights partly obscured events
below. The gulls, screeching their fright, or it might be interest, kept
close to the water, and the cormorants sailed in circles aloof.
Jones was pallid and streaming with perspiration. "I wouldn't have had
it happen for fifty quid," he groaned.
"I wouldn't ha' missed it for a hundred," yelped Jim. "It's a fight to a
finish, and the cap'n'll win. There ain't another sea-lawyer on the job,
an' Brand knows how to handle this one."
Their mate's head reappeared and Jim relieved the tension by a mighty
shout:
"He'll swim wild now, Brand. Keep out of his track."
Sure enough, the ugly monster began to thrash the water and career
around on the surface in frantic convulsions. The second stab of the
knife had reached a vital part. Brand, who perhaps had seen a Malay
diver handling his life-long enemy, coolly struck out towards the stern
of the boat. The shark, churning the sea into a white foam, whirled away
in blind pursuit of the death which was rending him. The man, unharmed
but somewhat breathless, clambered over the folds of the sail into the
boat.
"Glory be!" quavered Jones, who was a Baptist.
Jim was about to chant his thanks in other terms when his attention was
caught by Brand's curious actions.
In stepping across the after thwart he stopped as though something had
stung him. His hesitation was momentary. Pressing his left hand to mouth
and nose he passed rapidly forward, stooped, caught a limp body by the
belt which every sailor wears, and, with a mighty effort, slung it into
the sea, where it sank instantly. So the shark, like many a human
congener of higher intellect, had only missed his opportunity by being
too precipitate, whilst the cormorants and gulls, eyeing him ominously,
did not know what they had lost.
Then the man returned to the sail and peered beneath. Neither of the
onlookers could distinguish anything of special interest under the heavy
canvas sheet. Whatever it was, Brand apparently resolved to leave it
alone for the moment.
He shipped a pair of oars, and, with two vigorous sweeps, impelled the
derelict away from the charnel-house atmosphere which evidently clung to
it.
Then the shark engaged his attention. It was floating, belly upwards,
its white under-skin glistening in the sunlight. Two long gashes were
revealed, one transverse, the other lengthwise, proving how coolly and
scientifically Brand had done his work. An occasional spasm revealed
that life was not yet extinct, but the furtive attack of a dogfish,
attracted by the scent of blood, which stirs alike the denizens of air,
land and ocean, was unresisted.
The rower stood up again, drove a boat-hook into the cruel jaws, and
lashed the stock to a thorl-pin with a piece of cordage. This
accomplished to his satisfaction, he looked towards the Gulf Rock for
the first time since he drew the knife from its sheath, gave a cheery
hand-wave to the shouting pair on the balcony, and settled down to pull
the recovered craft close to the rock.
Jim closed the telescope with a snap.
"He heaved the dead man overboard," he announced, "so there's a live one
under the sail."
"Why do you think that?" said Jones, whose nerves were badly shaken.
"Well, you saw what happened to the other pore devil. Either him or the
cap'n had to go. It 'ud be the same if there was a funeral wanted aft.
Them there birds--But come along, boss. Let's give him a hand."
They hurried down to the iron-barred entrance. Jones shot outward a
small crane fitted with a winch, in case it might be needed, whilst the
sailor climbed to the narrow platform of rock into which the base-blocks
of the lighthouse were sunk and bolted.
Affording but little superficial space at low water, there was now not
an inch to spare. Here, at sea-level, the Atlantic swell, even in calm
weather, rendered landing or boarding a boat a matter of activity. At
this stage of the tide each wave lapped some portion of the granite
stones and receded quickly down the slope of the weed-covered rock.
The gulls and cormorants, filling the air with raucous cries, were
rustling in rapid flight in the wake of the boat, darting ever and anon
at the water or making daring pecks at the floating carcass.
Soon Brand glanced over his shoulder to measure his distance. With the
ease of a practised oarsman he turned his craft to bring her stern on to
the landing-place.
"Lower a basket!" he cried to Jones, and, whilst the others wondered
what the urgency in his voice betokened, there reached them the deep
strong blast of a steam-whistle, blown four times in quick succession.
Each and all, they had forgotten the _Princess Royal_. She was close in,
much nearer than mail steamers usually ventured.
At first they gazed at her with surprise, Brand even suspending his
maneuvers for a moment. Then Jim, knowing that a steamship trumpets the
same note to express all sorts of emotion, understood that the officers
had witnessed a good deal, if not all, that had taken place, and were
offering their congratulations.
"Blow away, my hearties!" crowed Jim, vainly apostrophizing the vessel.
"You'll have somethin' to crack about when you go ashore tonight or I'm
very much mistaken. Now, cap'n," he went on, "take the cover off. It's
alive, I suppose. Is it a man, or a woman?"
CHAPTER II
A CHRISTENING
Brand was slow to answer. For one thing, he was exhausted. Refreshing as
the long swim was after a night of lonely vigil, itself the culmination
of two days of hard work, the fierce battle with the shark had shocked
into active existence the reserve of latent energy which every healthy
animal unconsciously hoards for life-and-death emergencies.
But there was another reason. He had scarce gained the comparative
safety of the boat before he was, in the same instant, horrified and
astounded to a degree hitherto beyond his experience. Not even the stiff
pull of two hundred yards sufficed to restore his senses. So Jim's
question fell on his ears with the meaningless sound of the steamer's
siren.
"What is it, mate?" repeated his fellow-keeper, more insistently. "You
ain't hurt anyways, are you?"
"It is a baby," said Brand, in a curiously vacant way.
"A baby!" shrieked Jones, stretched out over the crane above their
heads.
"A what-a?" roared the sailor, whose crudely developed nervous system
was not proof against the jar of incredulity induced by this statement.
Had Brand said "a tiger," he could not have exhibited greater concern.
"Yes, a baby--and it is living. I heard it cry," murmured the other,
sitting down rather suddenly.
Indeed, a faint wail, suggestive of a kitten, now came from beneath the
tumbled canvas quite near to Jim. But the Royal Navy does not encourage
neurosis. The lighthouse-keeper felt that a minor crisis had arrived. It
must be dealt with promptly.
The evil odor which still adhered to the boat told him that Brand had
exchanged one Inferno for another, when he clambered out of the reach of
the blindly vengeful shark.
He looked up to Jones.
"Lower away," he said, promptly. "Swing the derrick until I grab the
tackle, and then hoist me aboard."
This was done. Ungainly in his walk, owing to his wounded limb, Jim,
clinging to a rope, had the easy activity of a squirrel.
"Now, lower a jug with some brandy. He's dead beat," he added.
Whilst Jones hastened for the spirit, the sailor stooped and threw back
the sail.
Lying in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in a blanket which unavailing
struggles had rumpled into a roll beneath the arms, was an infant whose
precise age it was impossible to estimate forthwith owing to the
emaciated condition of its body.
With the rocking of the boat, the foul bilge-water washed around the
child's limbs and back. Instinct alone had saved it from drowning.
Perhaps, during the first hours of vigor after abandonment, the little
one might have rolled over in infantile search for food and human
tendance, but the rush of salt water into eyes and mouth must have
driven the tiny sufferer to seek instantly the only position in which
life was possible.
So far as the man could judge in a first hasty glance, the child's
clothing was of excellent quality. Yet he gave slight heed to such
considerations. Jim was the father of three lusty youngsters who were
snugly in bed in Penzance, and the sight of this forlorn sea-waif made
his eyes misty.
He reached down, unpinned the blanket, which was secured with a brooch,
and lifted the infant out of its unpleasing environment. It was piteous
to see the way in which the shrunken hands at once strove to clasp his
wrists, though they were all too feeble to achieve more than a gentle
clutch which relaxed almost as soon as the effort was made.
Jones, also a husband and father, bethought him when he reached the
store-room. Hence, when the windlass lowered a basket, there was not
only a supply of brandy within but also a bottle of fresh milk, which
reached the Gulf Rock, by arrangement with a fisherman, whenever weather
permitted.
Jim handed the jug to his exhausted companion.
"Here, cap'n," he said, cheerfully. "Take a couple of mouthfuls of this.
It'll warm the cockles of your heart. An' the sooner you shin up the
ladder and get them soaked rags off you the better. Can you manage? It's
a near thing for the kid, if not too late now."
Brand needed no second bidding. He did not wish to collapse utterly, and
the soft breeze, rendered chilly by his wet garments, had revived him
somewhat.
The resourceful sailor did not attempt the foolish process of pouring
even the smallest quantity of milk into the baby's mouth. He produced a
handkerchief, steeped a twisted corner in the milk, and placed it
between the parched, salt-blackened lips.
This rough expedient for a feeding-bottle served admirably. The child's
eagerness to gulp in the life-giving fluid was only matched by the
tender care of the sailor in his efforts to appease its ravenous hunger.
He was so intent on this urgent task that for a little while he paid no
heed to Brand. Jones, forty feet overhead, took the keenest interest in
the baby's nurture.
"Mind you don't let it suck the handkerchief into its little throat," he
cried. "Not too much, Jim. It's on'y a young 'un. 'Half milk, half
water, an' a lump of sugar,' my missus says. Pore little dear! However
did it come to live, when that man must ha' bin dead for days? Now, Jim,
slow an' sure is the motter. S'pose you shove it into the basket an' let
me hoist it up here? A warm bath an' a blanket is the next best thing to
milk an' water."
"All right, skipper. Just hold on a bit. She's doin' fine."
"Is it a he or a she?"
"I dunno. But I guess it's a gal by the duds."
The baby, in the sheer joy of living again, uttered a gurgling cry, a
compound of milk, happiness and pain.
"There! I told you!" shouted Jones, angrily. "You think every kid is a
hardy young savage like your own. You're overdoing' it, I say."
"Overdoing' wot?" demanded the sailor. "You don't know who you're
talking' to. Why, when I was on the West Coast, I reared two week-old
monkeys this way."
Soon these firm friends would have quarreled--so unbounded was their
anxiety to rescue the fluttering existence of the tiny atom of humanity
so miraculously snatched from the perils of the sea.
But Stephen Brand's dominant personality was rapidly recovering its
normal state.
"Jim," he said, "Mr. Jones is right. The child must be made comfortable.
Her skin is raw and her eyes sore with inflammation. The little food she
has already obtained will suffice for a few minutes. Send her up."
The "Mr. Jones" was a gentle reminder of authority. No further protest
was raised, save by the infant when supplies were temporarily withheld,
and Jones was too pleased that his opinion should be supported by Brand
to give another thought to his subordinate's outburst.
"Now, back up to the rock," said Brand. "I will dress and rejoin you
quickly. The boat must be thoroughly examined and swabbed out: Jones
will signal for help. Meanwhile, you might moor her tightly. When the
tide falls she will be left high and dry."
The sailor's momentary annoyance fled. There was much to be done, and no
time should be wasted in disputes concerning baby culture.
"Sure you won't slip?" he asked, as Stephen caught hold of the ladder.
"No, no. It was not fatigue but sickness which overcame me. The brandy
has settled that."
Up he went, as though returning from his customary morning dip.
"By jingo, he's a plucked 'un," murmured Jim, admiringly. "He ought to
be skipper of a battleship, instead of housemaid of a rock-light. Dash
them sea-crows! I do hate 'em."
He seized an oar and lunged so hard and true at a cormorant which was
investigating the shark's liver, that he knocked the bird a yard through
the air. Discomfited, it retired, with a scream. Its companion darted to
the vacant site and pecked industriously. The neighborhood of the rock
was now alive with seagulls. In the water many varieties of finny shapes
were darting to and fro in great excitement. Jim laughed.
"They'd keep me busy," he growled. "When all's said an' done, it's their
nater, an' they can't help it."
Unconscious that he had stated the primordial thesis, he left the
foragers alone. Hauling the sail out of the water, he discovered that
the stern-board was missing, broken off probably when the mast fell. His
trained scrutiny soon solved a puzzle suggested by the state of the
cordage. Under ordinary conditions, the upper part of the mast would
either have carried the sail clean away with it or be found acting as a
sort of sea-anchor at a short distance from the boat.
But it had gone altogether, and the strands of the sail-rope were
bitten, not torn, asunder. The shark had striven to pull the boat under
by tugging at the wreckage.
Having made the canvas ship-shape, Jim settled the next pressing
question by seizing an empty tin and sluicing the fore part. Then he
passed a rope under the after thwart and reeved it through a ring-bolt
in a rock placed there for mooring purposes in very calm weather like
the present.
When the Trinity tender paid her monthly visit to the lighthouse she was
moored to a buoy three cables' lengths away to the northwest. If there
was the least suspicion of a sea over the reef it was indeed a ticklish
task landing or embarking stores and men.
Close-hauled, the boat would fill forward as the tide dropped. This was
matterless. By that time all her movable contents--she appeared to have
plenty of tinned meat and biscuits aboard but no water--would be removed
to the store-room.
The sailor was sorting the packages--wondering what queer story of the
deep would be forthcoming when the recent history of the rescued child
was ascertained--when Brand hailed him.
"Look out there, Jim. I am lowering an ax."
The weapon was duly delivered.
"What's the ax for, cap'n?" was the natural query.
"I want to chop out that shark's teeth. They will serve as mementoes for
the girl if she grows up, which is likely, judging by the way she is
yelling at Jones."
"Whats he a-doing' of?" came the sharp demand.
"Giving her a bath, and excellently well, too. He is evidently quite
domesticated."
"If that means 'under Mrs. J.'s thumb,' you're right, cap'n. They tell
me that when he's ashore--"
"Jim, the first time I met you you were wheeling a perambulator. Now,
load the skip and I will haul in."
They worked in silence a few minutes. Brand descended, and a few
well-placed cuts relieved the man-eater of the serrated rows used to
such serious purpose in life that he had attained a length of nearly
twelve feet. Set double in the lower jaw and single in the upper, they
were of a size and shape ominously suggestive of the creature's
voracity.
"It is a good thing," said Brand, calmly hewing at the huge jaws, "that
nature did not build the _Carcharodon galeidæ_ on the same lines as an
alligator. If this big fellow's sharp embroidery were not situated so
close to his stomach he would have made a meal of me, Jim, unless I
carried a torpedo."
"He's a blue shark," commented the other, ignoring for the nonce what he
termed "some of the cap'n's jaw-breakers."
"Yes. It is the only dangerous species found so far north."
"His teeth are like so many fixed bayonets. Of course, you would like
to keep 'em, but he would look fine in the museum. Plenty of folk in
Penzance, especially visitors, would pay a bob a head to see him."
Brand paused in his labor.
"Listen, Jim," he said, earnestly. "I want both you and Jones to oblige
me by saying nothing about the shark. Please do not mention my
connection with the affair in any way. The story will get into the
newspapers as it is. The additional sensation of the fight would send
reporters here by the score. I don't wish that to occur."
"Do you mean to say--
"Mr. Jones will report the picking up of the boat, and the finding of
the baby, together with the necessary burial of a man unknown--
"What sort of a chap was he?" interrupted Jim.
"I--I don't know--a sailor--that is all I can tell you. He must have
been dead several days."
"Then how in the world did that baby keep alive?"
"I have been thinking over that problem. I imagine that, in the first
place, there was a survivor, who disappeared since the death of the poor
devil out there--" he pointed to the sea. "This person, whether man or
woman, looked after the child until madness came, caused by drinking
salt water. The next step is suicide. The little one, left living, fell
into the bilge created by the shipping of a sea, and adopted, by the
mercy of Providence, a method of avoiding death from thirst which ought
to be more widely appreciated than it is. She absorbed water through the
pores of the skin, which rejected the salty elements and took in only
those parts of the compound needed by the blood. You follow me?"
"Quite. It's a slap-up idea."
"It is not new. It occurred to a ship's captain who was compelled to
navigate his passengers and crew a thousand miles in open boats across
the Indian Ocean, as the result of a fire at sea. Well, the child was
well nourished, in all likelihood, before the accident happened which
set her adrift on the Atlantic. She may have lost twenty or thirty
pounds in weight, but starvation is a slow affair, and her plumpness
saved her life in that respect. Most certainly she would have died
today, and even yet she is in great danger. Her pulse is very weak, and
care must be taken not to stimulate the action of the heart too
rapidly."
When Brand spoke in this way, Jim Spence was far too wary to ask
personal questions. Sometimes, in the early days of their acquaintance,
he had sought to pin his friend with clumsy logic to some admission as
to his past life. The only result he achieved was to seal the other
man's lips for days so far as reminiscences were concerned.
Not only Jones and Spence, but Thompson, the third assistant, who was
taking his month ashore, together with the supernumeraries who helped to
preserve the rotation of two months rock duty and one ashore, soon
realized that Brand--whom they liked and looked up to--had locked the
record of his earlier years and refused to open the diary for anyone.
Yet so helpful was he--so entertaining with his scraps of scientific
knowledge and more ample general reading--that those whose turn on the
rock was coincident with his relief hailed his reappearance with joy.
During the preceding winter he actually entertained them with a free
translation of the twenty-four books of the "Iliad," and great was the
delight of Jim Spence when he was able to connect the exploits of some
Greek or Trojan hero with the identity of one of her Majesty's ships.
In private, they discussed him often, and a common agreement was made
that his wish to remain incognito should be respected. Their nickname,
"the cap'n," was a tacit admission of his higher social rank. They
feared lest inquisitiveness should drive him from their midst, and one
supernumerary, who heard from the cook of the Trinity tender that Brand
was the nephew of a baronet, was roughly bidden to "close his rat-trap,
or he might catch something he couldn't eat."
So Jim now contented himself by remarking dolefully that had his advice
been taken "the bloomin' kid would be well on her way back to the Scilly
Isles."
"You must not say that," was the grave response. "These things are
determined by a higher power than man's intelligence. Think how the
seeming accident of a fallen sail saved the child from the cormorants
and other birds--how a chance sea fell into the boat and kept her
alive--how mere idle curiosity on my part impelled me to swim out and
investigate matters."
"That's your way of putting' it," Jim was forced to say. "You knew
quite well that there might be a shark in her wake, or you wouldn't have
taken the knife. An' now you won't have a word said about it. At the
bombardment of Alexandria, a messmate of mine got the V. C. for less."
"The real point is, Jim, that we have not yet discovered what ship this
boat belongs to."
"No, an' what's more, we won't find out in a hurry. Her name's gone,
fore and aft."
"Is there nothing left to help us?"
"Only this."
The sailor produced the brooch from his waistcoat pocket. It was of the
safety-pin order, but made of gold and ornamented with small emeralds
set as a four-leafed shamrock.
"Is the maker's name on the sail?"
"No. I fancy that this craft was rigged on board ship for harbor
cruisin'."
Brand passed a hand wearily across his forehead.
"I wish I had not been so precipitate," he murmured. "That man had
papers on him, in all likelihood."
"You couldn't have stood it, mate. It was bad enough for me. It must ha'
bin hell for you."
"Perhaps the baby's clothes are marked."
"That's a chance. She was well rigged out."
Brand cast the shark loose. The monster slid off into the green depths.
A noiseless procession of dim forms rushed after the carcass. The birds,
shrill with disappointment, darted off to scour the neighboring sea.
Beyond the damaged boat, bumping against the rock, and the huge jaws
with their rows of wedge-shaped teeth, naught remained to testify to the
drama of the hour save the helpless baby on which the head-keeper was
waiting so sedulously.
Already the signal "Doctor wanted" was fluttering from the lighthouse
flagstaff. It would be noted at the Land's End and telegraphed to
Penzance. The morning would be well advanced before help could reach the
Gulf Rock from ashore.
When Brand and Spence entered Jones's bedroom they found him hard at
work washing the child's clothing.
"She's asleep," he said, jerking his head towards a bunk. "I gev' her a
pint of mixture. She cried a bit when there was no more to be had, but a
warm bath with some boric acid in it made her sleepy. An' there she is,
snug as a cat."
The domesticated Jones was up to his elbows in a lather of soap.
"Have you noticed any laundry marks or initials on her clothing?" asked
Brand.
"Yes. Here you are."
He fished out of the bubbles a little vest, on which were worked the
letters E. T. in white silk.
"Ah! That is very important. We can establish her identity, especially
if the laundry mark is there also."
"I'm feared there's nothing else," said Jones. "I've not looked very
carefully, as it'll take me all my time to get everything dry afore the
tug comes. As for ironin', it can't be done. But my missus'll see after
her until somebody turns up to claim her."
"That may be never."
"Surely we will get some news of the ship which was lost!"
"Yes, that is little enough to expect. Yet it is more than probable that
her parents are dead. A baby would be separated from her mother only by
the mother's death. There is a very real chance that poor 'E. T.' will
be left for years on the hands of those who take charge of her now. The
only alternative is the workhouse."
"That's so, cap'n," put in Jim. "You always dig to the heart of a
subjec', even if it's a shark."
"In a word, Jones, you can hardly be asked to assume such a
responsibility. Now it happens that I can afford to adopt the child, if
she lives, and is not claimed by relatives. It is almost a duty imposed
on me by events. When the doctor comes, therefore, I purpose asking him
to see that she is handed over to Mrs. Sheppard, the nurse who looks
after my own little girl. I will write to her. My turn ashore comes next
week. Then I can devote some time to the necessary inquiries."
Jones made no protest. He knew that Brand's suggestion was a good one.
And he promised silence with regard to the fight with the shark. Men in
the lighthouse service are quick to grasp the motives which cause others
to avoid publicity. They live sedate, lonely lives. The noise, the rush,
the purposeless activities of existence ashore weary them. They have
been known to petition the Trinity Brethren to send them back to
isolated stations when promoted to localities where the pleasures and
excitements of a town were available.
Having determined the immediate future of little "E. T.," whose shrunken
features were now placid in sleep, they quietly separated. Brand flung
himself wearily into a bunk to obtain a much-needed rest, and the others
hurried to overtake the many duties awaiting them.
Weather reports and daily journals demanded instant attention. The oil
expenditure, the breakage of glass chimneys, the consumption of stores,
the meteorological records--all must be noted. An efficient lookout must
be maintained, signals answered or hoisted, everything kept spotlessly
clean, and meals cooked. Until noon each day a rock lighthouse is the
scene of unremitting diligence, and the loss of nearly an hour and a
half of Spence's watch, added to the presence of the baby and the
constant care which one or other of the two men bestowed on her, made
the remaining time doubly precious.
About nine o'clock, Brand was awakened from a heavy slumber by Jim's
hearty voice:
"Breakfast ready, cap'n. Corfee, eggs an' haddick--fit for the Queen,
God bless her! An' baby's had another pint of Jones's brew--Lord love
her little eyes, though I haven't seen 'em yet. A minnit ago Jones sung
down to me that the _Lancelot_ has just cleared Carn du."
The concluding statement brought Brand to his feet. The doctor would be
on the rock by the time breakfast was ended and the letter to Mrs.
Sheppard written.
When the doctor did arrive he shook his head dubiously at first sight of
the child.
"I don't know how she lived. She is a mere skeleton," he said.
Brand explained matters, and hinted at his theory.
"Oh, the ways of nature are wonderful," admitted the doctor. "Sometimes
a man will die from an absurdly trivial thing, like the sting of a wasp
or the cutting of a finger. At others, you can fling him headlong from
the Alps and he will merely suffer a bruise or two. Of course, this
infant has an exceptionally strong constitution or she would have died
days ago. However, you have done right so far. I will see to her proper
nourishment during the next few days. It is a most extraordinary case."
Jones had managed so well that the child's garments were dry and well
aired. Wrapped in a clean blanket, she was lowered into the steamer's
boat, but the doctor, preferring to jump, was soaked to the waist owing
to a slip on the weed-covered rock.
The crew of the tugboat bailed out the derelict and towed her to
Penzance.
That evening a fisherman brought a note from Mrs. Sheppard. Among other
things, she wrote that the baby's clothes were beautifully made and of a
very expensive type. She was feverish, the doctor said, but the
condition of her eyes and lips would account for this, apart from the
effects of prolonged exposure.
Brand read the letter to his mates when the trio were enjoying an
evening pipe on the "promenade," the outer balcony under the lantern.
"S'pose her people don't show up," observed Jim, "what are you going' to
call her?"
"Trevillion," said Brand.
The others gazed at him with surprise. The prompt announcement was
unexpected.
"I have told you about the fabled land of Lyonnesse lying there beneath
the sea," he went on, pointing to the dark blue expanse on whose distant
confines the Scilly Isles were silhouetted by the last glow of the
vanished sun. "Well, the name of the only person who escaped from that
minor deluge was Trevillion. It is suitable, and it accords with the
initial of her probable surname."
"Oh, I see," piped Jones. His voice, always high-pitched, became squeaky
when his brain was stirred.
"That's O.K. for the 'T,'" remarked Jim, "but what about the 'E'?
Elizabeth is a nice name when you make it into Bessie."
"I think we should keep up the idea of the Arthurian legend. There are
two that come to my mind, Elaine and Enid. Elaine died young, the victim
of an unhappy love. Enid became the wife of a gallant knight, Gawain,
who was
"----ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,
They called him the great Prince and man of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good."
"That settles it," cried Jim, brandishing his pipe towards Penzance. "I
hope as how Miss Enid Trevillion is asleep an' doin' well, an' that
she'll grow up to be both fair an' good. If she does, she'll be better'n
most women."
Brand made no reply. He went within to attend to the lantern. In five
minutes the great eyes of the Lizard, the Longships and the Seven Stones
Lightship were solemnly staring at their fellow-warden of the Gulf Rock,
whilst, in the far west, so clear was the night, the single flash of St.
Agnes and the double flash of the Bishop illumined the sky.
CHAPTER III
THE SIGNAL
At the foot of a long flight of steps leading from the boat quay to the
placid waters of Penzance harbor a stoutly built craft was moored. It
had two occupants this bright January morning, and they were
sufficiently diverse in appearance to attract the attention of the local
squad of that great army of loungers which seems to thrive in
tobacco-blessed content at all places where men go down to the sea in
ships.
The pair consisted of a weather-beaten fisherman and a girl.
The man was scarred and blistered by wind and wave until he had attained
much outward semblance to his craft. Nevertheless, man and boat looked
reliable. They were sturdy and strong; antiquated, perhaps, and greatly
in want of a new coat; but shaped on lines to resist the elements
together for years to come. Ben Pollard and his pilchard-driver,
_Daisy_, were Cornish celebrities of note. Not once, but many times, had
they been made immortal--with the uncertain immortality of art--by
painters of the Newlyn school.
The girl, an animated cameo, to which the shabby picturesqueness of Old
Ben in his patched garments and old _Daisy_ in her unkempt solidity
supplied a fitting background, merited the tacit approval she received
from the pipe-smokers.
Flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, with a face of a delicate, flower-like beauty
which added to its mobile charm by the healthy glow of a skin brightened
and deepened in tone by an abiding love of the open air, she suggested,
by her attire, an artistic study of the color effects derivable from the
daringly trustful little plant which gave the boat its name. She wore a
coat and skirt of green cloth, lightly hemmed and cuffed with dark red
braid. Her large white hat was trimmed with velvet of a tone to match
the braid, and her neatly fitting brown boots and gloves were of the
right shade. Beneath her coat there was a glimpse of a knitted jersey of
soft white wool, this being a tribute to the season, though a winter in
Lyonnesse can usually shrug its comfortable shoulders at the deceitful
vagaries of the Riviera.
That she was a young person of some maritime experience was visible to
the connoisseurs above at a glance. She was busily engaged in packing
the spacious lockers of the _Daisy_ with certain stores of apples,
oranges and vegetables--ranging from the lordly new potato (an
aristocrat at that time of the year) to the plebeian cabbage--and her
lithe, active figure moved with an ease born of confidence in the
erratic principles of gravitation as codified and arranged by a rocking
boat.
Pollard, too, was overhauling his gear, seeing that the mast was
securely stepped and the tackle ran free. Whilst they worked they
talked, and, of course, the critics listened.
"Do you think the weather will hold, Ben?" asked the girl over her
shoulder, stooping to arrange some clusters of daffodils and narcissus
so that they should not suffer by the lurch of some heavy package when
the boat heeled over.
"The glass be a-fallin', sure, missy," said the old fellow cheerily,
"but wi' the wind backin' round to the norrard it on'y means a drop o'
wet."
"You think we will make the rock in good time?"
"We'm do our best, Miss Enid."
She sat up suddenly.
"Don't you dare tell me, Ben Pollard, that after all our preparations we
may have to turn back or run for inglorious shelter into Lamorna."
Her mock indignation induced a massive grin. "A mahogany table breaking
into mirth," was Enid's private description of Ben's face when he
smiled.
"'Ee knaw the coast as well as most," he said. "Further go, stronger
blow, 'ee knaw."
"And not so slow, eh, Ben? Really, you and the _Daisy_ look more tubby
every time I see you."
Thus disparaged, Pollard defended himself and his craft.
"Me an' _Daisy_'ll sail to Gulf Light quicker'n any other two tubs in
Penzance, missy. Her be a long run at this time o' year, but you'm get
there all right, I 'xpect. Wi' a norrard breeze we'm be safe enough. If
the wind makes 'ee c'n zee et comin', 'ee knaw."
She laughed quietly. Any reflection on the spanking powers of his
pilchard-driver would rouse Ben instantly.
"As if I didn't know all you could teach me," she cried, "and as if
anyone in all Cornwall could teach me better."
The old fisherman was mollified. He looked along the quay.
"Time we'm cast off," he said. "Miss Constance be a plaguey long time
fetchin' them wraps."
"Oh, Ben, how can you say that? She had to go all the way to the
Cottage. Why, if she ran--"
"Here she be," he broke in, "an' she b'ain't runnin' neither. Her's got
a young man in tow."
What announcement would straighten the back of any girl of nineteen like
unto that? Enid Trevillion turned and stood upright.
"Why, it's Jack!" she cried, waving a delighted hand.
"So it be," admitted Pollard, after a surprised stare. "When I look
landward my eyes b'ain't so good as they was."
He stated this fact regretfully. No elderly sea-dog will ever
acknowledge to failing vision when he gazes at the level horizon he
knows so well. This is no pretence of unwilling age: it is wholly true.
The settled chaos of the shore bewilders him. The changeful sea cannot.
Meanwhile, the dawdlers lining the wharf, following Enid's signals with
their eyes, devoted themselves to a covert staring at the young people
hurrying along the quay.
Constance Brand, being a young and pretty woman, secured their instant
suffrages. Indeed, she would have won the favorable verdict of a more
severe audience. Taller than Enid, she had the brown hair and hazel eyes
of her father. To him, too, she owed the frank, self-reliant pose of
head and clearly cut, refined features which conveyed to others that
all-important first good impression. Blended with Stephen Brand's firm
incisiveness, and softening the quiet strength of her marked resemblance
to him, was an essential femininity which lifted her wholly apart from
the ruck of handsome English girls who find delight in copying the
manners and even the dress of their male friends.
Her costume was an exact replica of that of Enid. She walked well and
rapidly, yet her alert carriage had a grace, a subtle elegance, more
frequently seen in America than in England. Her lively face, flushed
with exercise, and, it may be, with some little excitement, conveyed the
same Transatlantic characteristic. One said at seeing her: "Here is a
girl who has lived much abroad." It came as a surprise to learn that she
had never crossed the Channel.
The man with her, Lieutenant John Percival Stanhope, R. N., was too
familiar a figure in Penzance to evoke muttered comment from the
gallery.
A masterful young gentleman he looked, and one accustomed to having his
own way in the world, whether in love or war. True type of the British
sailor, he had the physique of a strong man and the adventurously
cheerful expression of a boy.
The skin of his face and hands, olive-tinted with exposure, his dark
hair and the curved eyelashes, which drooped over his blue eyes, no less
than the artistic proclivities suggested by his well-chiseled features
and long, tapering fingers, proclaimed that Stanhope, notwithstanding
his Saxon surname and bluff bearing, was a Celt. His mother, in fact,
was a Tregarthen of Cornwall, daughter of a peer, and a leading figure
in local society.
One may ask: "Why should a youth of good birth and social position be on
such terms of easy familiarity with two girls, one of whom was the
daughter of a lighthouse-keeper, and the other her sister by adoption?"
Indeed, a great many people did ask this pertinent question; among
others, Lady Margaret Stanhope put it often and pointedly to her son,
without any cogent answer being forthcoming.
If she were denied enlightenment, although her maternal anxiety was
justifiable, the smokers on the pier, as representing the wider gossip
of the town, may also be left unsatisfied.
"This is a nice thing," he cried, when he came within speaking distance
of the girl in the boat. "I manage to bamboozle the admiral out of three
days' leave and I rush to Penzance to be told that Constance and you
are off to the Gulf Rock for the day. It is too bad of you, Enid."
Eyebrows were raised and silent winks exchanged among the human sparrows
lining the rails.
"So Master Jack came to see Miss Trevillion, eh? What would her ladyship
say if she heard that?"
"Why not come with us?" The audacity of her!
"By Jove," he agreed, "that would be jolly. Look here. Wait two minutes
until I scribble a line to the mater--"
"Nothing of the sort, Jack," interposed the other girl quietly, taking
from his arm the water-proof cloaks he was carrying for her. "You know
Lady Margaret would be very angry, and with very good reason. Moreover,
dad would be annoyed, too."
"The old girl is going out this afternoon," he protested.
"And she expects you to go with her. Now, Jack, don't let us quarrel
before we have met for five minutes. We will see you tomorrow."
He helped her down the stone steps.
"Enid," he murmured, "Connie and you must promise to drive with me to
Morvah in the morning. I will call for you at eleven sharp."
"What a pity you can't sail out to the rock with us today. Tomorvah is
so distant."
The minx lifted her blue eyes to his with such ingenuous regret in them
that Stanhope laughed, and pipes were shifted to permit the listeners
above their heads to snigger approval of her quip.
"Dad will wig us enough as it is, Enid," said the other girl. "We are
bringing him a peace-offering of fruits of the earth, Jack."
"Will you be able to land?"
"One never can tell. It all depends on the state of the sea near the
rock. Anyhow, we can have a chat, and send up the vegetables by the
derrick."
"We'm never get there thiccy tide if we'm stop here much longer,"
interrupted Ben.
"Hello, old grampus! How are you? Mind you keep these young ladies off
the stones."
"And mind you keep your tin-pot off the stones," growled Pollard. "They
was a-sayin' larst night her were aground at Portsea."
"They said right, Father Ben. That is why I am here."
Enid glanced at him with ready anxiety. There was nothing of the flirt
in her manner now.
"I hope you had no mishap," she said, and Constance mutely echoed the
inquiry. Both girls knew well what a serious thing it was for a
youngster to run his first boat ashore.
"Don't look so glum," he chuckled. "I am all right. Got a bit of kudos
out of it really. We fouled the _Volcanic_ and strained our steering
gear. That is all."
It was not all. He did not mention that, during a torpedo attack on a
foggy night, he ran up to three battleships undefended by nets and
stenciled his initials within a white square on five different parts of
their sleek hulls, thus signifying to an indignant admiral and three
confounded captains (dictionary meaning of "confounded") that these
leviathans had been ingloriously sunk at their moorings by torpedoes.
"It sounds unconvincing," said Constance. "You must supply details
tomorrow. Enid, that horrid pun of yours ruins the word."
"Are we also to supply luncheon?" chimed in Enid.
"Perish the thought. I have lived on sandwiches and bottled beer for a
week. There! Off you go."
He gave the boat a vigorous push and stood for a little while at the
foot of the steps, ostensibly to light a cigar. He watched Constance
shipping the rudder whilst Enid hoisted the sail and old Ben plied a
pair of oars to carry the boat into the fair way of the channel.
They neared the harbor lighthouse. The brown sail filled and the _Daisy_
got way on her. Then she sped round the end of the solid pier and
vanished, whereupon Lieutenant Stanhope walked slowly to the Promenade,
whence he could see the diminishing speck of canvas on the shining sea
until it was hidden by Clement's Island.
At last, the devotees of twist and shag, resting their tired arms on the
railing, were able to exchange comments.
"Brace o' fine gells, them," observed the acknowledged leader, a
broken-down "captain" of a mine abandoned soon after his birth.
"Fine," agreed his nearest henchman. Then, catching the gloom of the
captain's gaze after Stanhope's retreating figure, he added:
"But what does that young spark want, turning their pretty heads for
them, I should like to know?"
"They didn't seem partic'lar stuck on 'im," ventured another.
"The ways of women is curious," pronounced the oracle. "I once knew a
gell--"
But his personal reminiscences were not of value. More to the point was
the garbled, but, in the main, accurate account he gave of the rescue of
an unknown child by one of the keepers of the Gulf Rock lighthouse on a
June morning eighteen years earlier.
Stephen Brand was the name of the man, and there was a bit of a mystery
about him, too. They all knew that a light-keeper earned a matter of £70
to £80 a year--not enough to maintain a daughter and an adopted child in
slap-up style, was it? A small villa they lived in, and a governess they
had, and ponies to ride when they were big enough. The thing was
ridiculous, wasn't it?
Everybody agreed that it was.
People said Brand was a swell. Well, that might or might not be true.
The speaker did not think much of him. He was a quiet, unsociable chap,
though Jones, a Trinity pensioner, who kept the "Pilchard and Seine"
now, wouldn't hear a wrong word about him, and always called him
"cap'n." A pretty sort of a captain! But then, they all knew what an old
slow-coach Jones was. They did: Jones's pints were retailed on the
premises for money down.
Then there was Spence, lame Jim, who lived at Marazion: he told a fine
tale about a fight with a shark before Brand reached the boat in which
was the blessed baby--that very girl, Enid, they had just seen. Was it
true? How could he say? There was a lot about it at the time in the
local papers, but just then his own mind was given to thoughts of
enlisting, as a British expedition was marching across the desert to
relieve Khartoum--and cause Gordon's death.
No: Brand and the two girls had not dwelt all the time in Penzance. The
light-keepers went all over the kingdom, you know, but he had hit upon
some sort of fog-signal fad--Brand was always a man of fads: he once
told the speaker that all the Polwena Mine wanted was work--and the Gulf
Rock was the best place for trying it. At his own request the Trinity
people sent him back there two years ago. Some folk had queer tastes,
hadn't they? And talking so much had made him dry.
Then the conversation languished, as the only obvious remark of any
importance was not forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the _Daisy_ sped buoyantly towards the southwest. Although
she was broad in beam and staunch from thwart to keel it was no light
undertaking to run fourteen miles out and home in such a craft.
But old Ben Pollard knew what he was about. Not until the granite pillar
of the distant Gulf Rock opened up beyond Carn du was it necessary to
turn the boat's head seawards. Even then, by steering close to the
Runnelstone, they need not, during two-thirds of the time, be more than
a mile or so distant from one of the many creeks in which they could
secure shelter in case of a sudden change in the weather.
Thenceforward there was nothing for it but a straight run of six miles
to the rock, behind which lay the Scilly Isles, forty miles away, and
well below the boat's horizon.
So, when the moment came for the final decision to be made, Pollard cast
an anxious eye at a great bank of cloud mounting high in the north.
There was an ominous drop in the temperature, too. The rain he
anticipated might turn to snow, and snow is own brother to fog at sea,
though both are generally absent from the Cornish littoral in winter.
"Ben," cried Enid, breaking off a vivid if merciless description of a
new disciple who had joined the artistic coterie at Newlyn, "what are
you looking at?"
He scratched his head and gazed fixedly at the white battalions sweeping
in aërial conquest over the land.
"She do look like snaw," he admitted.
"Well, what does that matter?"
Without waiting for orders Constance had eased the helm a trifle. The
_Daisy_ was now fairly headed for the rock. With this breeze she would
be there in less than an hour.
"It be a bit risky," grumbled Ben.
"We will be alongside the lighthouse before there can be any serious
downfall," said practical Constance.
"Surely we can make the land again no matter how thick the weather may
be."
Ben allowed himself to be persuaded. In after life he would never admit
that they were free agents at that moment.
"It had to be," he would say. "It wur in me mind to argy wi' she, but I
just couldn't. An' how often do us zee snaw in Carnwall? Not once in a
blue moon." And who would dispute him? No West-country man, certainly.
At a distance of five miles one small fishing craft is as like another
as two Liliputians to the eye of Gulliver. In a word, it needs
acquaintance and nearness to distinguish them.
As it happened, Stephen Brand did happen to note the _Daisy_ and the
course she was shaping. But, during the short interval when his
telescope might have revealed to him the identity of her occupants, he
was suddenly called by telephone from the oil-room to the kitchen. When
next he ran aloft in a wild hurry to signal for assistance, he found, to
his despair, that the Land's End was already blotted out in a swirling
snowstorm, and the great plain of blue sea had shrunk to a leaden patch
whose visible limits made the reef look large by comparison.
With the mechanical precision of habit he set the big bell in motion.
Its heavy boom came fitfully through the pelting snow-flakes to the ears
of the two girls and old Ben. The latter, master of the situation now,
announced his intention to 'bout ship and make for Mount's Bay.
"'Ee doan' ketch me tryin' to sail close to Gulf Rock when 'ee can't zee
a boat's length ahead," he said, emphatically. "I be sorry, ladies both,
but 'ee knaw how the tide runs over the reef, an' 'tes easy to drive to
the wrong side of the light. We'm try again tomorrow. On'y the
flowers'll spile. All the rest--"
Crash! A loud explosion burst forth from the dense heights of the storm.
The _Daisy_, sturdy as she was, seemed to shiver. The very air trembled
with the din. Pollard had his hand on the sail to swing it to starboard
when Constance put the tiller over to bring the boat's head up against
the wind. For an instant he hesitated. Even he, versed in the ways of
the sea, was startled. Both girls positively jumped, the sudden bang of
the rocket was so unexpected.
"Mister Brand must ha' zeed us," pronounced Ben. "That's a warnin' to we
to go back."
The words had scarce left his lips when another report smote the great
silence, otherwise unbroken save by the quiet plash of the sea against
the bows and the faint reverberations of the distant bell.
"That is too urgent to be intended for us," said Constance. "We were
just half way when the snow commenced."
"I did not notice any vessel near the rock," cried Enid, tremulously.
"Did you, Ben?"
Pollard's slow utterance was not quick enough. Before he could answer, a
third rocket thundered its overpowering summons.
"That is the 'Help wanted' signal," cried Constance. "Ben, there is no
question now of going back. We must keep our present course for twenty
minutes at least, and then take to the oars. The bell will guide us."
"Oh, yes, Ben," agreed Enid. "Something has gone wrong on the rock
itself. I am quite sure there was no ship near enough to be in trouble
already."
"By gum, we'm zee what's the matter," growled Ben. "Steady it is, Miss
Brand. Ef we'm in trouble I'd as soon ha' you two gells aboard as any
two men in Penzance."
At another time the compliment would have earned him a torrent of
sarcasm. Now it passed unheeded. The situation was bewildering,
alarming. There were three keepers in the lighthouse. The signal
foreboded illness, sudden and serious illness. Who could it be?
In such a crisis charity begins at home. Constance, with set face and
shining eyes, Enid, flushed and on the verge of tears, feared lest their
own beloved one should be the sufferer.
To each of them Stephen Brand was equally a kind and devoted father. He
never allowed Enid to feel that she was dependent on his bounty. Only
the other day, when she hinted at the adoption of an art career as a
future means of earning a livelihood, he approved of the necessary study
but laughed at the reason.
"With your pretty face and saucy ways, Enid," he said, "I shall have
trouble enough to keep you in the nest without worrying as to the manner
of your leaving it. Work at your drawing, by all means. Avoid color as
the bane of true art. But where Connie and I live you shall live, until
you choose to forsake us."
No wonder these girls thought there was no other man in the world like
"dad." Their delightful home was idyllic in its happiness: their only
sorrow that Brand should be away two months out of three on account of
the pursuit in which he passed his hours of leisure during recent years.
Neither dared to look at the other. They could not trust themselves even
to speak. There was relief in action, for thought was torture.
The docile _Daisy_ steadily forged through the waves. The spasmodic
clang of the bell came more clearly each minute. Pollard, kneeling in
the bows, peered into the gloom of the swirling snow. He listened
eagerly to the bell. With right hand or left he motioned to Constance to
bring the boat's head nearer to the wind or permit the sail to fill out
a little more.
Enid, ready to cast the canvas loose at the first hint of danger,
consulted her watch frequently. At last she cried:
"Twenty minutes, Ben."
What a relief it was to hear her own voice. The tension was becoming
unbearable.
"Right y' are, missy. No need to slack off yet. 'Tes clearin' a bit.
We'm heave to alongside the rock in less'n no time."
The fisherman was right. His trained senses perceived a distinct
diminution in the volume of snow. Soon they could see fifty, a hundred,
two hundred yards ahead. On the starboard quarter they caught a
confused rushing noise, like the subdued murmur of a millrace. The tide
had covered the rock.
"Luff et is!" roared Ben, suddenly. "Steady now."
Out of the blurred vista a ghostly column rose in front. Smooth and
sheer were its granite walls, with dark little casements showing black
in the weird light. The boat rushed past the Trinity mooring-buoy. She
held on until they heard the sea breaking.
"Lower away!" cried Ben, and the yard fell with a sharp rattle that
showed how thoroughly Enid had laid to heart Pollard's tuition.
Constance brought the _Daisy_ round in a wide curve, and Ben got out the
oars to keep her from being dashed against the reef.
Enid's eyes were turned towards the gallery beneath the lantern.
"Lighthouse ahoy!" she screamed in a voice high-pitched with emotion.
There was no answering clang of the door leading from the room on a
level with the balcony. Not often had the girls visited the rock, but
they knew that this was the first sign they might expect of their
arrival being noted if there were no watchers pacing the "promenade."
"Help us, Ben," cried Constance, and their united shouts might be heard
a mile away in the prevailing stillness. A window half way up the tower
was opened. A man's head and shoulders appeared.
It was Stephen Brand.
"Thank God!" murmured Constance.
Enid, on whose sensitive soul the storm, the signal, the hissing rush of
the boat through the waves, had cast a spell of indefinite terror, bit
her lip to restrain her tears.
Brand gave a glance of amazement at the three uplifted faces. But this
was no time for surprise or question.
"I am coming down," he shouted. "Providence must have sent you at this
moment."
He vanished.
"What can it be?" said Constance, outwardly calm now in the assurance
that her father was safe.
"Must ha' bin a accident," said Ben. "That signal means 'Bring a
doctor.' An' there ain't a blessed tug in harbor, nor won't be till the
tide makes."
"That will mean delay," cried Enid.
"Five or six hours at least, missy."
The main door at the head of the iron ladder clamped to the stones swung
back, and Brand leaned out. He had no greeting for them, nor words of
astonishment.
"When will the tug reach here, Ben?" he asked.
The fisherman told him the opinion he had formed.
"Then you girls must come and help me. Jackson scalded his hands and
arms in the kitchen, and Bates was hurrying to the store-room for oil
and whitening when he slipped on the stairs and broke his leg. We must
get them both ashore. Ben, you can take them?"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Now, Constance, you first. Hold tight and stand in the skip. Your boat
cannot come near the rock."
He swung the derrick into place and began to work the windlass.
Constance, cool as her father, whispered to the excited Enid:
"Let us divide the parcels and take half each."
"Oh, I should have forgotten all about them," said Enid, stooping to
empty the lockers.
Constance, without flickering an eyelid, stepped into the strong basket
with its iron hoops, and, having arranged some of the plethoric paper
bags at her feet, told her father to "hoist away."
She arrived safely. Enid followed her, with equal _sang froid_, though a
lift of forty odd feet whilst standing in a skip and clinging to a rope
is not an every-day experience.
"Dang me," said Ben, as Enid, too, was swung into the lighthouse, "but
they're two plucked 'uns."
The great bell tolled away, though the snow had changed to sleet, and
the heights beyond the Land's End were dimly visible, so its warning
note was no longer needed. The sky above was clearing. A luminous haze
spreading over the waters heralded the return of the sun. But the wind
was bitterly cold; the fisherman watching the open door, with one eye on
the sea lest an adventurous wave should sweep the _Daisy_ against the
rock, murmured to himself:
"'Tes a good job the wind 's i' the norrard. This sort o' thing's a
weather-breeder, or my name ain't Ben Pollard."
And that was how Enid came back to the Gulf Rock to enter upon the
second great epoch of her life.
Once before had the reef taken her to its rough heart and fended her
from peril. Would it shield her again--rescue her from the graver danger
whose shadow even now loomed out of the deep. What was the bell saying
in its wistful monotony?
Enid neither knew nor cared. Just then she had other things to think
about.
CHAPTER IV
THE VOICE OF THE REEF
There comes a time in the life of every thinking man or woman when the
argosy of existence, floating placidly on a smooth and lazy stream,
gathers unto itself speed, rushes swiftly onward past familiar landmarks
of custom and convention, boils furiously over resisting rocks, and
ultimately, if not submerged in an unknown sea, finds itself again
meandering through new plains of wider horizon.
Such a perilous passage can never be foreseen. The rapids may begin
where the trees are highest and the meadows most luxuriant. No warning
is given. The increased pace of events is pleasant and exhilarating.
Even the last wild plunge over the cascade is neither resented nor
feared. Some frail craft are shattered in transit, some wholly sunken,
some emerge with riven sails and tarnished embellishments. A few not
only survive the ordeal, but thereby fit themselves for more daring
exploits, more soul-stirring adventures.
When the two girls stood with Stephen Brand in the narrow entrance to
the lighthouse, the gravity of their bright young faces was due solely
to the fact that their father had announced the serious accidents which
had befallen his assistants. No secret monitor whispered that fate, in
her bold and merciless dramatic action, had roughly removed two
characters from the stage to clear it for more striking events.
Not once in twenty years has it happened that two out of the three
keepers maintained on a rock station within signaling distance of the
shore have become incapacitated for duty on the same day. The thing was
so bewilderingly sudden, the arrival of Constance and Enid on the scene
so timely and unexpected, that Brand, a philosopher of ready decision in
most affairs of life, was at a loss what to do for the best now that
help, of a sort undreamed of, was at hand.
The case of Jackson, who was scalded, was simple enough. The Board of
Trade medicine chest supplied to each lighthouse is a facsimile of that
carried by every sea-going steamship. It contained the ordinary remedies
for such an injury, and there would be little difficulty or danger in
lowering the sufferer to the boat.
But Bates's affair was different. He lay almost where he had fallen.
Brand had only lifted him into the store-room from the foot of the
stairs, placing a pillow beneath his head, and appealing both to him and
to Jackson to endure their torture unmoved whilst he went to signal for
assistance.
The problem that confronted him now was one of judgment. Was is better
to await the coming of the doctor or endeavor to transfer Bates to the
boat?
He consulted Ben Pollard again; the girls were already climbing the
steep stairs to sympathize with and tend to the injured men.
"Do you think it will blow harder, Ben, when the tide turns?" he asked.
The old fellow seemed to regard the question as most interesting and
novel. Indeed, to him, some such query and its consideration provided
the chief problem of each day. Therefore he surveyed land, sea and sky
most carefully before he replied:
"It may be a'most anything afore night, Misser Brand."
At another time Brand would have smiled. Today he was nervous,
distraught, wrenched out of the worn rut of things.
"I fancy there is some chance of the doctor being unable to land when he
reaches the rock. Do you agree with me?"
His voice rang sharply. Ben caught its note and dropped his weather-wise
ambiguity.
"It'll blow harder, an' mebbe snaw agin," he said.
"I shall need some help here in that case, so I will retain the young
ladies. Of course you can manage the boat easily enough without them?"
Pollard grinned reassuringly.
"We'm run straight in wi' thiccy wind," he said.
So they settled it that way, all so simply.
A man sets up two slim masts a thousand miles apart and flashes
comprehensible messages across the void. The multitude gapes at first,
but soon accepts the thing as reasonable. "Wireless telegraphy" is the
term, as one says "by mail."
A whole drama was flowing over a curve of the earth at that moment but
the Marconi station was invisible. There was no expert in telepathic
sensation present to tell Brand and the fisherman that their commonplace
words covered a magic code.
Jackson, white and mute, was lowered first. The brave fellow would not
content himself with nursing his agony amidst the cushions aft. When
Bates, given some slight strength by a stiff dose of brandy, was
carried, with infinite care, down three flights of steep and narrow
stairs, and slung to the crane in an iron cot to be lowered in his turn,
Jackson stood up. Heedless of remonstrances, he helped to steady the cot
and adjust it amidships clear of the sail.
"Well done, Artie," said Brand's clear voice.
"Oh, brave!" murmured Enid.
"We will visit you every day at the hospital," sang out Constance.
Jackson smiled, yes, smiled, though his bandaged arms quivered and the
seared nerves of his hands throbbed excruciatingly. Speak aloud he could
not Yet he bent over his more helpless mate and whispered hoarsely:
"Cheer up, old man. Your case is worse'n mine. An' ye did it for me."
Pollard, with a soul gnarled as his body, yet had a glimpse of higher
things when he muttered:
"D'ye think ye can hold her, mate, whiles I hoist the cloth?"
Jackson nodded. The request was a compliment, a recognition. He sat down
and hooked the tiller between arm and ribs. Ben hauled with a will; the
_Daisy_, as if she were glad to escape the cascades of green water
swirling over the rock, sprang into instant animation. The watchers from
the lighthouse saw Ben relieve the steersman and tenderly arrange the
cushions behind his back. Then Brand closed the iron doors and the three
were left in dim obscurity.
They climbed nearly a hundred feet of stairways and emerged on to the
cornice balcony after Brand had stopped the clockwork which controlled
the hammer of the bell.
What a difference up here! The sea, widened immeasurably, had changed
its color. Now it was a sullen blue gray. The land was nearer and
higher. The _Daisy_ had shrunk to a splash of dull brown on the
tremendous ocean prairie. How fierce and keen the wind! How disconsolate
the murmur of the reef!
Brand, adjusting his binoculars, scrutinized the boat.
"All right aboard," he said. "I think we have adopted the wiser course.
They will reach Penzance by half-past two."
His next glance was towards the Land's End signal station. A line of
flags fluttered out to the right of the staff.
"Signal noted and forwarded," he read aloud. "That is all right; but the
wind has changed."
Enid popped inside the lantern for shelter. It was bitterly cold.
"Better follow her example, Connie," said Brand, to his daughter. "I
will draw the curtains. We can see just as well and be comfortable."
Indeed, the protection of the stout plate glass, so thick and tough that
sea-birds on a stormy night dashed themselves to painless death against
it, was very welcome. Moreover, though neither of the girls would admit
it, there was a sense of security here which was strangely absent when
they looked into the abyss beneath the stone gallery. Constance
balancing a telescope, Enid peering through the field-glasses, followed
the progress of the _Daisy_ in silence, but Brand's eyes wandered
uneasily from the barometer, which had fallen rapidly during the past
hour, to the cyclonic nimbus spreading its dark mass beyond the Seven
Stones Lightship. The sun had vanished, seemingly for the day, and the
indicator attached to the base of the wind vane overhead pointed now
sou'west by west. It would not require much further variation to bring
about a strong blow from the true southwest, a quarter responsible for
most of the fierce gales that sweep the English Channel.
Nevertheless, this quick darting about of the fickle breeze did not
usually betoken lasting bad weather. At the worst, the girls might be
compelled to pass the night on the rock. He knew that the tug with the
two relief men would make a valiant effort to reach the lighthouse at
the earliest possible moment. When the men joined him the girls could
embark. As it was, the affair was spiced with adventure. Were it not for
the mishap to the assistant-keepers the young people would have enjoyed
themselves thoroughly. The new airt of the wind, too, would send the
_Daisy_ speedily back to port. This, in itself, justified the course he
had taken. On the whole, a doubtful situation was greatly relieved. His
face brightened. With a grave humor not altogether artificial, he cried:
"Now, Constance, I did not take you aboard as a visitor. Between us we
ought to muster a good appetite. Come with me to the store-room. I will
get you anything you want and leave you in charge of the kitchen."
"And poor me!" chimed in Enid.
"Oh, you, miss, are appointed upper house-maid. And mind you, no
followers."
"Mercy! I nearly lost my situation before I got it."
"How?"
"We met Jack Stanhope and asked him to come with us."
"You asked him, you mean," said Constance.
"And you met him, I meant," said Enid.
"I don't care a pin how you treated Stanhope, so long as you didn't
bring him," said Brand, "though, indeed, he would have been useful as it
turned out."
When lunch was ready they summoned him by the electric bells he had put
up throughout the building. It gave them great joy to discover in the
living room a code of signals which covered a variety of messages. They
rang him downstairs by the correct call for "Meal served."
It was a hasty repast, as Brand could not remain long away from the
glass-covered observatory, but they all enjoyed it immensely. He left
them, as he said, "to gobble up the remains," but soon he shouted down
the stairs to tell them that the _Daisy_ had rounded Carn du. He could
not tell them, not knowing it, that at that precise moment old Ben
Pollard was frantically signaling to Lieutenant Stanhope to change the
course of the small steam yacht he had commandeered as soon as the
murmur ran through the town that the Gulf Rock was flying the "Help
wanted" signal.
The officials did not know that Brand was compelled by the snowstorm to
use rockets. All the information they possessed was the message from
Land's End and its time of dispatch.
Jack Stanhope's easy-going face became very strenuous, indeed, when he
heard the news.
The hour stated was precisely the time the _Daisy_ was due at the rock
if she made a good trip. Without allowing for any possible contingency
save disaster to the two girls and their escort, he rushed to the
mooring-place of the 10-ton steam-yacht _Lapwing_, impounded a couple of
lounging sailors, fired up, stoked, and steered the craft himself, and
was off across the Bay in a quarter of the time that the owner of the
_Lapwing_ could have achieved the same result.
His amazement was complete when he encountered the redoubtable _Daisy_
bowling home before a seven-knot breeze. He instantly came round and
ranged up to speaking distance. When he learnt what had occurred he
readily agreed to return to Penzance in order to pick up the relief
lighthouse-keepers, and thus save time in transferring them to the rock.
In a word, as Enid Trevillion was safe, he was delighted at the prospect
of bringing her back that evening, when the real skipper of the
_Lapwing_ would probably have charge of his own boat. There was no hurry
at all now.
If they left the harbor at three o'clock, there would still be plenty of
light to reach the Gulf Rock. Ben Pollard, glancing over his shoulder as
the _Daisy_ raced towards Penzance side by side with the _Lapwing_, was
not so sure of this. But the arrangement he had suggested was the best
possible one, and he was only an old fisherman who knew the coast,
whereas Master Stanhope pinned his faith to the Nautical Almanac and the
Rules.
The people most concerned knew nothing of these proceedings.
When Constance and Enid had solemnly decided on the menu for dinner,
when they had inspected the kitchen and commended the cleanliness of the
cook, Jackson, when they had washed the dishes and discovered the
whereabouts of the "tea-things," they suddenly determined that it was
much nicer aloft in the sky parlor than in these dim little rooms.
"I don't see why they don't have decent windows," said Enid. "Of course
it blows hard here in a gale, but just look at that tiny ventilator, no
bigger than a ship's port-hole, with a double storm-shutter to secure it
if you please, for all the world as if the sea rose so high!"
Constance took thought for a while.
"I suppose the sea never _does_ reach this height," she said.
Enid, in order to look out, had to thrust her head and shoulders through
an aperture two feet square and three feet in depth. They were in the
living-room at that moment--full seventy feet above the spring tide
high-water mark. Sixty feet higher, the cornice of the gallery was given
its graceful outer slope to shoot the climbing wave-crests of an
Atlantic gale away from the lantern. The girls could not realize this
stupendous fact. Brand had never told them. He wished them to sleep
peacefully on stormy nights when he was away from home. They laughed now
at the fanciful notion that the sea could ever so much as toss its spray
at the window of the living-room.
They passed into the narrow stairway. Their voices and footsteps sounded
hollow. It was to the floor beneath that Bates had fallen.
"I don't think I like living in a lighthouse," cried Enid. "It gives one
the creeps."
"Surely, there are neither ghosts nor ghouls here," said Constance. "It
is modern, scientific, utilitarian in every atom of its solid granite."
But Enid was silent as they climbed the steep stairs. Once she stopped
and peeped into her father's bedroom.
"That is where they brought me when I first came to the rock," she
whispered. "It used to be Mr. Jones's room. I remember dad saying so."
Constance, on whose shoulders the reassuring cloak of science hung
somewhat loosely, placed her arm around her sister's waist in a sudden
access of tenderness.
"You have improved in appearance since then, Enid," she said.
"What a wizened little chip I must have looked. I wonder who I am."
"I know who you soon will be if you don't take care."
Enid blushed prettily. She glanced at herself in a small mirror on the
wall. Trust a woman to find a mirror in any apartment.
"I suppose Jack will ask me to marry him," she mused.
"And what will you reply?"
The girl's lips parted. Her eyes shone for an instant. Then she buried
her face against her sister's bosom.
"O, Connie," she wailed, "I shall hate to leave you and dad. Why hasn't
Jack got a brother as nice as himself."
Whereupon Constance laughed loud and long.
The relief was grateful to both. Enid's idea of a happy solution of the
domestic difficulty appealed to their easily stirred sense of humor.
"Never mind, dear," gasped Constance at last. "You shall marry your Jack
and invite all the nice men to dinner. Good gracious! I will have the
pick of the navy. Perhaps the Admiral may be a widower."
With flushed faces they reached the region of light. Brand was writing
at a small desk in the service-room.
"Something seems to have amused you," he said. "I have heard weird peals
ascending from the depths."
"Connie is going to splice the admiral," explained Enid.
"What admiral?"
"Any old admiral."
"Indeed, I will not take an old admiral," protested the elder.
"Then you had better take him when he is a lieutenant," said Brand.
This offered too good an opening to be resisted.
"Enid has already secured the lieutenant," she murmured, with a swift
glance at the other.
Brand looked up quizzically.
"Dear me," he cried, "if my congratulations are not belated--"
Enid was blushing again. She threw her arms about his neck.
"Don't believe her, dad," she said. "She's jealous!"
Constance saw a book lying on the table: "Regulations for the Lighthouse
Service." She opened it. Brand stroked Enid's hair gently, and resumed
the writing of his daily journal.
"The Elder Brethren!" whispered Constance. "Do they wear long white
beards?"
"And carry wands?" added the recovered Enid.
"And dress in velvet cloaks and buckled shoes?"
"And--"
"And say 'Boo' to naughty little girls who won't let me complete my
diary," shouted Brand. "Be off, both of you. Keep a lookout for the next
ten minutes. If you see any signals from the mainland, or catch sight of
the _Lancelot_, call me."
They climbed to the trimming stage of the lantern, which was level with
the external gallery. Obedient to instructions, they searched the Land's
End and the wide reach of Mount's Bay beyond Carn du. Save a scudding
sail or two beating in from the Lizard and a couple of big steamers
hurrying from the East--one a Transatlantic Transport liner from
London--there was nothing visible. In the far distance the sea looked
smooth enough, though they needed no explanation of the reality when
they saw the irregular white patches glistening against the hull of a
Penzance fishing-smack.
"O, Connie, the reef!" said Enid, suddenly, in a low voice.
They glanced at the turbid retreat of the tide over the submerged rocks.
The sea was heavier, the noise louder, now that they listened to it,
than when they arrived in the _Daisy_, little more than an hour earlier.
Some giant force seemed to be wrestling there, raging against its bonds,
striving feverishly to tear, rend, utterly destroy its invisible
fetters. Sometimes, after an unusually impetuous surge, a dark shape,
trailing witch-tresses of weed, showed for an instant in the pit of the
cauldron. Then a mad whirl of water would pounce on it with a fearsome
spring and the fang of rock would be smothered ten feet deep.
For some reason they did not talk. They were fascinated by the power,
the grandeur, the untamed energy of the spectacle. The voice of the reef
held them spellbound. They listened mutely.
Beneath, Brand wrote, with scholarly ease:
"Therefore I decided that it would best serve the interests of the Board
if I sent Bates and Jackson to Penzance in the boat in which my
daughter--" he paused an instant and added an "s" to the
word--"fortunately happened to visit me. As I would be alone on the
rock, and the two girls might be helpful until the relief came, I
retained them."
He glanced at the weather-glass in front of him and made a note:
"Barometer falling. Temperature higher."
In another book he entered the exact records. A column headed "Wind
direction and force," caused him to look up at the wind vane. He
whistled softly.
"S. W.," he wrote, and after a second's thought inserted the figure 6.
The sailor's scale, ye landsman, differs from yours. What you term a
gale at sea he joyfully hails as a fresh breeze. No. 6 is a point above
this limit, when a well-conditioned clipper ship can carry single reefs
and top-gallant sails, in chase full and by. No. 12 is a hurricane.
"Bare poles," says the scale.
Slowly mounting the iron ladder, he stood beside the silent watchers.
The Bay was nearly deserted. No sturdy tug-boat was pouring smoke from
her funnel and staggering towards the rock. Northwest and west the
darkness was spreading and lowering.
He did not trouble to examine the reef. Its signs and tokens were too
familiar to him. Its definite bellow or muttered threat was part of the
prevailing influence of the hour or day. He had heard its voice too
often to find an omen in it now.
"This time I must congratulate both of you," he said quietly.
"On what?" they cried in unison, shrill with unacknowledged excitement.
"Ladies seldom, if ever, pass a night on a rock lighthouse. You will
have that rare privilege."
Enid clapped her hands.
"I am delighted," she exclaimed.
"Will there be a storm, father?" asked Constance.
"I think so. At any rate, only a miracle will enable the tug to reach us
before tomorrow, and miracles are not frequent occurrences at sea."
"I know of one," was Enid's comment, with great seriousness for her. He
read her thought.
"I was younger then," he smiled. "Now I am fifty, and the world has
aged."
CHAPTER V
THE HURRICANE
They descended into the service-room.
"Let me see," said Enid; "it will be nineteen years on the 22d of next
June, since you found me floating serenely towards the Gulf Rock in a
deserted boat?"
"Yes, if you insist on accuracy as to the date. I might cavil at your
serenity."
"And I was 'estimated' as a year old then? Isn't it a weird thing that a
year-old baby should be sent adrift on the Atlantic in an open boat and
never a word of inquiry made subsequently as to her fate? I fear I could
not have been of much account in those days."
"My dear child, I have always told you that the boat had been in
collision during the fog which had prevailed for several days
previously. Those who were caring for you were probably knocked
overboard and drowned."
"But alone! Utterly alone! That is the strangeness of it. I must be an
American. Americans start out to hustle for themselves early in life,
don't they."
"Certainly, in that respect you might claim the record."
Brand had not told her all the facts of that memorable June morning.
Why should he? They were not pleasant memories to him. Why cumber her
also with them? For the rest, he had drawn up and read to her, long ago,
a carefully compiled account of her rescue and the steps taken to
discover her identity.
"I entered on an active and useful career with no such halo of glory,"
broke in Constance. "I am just plain English, born in Brighton, of
parents not poor but respectable. Mother died a year after my birth,
didn't she, dad?"
"You were thirteen months old when we lost her," he answered, bending
over the clock-work attachment of the fog bell to wipe off an invisible
speck of dust. Since his first term of service on the rock the light had
changed from an occulting to a fixed one.
"She is buried there, isn't she," the girl went on. "How strange that,
amidst our many journeyings, we have never visited Brighton."
"If I were able to take you to her grave-side, I would not do it," said
Brand. "I do not encourage morbid sentiments, even of that perfectly
natural kind. Your mother, to you, Constance, is like Enid's to her, a
dear but visionary legend. In a degree, it is always so between loved
ones lost and those who are left. Truth, honor, work, these are the
highest ideals for the individual. They satisfy increasingly. Happy as I
am in your companionship, you must not be vexed when I tell you that the
most truly joyful moment of my life was conferred when my little friend
here first responded accurately to external influences."
He laid his hand on an object resting on a table by itself. It looked
like an aneroid barometer, but the others knew it was the marine
auriscope to which he had devoted so many patient hours.
"Is it in working order now?" asked Constance instantly, and Enid came
nearer. Together they examined the small dial. It was equipped with an
arrow-headed pointer, and marked with the divisions of the compass but
without the distinguishing letters.
These three understood each other exactly. By inadvertence, the
conversation had touched on a topic concerning which Brand was always
either vague or silent. Both girls were quick-witted enough to know that
Constance's mother was never willingly alluded to either by the
lighthouse-keeper or by the elderly Mrs. Sheppard who looked after them
in infancy, and was now the housekeeper of Laburnum Cottage.
Constance was annoyed. How could she have been so thoughtless as to
cause her father a moment's suffering by bringing up painful
reminiscences. But he helped her, being master of himself.
He adjusted a switch in the instrument.
"I had no difficulty in constructing a diaphragm which would intercept
all sounds," he said. "The struggle came when I wanted an agent which
would distinguish and register a particular set of sounds, no matter
what additional din might be prevalent at the same time. My hopes were
wrecked so often that I began to despair, until I chanced one day to
read how the high-tension induction coil could be tuned to disregard
electrical influences other than those issued at the same pitch. My
anxiety, until I had procured and experimented with a properly
constructed coil, was very trying, I assure you."
"I remember wondering what on earth it was," volunteered Enid. "It
sounded like a mathematical snake."
"And I am sorry to say that even yet I am profoundly ignorant as to its
true inwardness," smiled Constance.
"Yet you girls delight in poets who bid you hearken to the music of the
spheres. I suppose you will admit that the ear of, say, Ben Pollard, is
not tuned to such a celestial harmony. However, I will explain my
auriscope in a sentence. It only listens to and indicates the direction
of foghorns, sirens, and ship's bells. A shrill steam whistle excites
it, but the breaking of seas aboard ship, the loud flapping of a
propeller, the noise of the engines, of a gale, or all these in
combination, leave it unmoved."
"I remember once, when we were going from Falmouth to Porthalla in a
fog, how dreadfully difficult it was to discover the whereabouts of
another steamer we passed _en route_," said his daughter.
"Well, with this little chap on the bridge, the pointer would have told
the captain unerringly. I don't suppose it will be thick whilst you are
here, or you would see it pick up the distant blasts of a steamer long
before we can hear them, and follow her course right round the arc of
her passage. It is most interesting to watch its activity when there are
several ships using their sirens. I have never had an opportunity of
testing it on more than three vessels at once, but as soon as I could
deduce a regular sequence in the seemingly erratic movements of the
indicator, I marked the approach and passing of each with the utmost
ease."
"Would that stop collisions at sea?"
"Nothing will do that, because some ship's officers refuse at times to
exercise due care. But with my instrument on board two ships, and a time
chart attached to the drums, there would be no need for a Board of Trade
inquiry to determine whether or not the proper warning was given. To the
vast majority of navigators it will prove an absolute blessing."
"You clever old thing!" cried Enid. "I suppose you will make heaps of
money out of it."
"The inventor is the last man to make money out of his inventions, as a
rule," said Brand. "I suppose I differ from the ordinary poor fellow
inasmuch as I am not dependent for a livelihood on the success of my
discovery."
"There's not the least little bit of chance of there being a fog
tonight?" queried Enid, so earnestly that a wave of merriment rippled
through the room.
"Not the least. In any event, you two girls will be in bed and sound
asleep at ten o'clock."
"Perish the thought!" cried Constance. "Bed at ten, during our first and
only night on a lighthouse!"
"You will see," said her father. "You cannot imagine how the clock
dawdles in this circumscribed area. Work alone conquers it. Otherwise,
men would quit the service after a month's experience."
"Ship ahoy!" screamed Enid. "Here comes the _Lapwing_ round Carn du. Mr.
Lawton must have lent her to bring the relief. How kind of him."
"The _Lapwing_ cannot approach the rock," said Brand. "I will signal
'Landing impossible today.' It will save them a useless journey."
He selected the requisite flags from a locker, the phrase he needed
being coded. Soon the strong breeze was trying to tear the bunting from
the cordage, and though they could not hear the three whistles with
which the little yacht acknowledged the signal, they could easily see
the jets of steam through their glasses.
Constance happened to overlook the table on which stood the auriscope.
"This thing has actually recorded those whistles," she cried in wonder.
"What sort of whistle has the _Lapwing_?" asked Brand.
"A loud and deep one, worthy of a leviathan. It was a fad of Mr.
Lawton's. They say his siren consumes more steam than his engines."
Her father laughed.
"Anyhow, he is sticking to his course," he announced. "I may as well
take in the decorations."
Undauntedly, but much flurried by a sea ever increasing in strength as
the force of the ebb tide encountered the resistance of the wind, the
_Lapwing_ held on. With wind and sea against her she would have made
slow work of it. As it was, there was help forthcoming for both journeys
unless the wind went back to the north again as rapidly as it had veered
to the southwest.
She would not be abreast the rock for nearly an hour, so Brand left the
girls in charge of the lookout whilst he visited the oil-room. A wild
night, such as he anticipated, demanded full pressure at the lamp. If
the air became super-saturated, breakage of the glass chimneys might
take place, and he must have a good stock on hand. Water and coal, too,
were needed; the double accident to Bates and Jackson had thrown into
arrears all the ordinary duties of the afternoon watch.
Naturally, the pair in the lantern found the progress of the yacht
exasperatingly slow.
"A nice _Lapwing_," said Enid, scornfully. "I will tell Mr. Lawton he
ought to rechristen her the _Bantam_. All her power is in her crow."
When Brand joined them matters became livelier. More accustomed than
they to the use of a telescope, he made discoveries.
"The two supernumeraries are there," he announced, "but I cannot see
Lawton. Indeed, so far as I can make out, she is commanded by Stanhope,
dressed in Ben Pollard's oil-skins."
"He has left Lady Margaret!" cried Constance.
"He never went home!" essayed Enid.
"Poor chap! He was going to take us for a drive tomorrow," said
Constance.
"To Morvah," explained Enid, with a syllabic emphasis meant for one pair
of ears.
"It is very nice of him to struggle on and have a look at us," said
Brand. "He can come close enough to see us, but that is all. Our small
megaphone will be useless."
Indeed, the _Lapwing_ dared not approach nearer than the Trinity mooring
buoy. By that time the three, protected from the biting wind by oilskin
coats, were standing on the gallery. The reef was bellowing up at them
with a continuous roar. A couple of acres of its surface consisted of
nothing more tangible than white foam and driving spray.
Stanhope, resigning the wheel to a sailor, braced himself firmly against
the little vessel's foremast and began to strike a series of
extraordinary attitudes with his arms and head.
"Why is he behaving in that idiotic manner?" screamed Enid.
"_Capital_ idea--semaphore--clever fellow, Jack," shouted Brand.
Abashed, Enid held her peace.
The lighthouse-keeper, signalling in turn that he was receiving the
message, spelled out the following:
"Is all well?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Bates and Jackson reached hospital. Bates compound fracture. If weather
moderates will be with you next tide."
"All right," waved Brand.
The distant figure started again:
"L-o-v-e t-o E-n-i-d."
Enid indulged in an extraordinary arm flourish.
"A-n-d C-o-n-s-t-a-n-c-e."
"That spoils it," she screamed. "It ought to be only kind regards to
you, Connie. I believe you are a serpent, a--"
"Do stop your chatter," shouted Brand, and he continued the message:
"Weather looks very bad. Little hope for tonight. _Lancelot_ due at six.
Will see personally that no chance is lost. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," was the response.
The _Lapwing_ fell away astern from the vicinity of the buoy.
"Why is he doing that?" asked Constance, close to her father's ear.
"He is too good a sailor to risk turning her in that broken water. A
little farther out there is greater depth and more regular seas."
They watched the yacht in silence. At last her head swung round towards
the coast. When broadside on, a wave hit her, and the spray leaped over
her masts.
"That gave them a wetting," cried Brand, and his calm tone stilled their
ready fear. Indeed, there was greater danger than he wanted them to
know. But the _Lapwing_ reappeared, shaking herself, and still turning.
"Good little boat!" said Brand. The crisis had passed. She was headed,
at full speed, for the Bay. And not too soon. 'Ere she reached the
comparative shelter of Clement's Island she was swept three times by
green water.
Inside the lantern, their faces ruddy with the exposure, their eyes
dancing with excitement, the girls were voluble with delight. Could
anything be more thrilling than their experiences that day!
"That semaphore dodge is too precious to be lost," cried Enid. "Connie,
you and I must learn the alphabet. You shall teach us this very evening,
dad. Fancy me signaling you the whole length of the Promenade: 'Just
look at Mrs. Wilson's bonnet,' or 'Here come the Taylor-Smiths. Scoot!'
Oh, it's fine."
She whirled her arms in stiff-jointed rigidity and mimicked Stanhope's
fantastic posing.
"Why should you scoot when you meet the Taylor-Smiths?" asked Brand.
"Because Mrs. T.-S. hauls us off to tea and gives us a gallon of gossip
with every cup."
"I thought your sex regarded gossip as the cream?"
"Sex, indeed! Old Smith is worse than his wife. He doesn't say much, but
he winks. One of his winks, at the end of a story, turns an episode into
a three-volume novel."
"It seems to me I must teach you the code in my own self-defence," he
replied. "And now for tea. Let us have it served here."
They voted this an admirable notion. The girls enlivened the meal by
relating to him the doings and sayings of current interest ashore during
the past two months. By a queer coincidence, which he did not mention,
his relief was again due within a week, just as on the occasion of
Enid's first appearance on the rock. The fact struck him as singular. In
all probability he would not return to duty. He had completed twenty-one
years of active service. Now he would retire, and when the commercial
arrangements for the auriscope were completed, he would take his
daughters on a long-promised Continental tour, unless, indeed, matters
progressed between Stanhope and Enid to the point of an early marriage.
He had foreseen that Stanhope would probably ask Enid to be his wife. He
knew the youngster well, and liked him. For the opposition that Lady
Margaret might offer he cared not a jot. He smiled inwardly--as the
convenient phrase has it--when he reviewed the certain outcome of any
dispute between himself and her ladyship. He would surprise her.
Brand, the lighthouse-keeper, and Brand urging the claims of his adopted
daughter, would be two very different persons.
Of course, all Penzance knew that he was a gentleman, a scientist in a
small way, and a man of means: otherwise Constance and Enid would not
have occupied the position they held in local society. Those
unacquainted with English ways ofttimes make the mistake of rating a
man's social status by the means he possesses or the manner of his life
in London. No greater error could be committed. The small, exclusive
county town, the community which registers the family connections of
many generations, is the only reliable index. Here, to be of gentle
birth and breeding--not bad credentials even in the court of King
Demos--confers Brahminical rank, no matter what the personal fortunes of
the individual.
Brand, it is true, did not belong to a Cornish county family, but there
were those who conned him shrewdly. They regarded him as a well-meaning
crank, yet the edict went forth that his daughters were to be
"received," and received they were, with pleasure and admiration by all
save such startled elderly mammas as Lady Margaret Stanhope, who
expected her good-looking son to contract a marriage which would restore
the failing fortunes of the house.
All unconscious of the thoughts flitting through his brain, for Brand
was busy trimming a spare lamp, the two girls amused themselves by
learning the semaphore alphabet from a little hand-book which he found
for them.
When the night fell, dark and lowering, the lamp was lighted. They had
never before seen an eight-wicked concentric burner in use. The shore
lighthouses with which they were better acquainted were illuminated by
electricity or on the catoptric principle, wherein a large number of
small Argand lamps, with reflectors, are grouped together.
To interest them, to keep their eyes and ears away from the low-water
orgy of the reef, he explained to them the capillary action of the oil.
Although they had learnt these things in school they had not realized
the exactness of the statement that oil does not burn, but must first
be converted into gas by the application of heat. On the Gulf Rock there
were nearly 3,000 gallons of colza oil stored in the tanks beneath,
colza being used in preference to paraffin because it was safer, and
there was no storage accommodation apart from the lighthouse.
Requiring much greater heat than mineral oil to produce inflammable gas,
the colza had to be forced by heavy pressure in the cistern right up to
the edge of the wicks, and made to flow evenly over the rims of the
burner, else the fierce flame would eat the metal discs as well.
He read them a little lecture on the rival claims of gas and
electricity, and demonstrated how dazzlingly brilliant the latter could
be on a dark, clear night by showing them the fine light on the Lizard.
"But in hazy weather the oil wins," he said, with the proper pride of
every man in his own engine. "Fishermen sailing into Penzance along a
course equidistant from the two points tell me that if they can see
anything at all on a foggy night they invariably catch a dull yellow
radiance from the rock, whilst the Lizard is invisible. The oil has more
penetrative power. Its chemical combination is nearer the mean of
nature's resources."
At the proper time he banished them to the kitchen to prepare dinner, a
feast diverted from the hour of noon by the chances of the day. He
adopted every expedient to keep them busy, to tire them physically and
mentally, to render them so exhausted that they would sleep in blissful
calm through the ordeal to come.
As he could not leave the lamp, and they refused to eat apart from him,
the dinner, in three courses, was a breathless affair. Going up and down
five flights of stairs with soup, joint and pudding, whilst one carried
the tray and the other swung a hand lantern in front, required time and
exertion. They were cheerful as grigs over it.
Enid, whose turn it was to bring up the plates of tapioca, pleaded
guilty to a slight sensation of nervousness.
"I could not help remembering," she said, "what an awful lot of dark
iron steps there were beneath me. I felt as if something were creeping
up quickly behind to grab me by the ankles."
"You should go up and down three times in the dark," was Brand's recipe.
"When you quitted the door level for the third ascent you would cease to
worry about impossible grabs."
Constance looked at her watch.
"Only eight o'clock! What a long day it has been," she commented.
"You must go to bed early. Sleep in my room. You will soon forget where
you are; each of the bunks is comfortable. Now I will leave you in
charge of the lamp whilst I go and lock up."
They laughed. It sounded so home-like.
"Any fear of burglars?" cried Enid.
"Yes, most expert cracksmen, wind, and rain, and--sleet," he added
quietly. "I must fasten all the storm-shutters and make everything
snug. Don't stir until I wake you in the morning."
"Poor old dad!" sighed Constance. "What a vigil!"
He was making new entries in the weather report when she remarked
thoughtfully:
"It is high-water about half past one, I think?"
He nodded, pretending to treat the question as of no special import.
"From all appearances there will be a heavy sea," she went on.
"Just an ordinary bad night," he said coolly.
"Do the waves reach far up the lighthouse in a gale?" she persisted.
Then Brand grasped the situation firmly.
"So that your slumbers may be peaceful," he said, "I will call your kind
attention to the fact that the Gulf Rock light has appeared every night
during the past twenty-five years, or since a date some four years
before you were born, Constance. It contains 4,000 tons of granite and
is practically monolithic, as if it were carved out of a quarry. Indeed,
I think its builder went one better than nature. Here are no cracks or
fissures or undetected flaws. The lowest course is bolted to the rock
with wrought-iron clamps. Every stone is dovetailed to its neighbors,
and clasped to them with iron, above, below and at the sides. If you
understand conic sections I could make clearer the scientific aspect of
the structure, but you can take it from me you are far safer here than
on a natural rock many times the dimensions of this column."
"That sounds very satisfactory," murmured Enid, sleepily.
"I am overwhelmed," said Constance, who grasped the essential fact that
he had not answered her question.
Soon after nine o'clock he kissed them good-night. They promised not to
sit up talking. As a guarantee of good behavior, Enid said she would
ring the electric bell just before she climbed into her bunk.
The signal came soon and he was glad. He trusted to the fatigue, the
fresh air, the confidence of the knowledge that he was on guard, to lull
them into the security of unconsciousness.
The behavior of the mercury puzzled him. In the barometer it fell, in
the thermometer it rose. Increasing temperature combined with low
pressure was not a healthy weather combination in January. Looking back
through the records of several years, he discovered a similar set of
conditions one day in March, 1891. He was stationed then on the
Northeast coast and failed to remember any remarkable circumstance
connected with the date, so he consulted the lighthouse diary for that
year. Ah! Here was a possible explanation. The chief-keeper, a stranger
to him, was something of a meteorologist.
He had written: "At 4.15 P.M. the barometer stood at 27.16°, and the
thermometer at 45.80°. There was a heavy sea and a No. 7 gale blowing
from the S. S.-W. About five o'clock the wind increased to a hurricane
and the sea became more violent than I have seen it during five years'
experience of this station. Judging solely by the clouds and the flight
of birds, I should imagine that the cyclonic centre passed over the
Scilly Isles and the Land's End."
Then, next day:
"A steady northeast wind stilled the sea most effectually. Within
twenty-four hours of the first signs of the hurricane the Channel was
practicable for small craft. A fisherman reports that the coast is
strewn with wreckage."
Brand mused over the entries for a while. With his night glasses he
peered long into the teeth of the growing storm to see if he could find
the double flash of the magnificent light on the Bishop Rock, one of the
Atlantic breakwaters of the Scilly Isles. It was fully thirty-five miles
distant, but it flung its radiance over the waters from a height of 143
feet, and the Gulf Rock lamp stood 130 feet above high-water mark. A
landsman would not have distinguished even the nearer revolutions of the
St. Agnes light, especially in the prevalent gloom, and wisps of
spindrift were already striking the lantern and blurring the glass.
Nevertheless, he caught the quick flashes reflected from clouds low, but
unbroken. As yet, there was a chance of the incoming tide bringing
better weather, and he bent again over the record of the equinoctial
gale in 1891. Soon he abandoned this hope. The growing thunder of the
reef as the tide advanced gave the first unmistakable warning of what
was to come. As a mere matter of noise the reef roared its loudest at
half-tide. He understood now that a gale had swept across the Atlantic
in an irregular track. Howsoever the winds may rage the tides remain
steadfast, and the great waves now rushing up from the west were
actually harbingers of the fierce blast which had created them.
Of course, the threatened turmoil in no wise disconcerted him. It might
be that the rock would remain inaccessible during many days. In that
event the girls would take the watch after the lamp was extinguished and
they must learn to endure the monotony and discomforts of existence in a
storm-bound lighthouse. They would be nervous unquestionably--perhaps he
had forgotten how nervous--but Brand was a philosopher, and at present
he was most taken up with wonderment at the curious blend of
circumstances which resulted in their presence on the rock that night.
Ha! A tremor shook the great pillar. He heard without the frenzied
shriek of the first repulsed roller which flung itself on the sleek and
rounded wall. Would the girls sleep through the next few hours?
Possibly, if awake, they would attribute the vibration of the column to
the wind. He trusted it might be so. Shut in as they were, they could
not distinguish sounds. Everything to them would be a confused hum, with
an occasional shiver as the granite braced its mighty heart to resist
the enemy.
But what new note was this in the outer chaos? An ordinary gale
shuddered and whistled and chanted its way past the lantern in varying
tones. It sang, it piped, it bellowed, it played on giant reeds and
crashed with cymbals. Now--he looked at the clock, after
midnight--there was a sustained screech in the voice of the tempest
which he did not remember having heard before. At last the explanation
dawned on him. The hurricane was there, a few feet away, shut off from
him by mere sheets of glass. The lighthouse thrust its tall shaft into
this merciless tornado with grim steadfastness, and around its smooth
contours poured a volume of unearthly melody which seemed to surge up
from the broad base and was flung off into the darkness by the outer
sweep of the cornice.
The wind was traveling seventy, eighty, mayhap a hundred miles an hour.
Not during all his service, nor in earlier travels through distant
lands, had he ever witnessed a storm of such fury. He thought he heard
something crack overhead. He looked aloft, but all seemed well. Not
until next day did he discover that the wind-vane had been carried away,
a wrought iron shank nearly two inches thick having snapped like a piece
of worsted at the place where the tempest had found a fault.
He tried to look out into the heart of the gale. The air was full of
flying foam, but the sea was beaten flat. If the growling monster
beneath tried to fling a defiant crest at the tornado, the whole mass of
water, many tons in weight, was instantly torn from the surface and
flung into nothingness. Some of these adventurers, forced up by the
reef, hit the lighthouse with greater force than many a cannon-ball
fired in battles which have made history. Time after time the splendid
structure winced beneath the blow.
If Stephen Brand were ever fated to know fear he was face to face with
the ugly phantom then. The granite column would not yield, but it was
quite within the bounds of possibility that the entire lantern might be
carried away, and he with it.
He thought, with a catching of his breath, of the two girls in the tiny
room beneath. For one fleeting instant his mortal eyes gazed into the
unseen. But the call of duty restored him. The excessive draught
affected the lamp. Its ardor must be checked. With a steady hand he
readjusted the little brass screws. They were so superbly indifferent to
all this pandemonium. Just little brass screws, doing their work, and
heeding naught beside. Suddenly there came to him the triumphant
knowledge that the pure white beam of the light was hewing its path
through the savage assailant without as calmly and fearlessly as it lit
up the ocean wilds on a midsummer night of moonlight and soft zephyrs.
"Thank God for that!" he murmured aloud. "How can a man die better than
at his post?"
The ring of iron beneath caught his ears. He turned from the lamp.
Constance appeared, pale, with shining eyes. She carried the lantern.
Behind her crept Enid, who had been crying; she strove now to check her
tears.
"Is this sort of thing normal, or a special performance arranged for our
benefit?" said his daughter, with a fine attempt at a smile.
"Oh, dad, I am so frightened," cried Enid. "Why does it howl so?"
CHAPTER VI
THE MIDDLE WATCH
It says a good deal for Stephen Brand's courage that he was able to
laugh just then, but it is a fine thing for a man, in a moment of
supremest danger, to be called on to comfort a weeping woman.
The next minute might be their last--of that he was fully conscious.
Even before the girls reached his side he felt a curious lifting
movement of the whole frame of the lantern. Steel and glass alike were
yielding to the sustained violence of the wind-pressure. Well were they
molded, by men whose conscience need harbor no reproach of dishonest
craftsmanship; they were being tested now almost beyond endurance.
Some natures would have found relief in prayer. Gladly would Constance
and Enid have sunk on their knees and besought the Master of the Winds
to spare them and those at sea. But Brand, believing that a catastrophe
was imminent, decided that in order to save the girls' lives he must
neither alarm them nor lose an unnecessary instant.
To desert the light--that was impossible personally. If given the least
warning, he would spring towards the iron rail that curved by the side
of the stairs to the service-room, and take his chance. Otherwise he
would go with the lamp. There was no other alternative. The girls must
leave him at once.
The laugh with which he greeted their appearance gave him time to
scheme.
"I ought to scold you, but I won't," he cried. "Are you plucky enough to
descend to the kitchen and make three nice cups of cocoa?"
Just think what it cost him to speak in this bantering way, careless of
words, though each additional syllable might mean death to all three.
His request had the exact effect he calculated. For once, Constance was
deceived, and looked her surprise. Enid, more volatile, smiled through
her tears. So it was not quite as bad as they imagined, this gale. Their
father could never be so matter-of-fact in the face of real peril to all
of them. Cocoa! Fancy a man giving his thoughts to cocoa whilst they
were expecting the lighthouse to be hurled into the English Channel.
He turned again to manipulate the brass screws.
"Now, do not stand there shivering," he said, "but harden your hearts
and go. Use the oil stove. By the time it is ready--"
"Shivering, indeed!"
Constance, of the Viking breed, would let him see that he had no
monopoly of the family motto: "_Audèo._" She, too, could dare.
"Down you go, Enid," she cried. "He shall have his cocoa, poor man."
He looked over his shoulder and caught his daughter glancing at him from
the well of the stairs.
"Bad night," he shouted cheerfully, and he cheated her quick
intelligence a second time.
They were gone. Perchance it was his last sight of them in this life.
Three times the stalwart frame-work creaked. Once it moved so
perceptibly that the curtain rings jingled. Then he remembered the words
of Isaiah:
"For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in
his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the
blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."
The blast of the terrible ones! What a vivid pen-picture of the awesome
forces of nature. How long would this tornado continue? Already it must
have strewed its path with havoc at sea and on land. His physical senses
were elevated to the supernatural. He seemed to acquire abnormal powers
of sight and hearing. He could see the trees bending before the wrathful
wind, hear the crashing tiles and brickwork as houses were demolished
and people hurled to death. But there was no ecstasy of soul, no mental
altitude. In quick reaction came the fanciful memory of the hardy old
salt who cheered his shipmates during a terrific gale with the trite
remark:
"I pity the poor folk ashore on a night like this."
What a curious jumble of emotions jostled in his brain. A step from the
sublime to the ridiculous! Not even a step. They were inextricably
interwoven, the woof and the warp of things. He recalled the odd
expression of an officer who had passed unscathed through the Inferno of
Spion Kop.
"I had no sense of fear," said he, "but my teeth began to ache."
Brand, a student, even of himself, discovered that his dominant
sensation was one of curiosity.
"If it has to be," said his nervous system, "let it come quickly." He
felt like a man lying on the operating table waiting for the chloroform.
Suddenly, the bright flame of the lamp lessened. The use that was his
second nature caused him to raise the wicks and admit more draught. Even
whilst his deft fingers arranged the complex burner, his ear caught a
change in the external din. The shriek of the wind dropped to a
thunderous growl. This was a gale, not a tempest. God be praised, the
crisis had passed!
The hurricane had lasted thirty-five minutes. A similar tornado sufficed
to wreck one-half of the City of St. Louis. This one, as he learnt
afterwards, swept around the south of Ireland, created a tidal wave
which did great damage to the Scilly Isles and the headlands of the
south coast, yet spent itself somewhere in the North Sea. Dwellers in
inland cities were amazed and incredulous when the newspapers spoke of
its extraordinary violence. A truth is harder to swallow than a lie, all
the time.
Up clattered Enid with the steaming beverage; Constance, the
lantern-bearer, providing the rear-guard.
"I do believe it is blowing worse than ever," said Enid, striving
desperately to be unconcerned. In reality, the angry wind was no longer
able to behead the waves. With a rising tide and the gale assisting
there would soon be a sea worthy of Turner in his maddest mood.
"Good gracious, dad," cried Constance, "how pale you are. And your
forehead is wet. What have you been doing?"
Brand hastily mopped his face with a handkerchief.
"During some of the heavy gusts," he explained, "I was compelled to
stand on the trimming stage. And--the micrometer valve required
adjustment."
She eyed him narrowly. The margin of suspicion was wider.
"There is nothing else wrong?" she asked.
He approached and kissed her ear.
"Since when did my little girl begin to doubt me?" he said quietly.
Her eyes filled. Even the hint of a reproach from him was intolerable.
For the life of her she could no longer control the flood of terror
which welled up beyond restraint.
"Forgive me, dad," she murmured, "but I thought, and I still think, that
we were and are in a position of the utmost peril. I can't help knowing
that it is high-water about two o'clock. It is now only a quarter to
one. The worst is not over. Do you think I cannot read your dear face!
Dad! if there is danger, don't send us away again."
Tears were streaming down her white cheeks. Enid, holding the tray in
speechless bewilderment during this outburst from her proud and
self-reliant sister, set it down on the writing-desk with a crash.
"Oh, dear," she wailed, "I don't want any cocoa if we're gug-gug-going
to be drowned."
Certainly if Stephen Brand had imagined, two minutes earlier, that he
was about to laugh long and loudly, in a genuine surrender to an
uncontrollable spasm of mirth, he would have feared lest his wits were
leaving him. Yet he laughed now until his vision was blurred. And the
wonderful relief of it! What a tonic, after the ordeal he had endured!
It chanced, just then, that an emancipated wave embraced the granite
column, hit the cornice, and deluged the lantern, its disintegrated mass
striking the glass with force enough to break any ordinary window. The
astounded girls could not refuse the evidence of eyes and ears. Here was
the frantic sea leaping to a height of one hundred and forty feet and
more, yet their father was treating the incident as the merriest joke of
many a month.
No better cure for their hysteria could be contrived. Brand was
obviously not acting. The hearty pulsations of laughter had restored his
ruddy color. Evidently they were alarmed about nothing.
"Here, Enid, drink your parting cup," he cried at last. "Have no fear.
It is only the _dochan doris_ before many another feast."
Feeling somewhat ashamed of themselves, though smiling very wistfully,
they obeyed him. He sipped his cocoa with real nonchalance. Another wave
turned a somersault over the lantern. Brand's only anxiety was to blow
at the steaming liquid and cool it sufficiently.
Yet was he watching them and hammering out the right course to adopt. He
alone understood that, to the novice, the amazing ordeal from which the
lighthouse had successfully emerged was as naught compared with the
thunderous blows of the waves, the astounding reverberations of the
hollow pillar, the continuous deluge of spray striking the lantern,
which the infuriated sea would inflict on them.
To urge any further effort to sleep was folly. They must remain with him
and be comforted.
Being reasonable girls, of fine spirit under conditions less benumbing,
it was better that they should grasp the facts accurately. They would be
timid, of course, just as people are timid during their first attempt to
walk 'twixt rock and cataract at the Falls of Niagara, but they would
have confidence in their guide and endure the surrounding pandemonium.
"Here's to you, Enid. Still we live," he cried, and drained his cup.
"I sup-pup-pose so," she stammered.
"Better sup up your cocoa," said Constance. "Now I am quits with you for
this afternoon."
"I'll tell you what," went on Brand, confidentially. "In that locker you
will find a couple of stout pilot-coats. Put them on. As I cannot
persuade you to leave me you must sit down, and it is cold in here.
Moreover, for the first time in twenty-one years I will smoke on duty. I
have earned a little relaxation of the law."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Constance, if not Enid, had not
missed the subtle hint in his words. But she was quite normal again. She
gave no sign; helped her sister into the heavy reefer, and made herself
comfortable in turn.
"Neither of you will ever regret tonight's experience--when it is nicely
over," he said. "You are like a couple of recruits in their first
battle."
"I am sure--" began Enid.
A huge wave, containing several hundred tons of water, smote the
lighthouse, and cavorted over their heads. The house that was founded
upon a rock fell not, but it shook through all its iron-bound tiers, and
the empty cups danced on their saucers.
Not another word could Enid utter. She was paralyzed.
"That fellow--arrived--in the nick of time--to emphasize my remarks,"
said Brand, lighting his pipe. "This is your baptism of fire, if I may
strain a metaphor. But you are far better situated than the soldier. He
gets scared out of his wits by big guns which are comparatively
harmless, and when he has been well pounded for an hour or so, he
advances quite blithely to meet the almost silent hail of dangerous
bullets. So, you see, in his case, ignorance is bliss."
"Are we in bliss?" demanded Constance.
"You have been. The lighthouse has out-faced a hurricane such as has not
visited England before in my life-time. It is over. The wind has dropped
to a No. 10 gale, and we have not lost even a bit of skin to my
knowledge. Now the cannonade is beginning. Certainly, we may have the
glass broken, by a rare accident, but no worse fate can befall us."
A heavy thud was followed by a deluge without. They heard the water
pouring off the gallery.
Constance leaned forward, with hands on knees. Her large eyes looked
into his.
"This time, dad, you are not choosing your words," she said.
"I am sorry you should think that," was the reply. "I selected each
phrase with singular care. Never be misled by the apparent ease of a
speaker. The best impromptu is prepared beforehand."
"You dear old humbug," she cried.
Now the quiet deadliness of the scene which followed the reappearance of
Enid and herself from their bedroom was manifest to her. Enid, too, was
looking from one to the other in eager striving to grasp the essentials
of an episode rapidly grouping its details into sequence. Brand knew
that if he parried his daughters' questioning they would be on their
knees by his side forthwith, and he wished to avoid any further
excitement.
"Please attend, both of you," he growled, with mock severity. "I am
going to tell you something that will console you."
His voice was drowned by some part of the Atlantic whirling over the
lantern.
"This kind of thing does not go on all the time," he continued.
"Otherwise we should have five hours of spasmodic conversation. As soon
as the tide rises sufficiently to gain an uninterrupted run across the
reef we will have at least two hours of comparative quiet. About four
o'clock there will be a second edition for an hour or so. I suppose that
any suggestion of bed--"
"Will be scouted," exclaimed Enid.
"A nice pair of beauties you will be in the morning," he grumbled
artfully.
Not even Constance was proof against this new burthen of woe. She
glanced around.
"You say that," she cried, "knowing that the nearest looking-glass is
yards away."
He pointed with his pipe.
"In the second drawer of the desk you will find a heliograph. It is only
a toy, but will justify me."
They ran together, and found the little circular mirror. The next wave
passed unheeded. Smiling, he went up to the lamp. Even yet there was
hope they might go to bed when the respite came.
After much talk of disordered hair, wan cheeks, rings round the eyes,
cracked lips, and other outrageous defects which a pretty woman mourns
when divorced from her dressing-table, Constance called him.
"Here is a queer thing," she said. "Have you heard any steamer hooting?"
"No," he answered. Bending between the two of them he saw that the
pointer of the auriscope bore due southwest, though the last siren of
which they had any knowledge sounded from the opposite direction.
He picked up a little trumpet resembling the horn of a motor-car.
"I use this for tests," he explained. Its tiny vibrator quickly brought
the needle round towards his hand.
"It is improbable in the highest degree that any steamer is near enough
to affect the auriscope," he said. "On a night like this they give the
coast a wide berth."
He quitted them again. The girls, having nothing better to do, watched
the dial to see if any change occurred. He heard them use the small
trumpet three times. Then Enid sang out:
"Oh, do come, dad. It goes back to the southwest regularly."
He joined in the watch. The needle was pointing north in obedience to
the sound-waves created in the room. Suddenly, it swung round nearly
half the circumference of the dial.
"Hush!" he said. They listened intently, but the roar of wind and water
was too deafening. They could hear naught else. He went to the southwest
point of the glass dome, but the lantern was so blurred with rivulets of
water that he could see nothing save a tawny vastness where the light
fell on the flying spindrift.
To make sure, he tested the auriscope again, and with the same result.
"A vessel is approaching from the southwest," he announced, gravely.
"Evidently she is whistling for help. I hope she will not attempt to
approach too near the reef. I must have a look out."
He put on an oilskin coat and tied the strings of a sou'wester firmly
beneath his chin.
The small door of the lantern opened towards the Bay, so he had no
difficulty in gaining the gallery. The girls watched him forcing his way
against the wind until he was facing it and gazing in the direction of
the Scilly Isles.
"Perhaps some poor ship is in danger, Connie," whispered Enid. "It makes
me feel quite selfish. Here was I, thinking of nothing but my own peril,
yet that little machine there was faithfully doing its duty."
"It was not alone in its self-abandonment. We shall never know, dearest,
how much father suffered when he sent us off with a jest on his lips. I
am sure he thought the lantern would be blown away."
"And he with it! Oh, Connie!"
"Yes. He believed, if that awful thing took place whilst we were below,
we might escape. I can see it all now. I had the vaguest sort of
suspicion, but he hoodwinked me."
"Had we known we would not have left him," cried Enid, passionately.
"Yes, we would. Think of him, sticking to his post. Was it for us to
disobey?"
Overcome by their feelings, they stood in silence for a little while.
Through the thick glass they could dimly distinguish Brand's figure. A
great wave assailed the lantern and Enid screamed loudly.
"Don't, dear!" cried Constance, shrilly. "Father would not remain there
if it were dangerous."
Nevertheless, they both breathed more freely when they saw him again, an
indeterminate shape against the luminous gloom.
Constance felt that she must speak. The sound of her own voice begat
confidence.
"I have never really understood dad until tonight," she said. "What an
ennobling thing is a sense of duty. He would have died here quite
calmly, Enid, yet he would avoid the least risk out there. That would be
endangering his trust. Oh, I am glad we are here. I have never lived
before this hour."
Enid stole a wondering glance at her sister. The girl seemed to be
gazing into depths immeasurable. Afterwards the words came back to her
mind: "That would be endangering his trust."
Brand faced the gale a full five minutes. He returned hastily.
"There is a big steamer heading this way--a liner, I fancy," he gasped,
half choked with spray. "I fear she is disabled. She is firing rockets,
and I suppose her siren is going constantly, though I cannot hear it."
He ran to the room beneath. Flushed with this new excitement, the girls
donned their oilskin coats and arranged their sou'westers. When he
hurried up the stairs he was carrying four rockets. He noted their
preparations.
"Don't come out until I have fired the alarm signal," he shouted, "and
tie your dresses tightly around your knees."
They heard the loud hissing of the rockets, and the four reports
traveled dully from the sky. Three white star-bursts and one red told
the Land's End coastguards that a ship in need of help was near the Gulf
Rock. Probably they had already seen the vessel's signals. In any event,
they would not miss the display from the lighthouse.
Walking with difficulty, the girls crept out on to the balcony.
Brand had already gone to the windward side. The first rush of the gale
made them breathless, yet they persevered and reached him. They were
greeted by a climber, but their father, with a hand on their shoulders,
pressed them down, and the spray crashed against the lantern behind
them. He knew they would take no harm. When the vessel passed, their
boots and stockings would be soaked. Then he could insist that they
should go to bed.
At first they distinguished nothing save a chaotic blend of white and
yellow foam, driving over the reef at an apparently incredible speed.
Overhead, the black pall of the sky seemed to touch the top of the
lantern. Around, in a vast circle carved out of the murky wilderness,
the wondrous beam of the light fought and conquered its unwearied foes.
Constance caught the three quick flashes of the Seven Stones lightship
away to the right. She fancied she saw a twinkling ahead, but this was
the St. Agnes light, and neither girl could make out other sight or
sound until Brand pointed steadily towards one spot in the darkness.
Before they could follow his indication they were compelled to duck to
avoid another wave. Then, as if it had just popped up out of the sea,
they divined a tiny white spark swinging slowly across a considerable
area. It was by that means that Brand had estimated the size and
nearness of the steamer, and soon they glimpsed the red and green
side-lights, though ever and anon these were hidden by the torrents of
water sweeping over her decks. Of the vessel they could see nothing
whatever.
Steadily she rolled along her fearful path. Having once found her, there
was no difficulty in estimating the rapidity of her approach. Enid,
whose eyes were strong and far-sighted, fancied she caught a fitful
vision of a big, black hull laboring in the yellow waves.
Though it was difficult to speak, she crept close to Brand and screamed:
"Is she drifting onto the reef?"
"I fear so," he answered.
"Then she will be lost!"
"Yes. Unless they manage to pass to s'uth'ard."
Luckily for poor human nature, mental stress and physical effort rarely
unite forces. The mere attempt to resist the wind, the constant
watchfulness needed to avoid the ambitious seas, though these, strange
to say, appeared to be diminishing in size and volume as the tide rose,
served to dull the horror of the threatened tragedy.
Brand quitted them for an instant to glue his eyes to the lantern, after
wiping a space on the glass: he must see if the lamp needed tending.
Satisfied by the scrutiny, he stood behind the girls, who had shrunk
closely together the moment he retired.
"They are trying hard to steer clear of the reef," he shouted. "Twice
they have got her head round, but the sea is too strong for them. I am
afraid she is doomed."
Now, they unquestionably saw the great body of the ship. Her funnels
showed most clearly, making sharply defined black daubs on the heaving
desert of froth. The plunging whirls of the masthead light were enough
to prove how the unfortunate vessel was laboring in what might prove to
be her final agony.
And the pity of it! The wind was dropping. In another hour the weather
might moderate appreciably, the tide would sweep her away from the
horrible reef, and help would be forthcoming. Indeed, even then, a
powerful steam trawler was preparing to fight her way out of Penzance
harbor, with brave men on board ready to take any risk to save a ship in
distress.
But the hour was grudged by fate. They could plainly hear the hoarse
blasts of the steamer's foghorn, and again a rocket spurted its path to
the clouds. She was barely a mile away, and, if anything, in a worse
position than before, as the wind remained fixed in the southwest, and
the tide, at this stage, curved in towards the land ere it began to flow
back again to the Atlantic.
"Can nothing be done?" screamed Constance, rendered half frantic by the
thought that the steamer would go to pieces before their eyes.
"Nothing," was the answer. "Pray for them. They are in the hands of
God."
In gruesome distinctness they watched the vessel's approach. The siren
ceased. Had those on board abandoned hope? Pitching and rolling in a
manner that suggested the possibility of foundering in deep water, she
came on with fatal directness. Suddenly, a dreadful thought came to
Brand's mind. The lighthouse stood on the easterly and most elevated
portion of the reef, whose bearings ran southwest by west and
north-northwest. At low-water, some two acres of jagged rocks were
exposed. On all sides the soundings fell to sixteen and eighteen
fathoms. What if this helpless leviathan, of ten thousand tons or more
dead weight, were to strike the pillar? This was quite possible with the
tide at its present level. It all depended whether her bows were raised
or lowered at the moment of impact. In the one case she would smash away
many feet of rock, and perhaps damage the foundations of the lighthouse:
in the other, her sharp prow would stab into the vitals of the granite,
and the huge column might collapse in common ruin with its colossal
assailant.
One of the girls, he never remembered which of them, spoke to him. He
could not answer. For a second time that night he knew what fear meant.
He watched the onward plunging of the vessel with stupefied eyes. He
saw, as in a dream, that her officers and crew were still making
desperate efforts to weather the reef. But, with the utter malignity of
fate, though they might have swung her to port, she would not budge a
yard to starboard, for now both wind and waves assailed her most
vehemently on the starboard quarter.
Then when she was little more than twice her own length distant, he was
certain that a dim form on the bridge signaled to the chart-house. With
a miraculous deftness, on the assumption that her wheel was put hard
over, she fell away from the racing seas. Her red light disappeared; her
green light curved into full view. The next wave lifted her bodily, with
a mad joy that it should be able to use her to batter its enemy, the
rock.
Then she struck, with a sickening crash that was plainly audible above
the roar of the reef. This was not enough. Another rush of foaming water
enveloped her and smashed her again on an inner ledge. There she lodged,
falling inertly over to starboard.
And Brand found his voice once more, for, as sure as this terrible night
would have its end, so surely had the gallant captain of the steamer
refused to imperil the lighthouse when all hope of saving his ship had
vanished.
The tears were in Brand's eyes. His arms encircled the two girls.
"There goes a fine ship, commanded by a brave man," he cried.
And that was the beginning of the captain's requiem.
CHAPTER VII
THE LOTTERY
Just as the spin of a coin may mean loss or gain in some trumpery
dispute or game of the hour, in like manner, apparently, are the graver
issues of life or death determined at times. It is not so, we know.
Behind the triviality on which men fasten with amazement as the
governing factor in events there lies an inscrutable purpose. Yet, to
those watching the destruction of the splendid vessel, there was little
evidence of other than a blind fury in the fashion of her undoing.
The hoarse words had scarce left Brand's lips before a third wave,
higher and more truculent than its predecessors, sprang right over the
lost ship and smothered her in an avalanche of water. No doubt this
monster swept away some of the officers and crew. It was impossible to
be certain of aught save the one thing--that the steamer would surely
break up before their eyes. The wind, now blowing in fierce gusts, the
sea, rising each minute, the clouds of spray chasing each other in eerie
flights through space, the grinding, incessant, utterly overwhelming
noise of the reef, made all sights and sounds indefinite, nebulous,
almost fantastic.
But when the giant billow receded, leaving the ship like a dark rock in
the midst of innumerable cascades, the catastrophe took place which
Brand would have foreseen were his thoughts less tumultuous. With the
support of the sea withdrawn from half its length the huge hull must
either slip back into deep water or break in two. The slender steel
shell of an ocean liner is not constructed to resist the law of gravity
acting on full five thousand tons. So the solid-looking colossus cracked
like a carrot, and the after part fell back into the watery chasm, there
to be swallowed instantly, amidst a turmoil which happily drowned the
despairing shrieks of far more than half of those on board.
Constance and Enid screamed bitterly in their woe, but again they were
saved from utter collapse by the exigencies of the moment. Brand, who
expected to see the remainder of the ship blown up by the inrushing of
the sea to the furnaces, dragged them forcibly below the level of the
protecting balustrade.
Yet nothing of the sort took place. A vast cloud of steam rushed
upwards, but it was dissipated by the next breath of the gale. This
incident told the lighthouse-keeper much. The vessel had been disabled
so long that her skilful commander, finding the motive power of no
further avail, and certain that his ship must be driven ashore, had
ordered the fires to be drawn and the steam to be exhausted from all
boilers except one. Therefore, her shaft was broken, reasoned Brand.
Probably the accident had occurred during the height of the hurricane,
and her steering gear, of little use without the driving force of the
engines to help, might have been disabled at the same time.
When the horror-stricken watchers looked again at the wreck the forward
part had shifted its position. It was now lying broadside on to the
seas, and the lofty foremast thrust its truck to within a few feet of
them.
They were spared one ghastly scene which must surely have bereft the
girls of their senses. The majority of the first-class passengers had
gathered in the saloon. Some clung like limpets to the main gangway. A
number, mostly men, crowded together in the drawing-room on the
promenade deck. Farther than this they could not go, as the companion
hatchways had been locked by the officer of the watch, the decks being
quite impassable.
When the hull yielded, the spacious saloon was exposed to the vicious
waves. Finding this new cavern opened to them, great liquid tongues
sprang into the darkness and licked out hapless victims by the score. Of
this appalling incident those in the lighthouse knew nothing until long
afterwards.
When the ship struck, the electric dynamos stopped and all her lights
went out. The lighthouse lamp, owing to its rays being concentrated by
the dioptric lens, helped not at all to dissipate the dim and ghastly
vision beneath, but the great frame of the fore part of the vessel
served as a break-water to some extent, and temporarily withheld the
waves from beating against the column.
Hence Brand, straining his eyes through the flying ruck, fancied he
could make out the figure of the captain as he left the bridge, and,
with some of the crew, took shelter behind the structure of the library
and state cabins on what remained of the promenade deck. At the same
moment the frenzied occupants of the library and gangway contrived to
burst open the door of the main companion.
If they had to die they might as well die in the open and not boxed up
in impenetrable darkness. As a matter of fact, the bolts were forced by
a man who fired his revolver at them. The sea quickly discovered this
new outlet. The next wave, passing through the saloon, sent tons of
water pouring through the open hatch. One good result accrued. The
strong canvas awning which prolonged the spar deck was carried away, and
the group of survivors, benumbed with cold and wholly overcome by their
desperate position, could see the entire height of the granite column in
front crowned with its diadem of brilliance. The liberated passengers
saw it for the first time.
The sight brought no hope. Between ship and lighthouse was a true
maelstrom of more than sixty feet of water, created by the back-wash
from the stone-work and the shattered hull. Even if the passage could be
made of what avail was it? The iron entrance door was full fifty feet
above the present level of the sea. It could only be approached by way
of the rungs of iron embedded in the granite, and every wave, even in
the comparative moderation caused by the obstructing wreck, swept at
least twenty feet of the smooth stone tiers. It is this very fact that
prevents rock lighthouses from seldom if ever serving as refuges for
shipwrecked sailors. The ascending ladder is so exposed, the sea usually
so turbulent under the least stress of wind, that no human being can
retain hand-hold or footing.
Yet, there was one faint chance of succor, and it was not a sailor who
grasped it. The first that Brand knew of the desperate venture was the
sight of a spectral man climbing up the shrouds of the fore-mast. On a
steamer, whose yards are seldom used for sails, the practicable
rope-ladder ceases at the fore, main, or mizzen-top, as the case may be.
Thenceforward, a sailor must climb with hands and feet to the truck, a
feat which may occasionally be necessary when the vessel is in dock; it
is hardly ever attempted at sea.
The venturesome individual who thus suddenly made himself the center of
observation carried a line with him. Not until he essayed the second
portion of his perilous ascent did Brand realize what the other intended
to do, which was nothing less than to reach the truck, the very top of
the mast, and endeavor to throw a rope to the gallery.
And he might succeed, too--that was the marvel of it. The tapering spar
came very near to them, perhaps twelve feet distant, and the wind would
certainly carry the rope across the chasm if carefully thrown. A few
strong and active men might use this aërial ferry. Well, better they
than none. Brave fellow; would that the Lord might help him!
Higher and nearer swung the stalwart youngster, for none but a lithe
and active boy could climb a pole with such easy vigor. At last he
reached the truck, and a faintly heard cheer from beneath mingled with
the hysterical delight of Enid and Constance, when, with legs twined
round the mast, he rested his arms for an instant on the flat knob of
the truck.
Here his face came into the lower focus of the light--strong,
clean-shaven, clear-cut features, a square, determined chin, two dark,
earnest eyes, and a mop of ruffled black hair, for his deer-stalker cap
had blown off 'ere he cleared the spar deck.
"Look out for the line," they heard him shout. The wind brought his
voice plainly, but evidently he could distinguish no syllable of Brand's
answering hail:
"Shall I make fast?"
"Can't hear a word," he cried. "If you can hear me hold a hand up."
Brand obeyed.
"Catch the line," he went on. "It is attached to a block with a running
tackle. Haul in and make fast."
"The megaphone!" shouted Brand to Constance. She darted away to bring
it, and when the adventurer clinging to the fore-mast had thrown a coil
successfully, Brand took the instrument.
"Why don't you come this way? The others will follow," he bellowed.
"There are women and children down below. They must be saved first, and
they cannot climb the mast," was the reply.
"All right, but send up a couple of sailors. We are short-handed here."
"Right-o," sang out the other cheerily, though he wondered why three men
should anticipate difficulty.
Down he went. Without waiting, Brand and the girls hauled lustily at the
rope. It was no child's play to hoist a heavy pulley and several hundred
feet of stout cordage. More than once they feared the first thin rope
would break, but it was good hemp, and soon the block was hooked to the
strong iron stanchions of the railing. To make assurance doubly sure,
Brand told Enid to take several turns of the spare cord around the hook
and the adjacent rails.
Meanwhile, Constance and he saw that the rope was moving through the
pulley without their assistance. Then through the whirling scud beneath
they made out an ascending figure clinging to it. Soon he was close to
the gallery. Catching him by arms and collar they lifted him into
safety. He was one of the junior officers, and Constance, though she
hardly expected it, experienced a momentary feeling of disappointment
that the first man to escape was not the handsome youth to whose cool
daring some at least of the ship's company would owe their lives.
The newcomer was a typical Briton.
"Thanks," he said. "Close shave. Have you a light? We must signal after
each arrival."
Enid brought the small lantern, and the stranger waved it twice. The
rope traveled back through the pulley, and this time it carried a
sailor-man, who said not one word but stooped to tie his boot-lace.
"How many are left?" inquired Brand of the officer.
"About eighty, all told, including some twenty women and children."
"All wet to the skin?"
"Yes: some of them unconscious, perhaps dead."
"Can you hold out?"
"Yes; A nip of brandy--"
"I will send some. We must leave you now. These with me are my
daughters."
At last the crust of insular self-possession was broken. The man looked
from one to the other of the seeming lighthouse-keepers.
"Well, I'm--," he blurted out in his surprise. "That American youngster
wondered what the trouble was."
A shapeless bundle hove in sight. It contained two little girls, tied
inside a tarpaulin and lashed to the rope. This, evidently, was the plan
for dealing with the helpless ones.
Brand instantly divided his forces. Enid he dispatched to make hot cocoa
in the quickest and most lavish manner possible. Constance was to give
each new arrival a small quantity of stimulant (the lighthouse possessed
a dozen bottles of brandy and whiskey) and act as escort. The women and
children were to be allotted the two bedrooms. Any bad cases of injury
or complete exhaustion could be disposed of in the visiting officer's
room, whilst all the men fit to take care of themselves were to be
distributed between the entrance, the coal-room, the workshop and the
stairways. The kitchen, store-room and service-room were to be kept
clear, and the store-room door locked. Eighty! Brand was already doing
problems in simple arithmetic.
A similar problem, with a different point to be determined, was
occupying the active mind of the "American youngster" who had solved the
knottiest proposition put forward during that eventful night.
He watched the forwarding of the shrieking, shuddering, or inanimate
women. He timed the operation by his watch, as the reflected light from
the lamp was quite sufficient for the purpose.
Then he approached the captain.
"Say, skipper," he cried, "how long do you give the remains of her to
hold out?"
"It is not high-water yet," was the answer. "Perhaps half an hour. Forty
minutes at the utmost."
"Then you'll have to boost this thing along a good deal faster," said
the cheerful one. "They're going up now at the rate of one every two
minutes. That's thirty in half an hour. Fifty of us will travel a heap
quicker at the end of that time if your calculation holds good."
The captain, who appeared to be in a stupor of grief, roused himself.
A few short and sharp orders changed the aspect of affairs. Frightened
and protesting ladies were securely tied together, and hoisted, four at
a time, like so many bags of wheat. When it came to the men's turn even
less ceremony and greater expedition were used.
Indeed, already there were emphatic warnings that much valuable time had
been lost in the early stage of the rescue. Though the wind was now only
blowing a stiff gale, the sea, lashed to frenzy by the hurricane, was
heavier than ever. The ship was vanishing visibly. A funnel fell with a
hideous crash and carried away a life-boat. The rest of the spar deck
and nearly the whole of the forward cabins were torn out bodily. By
repeated thumping on the reef the vessel had settled back almost onto an
even keel, and the fore-mast, which had so providentially neared the
summit of the lighthouse, was now removed far beyond the possibility of
a rope being thrown.
The survivors on deck worked with feverish energy. The time was drawing
short. They did not know the second that some unusually tempestuous wave
would devour them utterly.
"Now, Mr. Pyne, you next," cried the chief officer, addressing the young
Philadelphian, who, _mirabile dictu_, had found and lighted a cigar.
"Guess I'll swing up along with the captain," was the answer.
"Up with him," shouted the captain, fiercely, himself helping to loop
Pyne to the fourth officer.
All others had gone. The officers were leaving the ship in order of
seniority, the juniors first. Just as the quartette were about to swing
clear of the ship the captain grasped Pyne's hand.
"Thank you, lad," he said, and away they went.
There were left on the vessel the third, second, and first officers,
the purser, and the captain. The others wanted the captain to come with
them. He resisted, held out for his right to be the last to quit a ship
he had commanded for more than twenty years, and hoarsely forbade any
further argument.
Very unwillingly, they left him hauling alone at the rope, though their
predecessors, knowing the need of it, helped vigorously from the
gallery. Indeed, it was with difficulty that Pyne was held back from
returning with the descending rope. They told him he was mad to dream of
such a piece of folly, and perforce he desisted.
But when the captain deliberately cast off the deck-pulley from which
the rope had been manipulated they knew that the boy had read his soul.
The now useless cordage dangling from the gallery was caught by the wind
and sea and sent whipping off to leeward.
Brand, brought from the lantern by the hubbub of shouting, came out,
followed by Constance. He suggested, as a last resource, that they
should endeavor to fire a line across the vessel by means of a rocket.
They agreed to try, for the spectacle of the captain, standing
bareheaded on all that was left of the bridge, moved them to a pitch of
frenzy not often seen in an assemblage of Anglo-Saxons, and especially
of sailors.
Brand turned to procure the rocket, but a loud cry caused him to delay.
The expected wave had come, the vessel was smothered in a vortex of
foam, the tall fore-mast tottered and fell, and when the water subsided
again all that was visible of the great steamer was some portion of her
hull and the solidly built bow, which was not wrenched from the
keel-plate until another hour had passed.
The agonized cry of a strong man is a woful thing. Constance, by reason
of the gathering at the side of the gallery, was unable to see all that
was taking place. But the yell which went up from the onlookers told her
that something out of the common, even on this night of thrills, had
occurred.
"What is it, dad?" she asked, as her father came to her.
"The end of the ship," he said. "The captain has gone with her."
"Oh, dear, why wasn't he saved?"
"I think he refused to desert his ship. His heart was broken, I expect.
Now, Connie, duty first."
Indeed, she required no telling. As each of the shipwrecked men entered
the lantern, she handed him a glass of spirits, asked if he were
injured, and told him exactly how many flights of stairs he had to
descend. But cocoa and biscuits would be brought soon, she explained:
greatly amazed, but speechless for the most part, the men obeyed her
directions.
One of the last to claim her attention was the young American, Mr. Pyne.
Her face lit up pleasurably when she saw him.
"I was wondering what had become of you," she said. "My sister has asked
me several times if you had arrived, and I imagined that I must have
missed you by some chance."
Now all this was Greek to him, or nearly so. Indeed, had it been
intelligible Greek, he might have guessed its purport more easily.
Holding the glass in his hand he looked at her in frank, open-eyed
wonder. To be hailed so gleefully by a good-looking girl, whom he had
never to his knowledge set eyes on, was somewhat of a mystery, and the
puzzle was made all the more difficult by the fact that she had
discarded the weather-proof accoutrements needed when she first ventured
forth on the gallery.
"I'm real glad you're pleased. My name is Charles A. Pyne," he said,
slowly.
It was now Constance's turn to be bewildered. Then the exact situation
dawned on her.
"How stupid of me," she cried. "Of course you don't recognize me again.
My sister and I happen to be alone with my father on the rock tonight.
We were with him on the balcony when you acted so bravely. You see, the
light shone clear on your face."
"I'm glad it's shining on yours now," he said.
"You must go two floors below this," said she severely. "I will bring
you some cocoa and a biscuit as quickly as possible."
"I am not a bit tired," he commented, still looking at her.
"That is more than I can say," she answered, "but I am so delighted that
we managed to save so many poor people."
"How many?"
"Seventy-eight. But I dare not ask you now how many are lost. It would
make me cry, and I have no time for tears. Will you really help to carry
a tray?"
"Just try me."
At the top of the stairs Constance called to her father:
"Anything you want, dad?"
"Yes, dear. Find out the chief officer, and send him to me. He can eat
and drink here whilst we talk."
CHAPTER VIII
AN INTERLUDE
"Please be careful; these stairs are very steep," said Constance,
swinging the lantern close to her companion's feet as they climbed down
the topmost flight.
"If I fall," he assured her, "you will be the chief sufferer."
"All the more reason why you should not fall. Wait here a moment. I must
have a look at the hospital."
The visiting-officer's room, which also served the purposes of a library
and recreation room in normal times, now held fourteen injured persons,
including two women, one of them a stewardess, and a little girl.
Most of the sufferers had received their wounds either in the saloon or
by collision with the cornice of the lighthouse. The worst accident was
a broken arm, the most alarming a case of cerebral concussion. Other
injuries consisted, for the most part, of cuts and bruises.
Unfortunately, when the ship struck, the surgeon had gone aft to attend
to an engineer whose hand was crushed as the result of some frantic
lurch caused by the hurricane; hence the doctor was lost with the first
batch of victims. Enid discovered that among the few steerage
passengers saved was a man who had gained some experience in a
field-hospital during the campaign in Cuba. Aided by the plain
directions supplied with the medicine chest of the lighthouse, the
ex-hospital orderly had done wonders already.
"All I want, miss," he explained, in answer to Constance's question, "is
some water and some linen for bandages. The lint outfit in the chest is
not half sufficient."
She vanished, to return quickly with a sheet and a pair of scissors.
"Now," she said to Mr. Pyne, "if you come with me I will send you back
with a pail of water."
She took him to the kitchen, where Enid, aided by a sailor, pressed into
service, was dispensing cocoa and biscuits. Pyne, who remained in the
stairway, went off with the water and Constance's lantern. The interior
of the lighthouse was utterly dark. To move without a light, and with no
prior knowledge of its internal arrangements, was positively dangerous.
All told, there were seven lamps of various sizes available. Brand had
one, four were distributed throughout the apartments tenanted by the
survivors of the wreck, two were retained for transit purposes, and the
men shivering in the entrance passage had no light at all.
Constance took Enid's lantern in order to discover the whereabouts of
Mr. Emmett, the first officer, the tray-carrying sailor offering to
guide her to him.
When Pyne came back he found Enid in the dark and mistook her for
Constance.
"They want some more," he cried at the door.
"Some more what?" she demanded. It was no time for elegant diction. Her
heart jumped each time the sea sprang at the rock. It seemed to be so
much worse in the dark.
"Water," said he.
"Dear me. I should have thought everybody would be fully satisfied in
that respect."
He held up the lantern.
"Well, that's curious," he cried. "I imagined you were the other young
lady. The water is needed in the hospital."
"Why didn't you say so?" she snapped, being in reality very angry with
herself for her flippancy. She gave him a full pail and he quitted her.
Constance, having delivered her father's message to Mr. Emmett, was
greeted with a tart question when she re-entered the kitchen:
"Why on earth didn't you tell me that young man was attending to the
injured people? Is he a doctor?"
"I think not. What happened?"
"He came for a second supply of water and nearly bit my head off."
"Oh, Enid! I am sure he did not mean anything. Didn't you recognize him?
It was he who climbed the mast and flung the rope to us."
"There!" said Enid, "I've gone and done it. Honestly, you know, it was I
who was rude. He will think me a perfect cat."
"That isn't what people are saying," explained Mr. Pyne, whose approach
was deadened by the outer noise. "There's a kind of general idea
floating round that this locality is an annex of heaven, with
ministering angels in attendance."
In the half light of the tiny lamps he could not see Enid's scarlet
face. There was a moment's silence, and this very self-possessed youth
spoke again.
"The nice things we all have to tell you will keep," he said. "Would you
mind letting me know in which rooms you have located the ladies?"
Constance, as major domo, gave the information asked for:
"They are in the two bedrooms overhead. Poor things! I am at my wits'
end to know how to get their clothing dried. You see, Mr. Pyne, my
sister and I have no spare clothes here. We only came to the rock this
afternoon, by the merest chance."
"That is just what was troubling me," he answered. "I am sort of
interested in one of them."
"Oh," said Constance, "I do wish I could help. But, indeed, my own
skirts are wringing wet."
"From what I can make out, then, my prospective step-aunt will catch a
very bad cold."
The queer phrase puzzled the girls, but Constance, rarely for her,
jumped at a conclusion.
"Your prospective step-aunt. You mean, perhaps, your fiancée's aunt?"
she suggested.
"I don't know the lady. No, ma'am. I was right first time. Mrs.
Vansittart is going to marry my uncle, so I keep an eye on her stock to
that extent."
"How stupid of me!" she explained, whilst a delighted giggle from Enid
did not help to mend matters. So Constance became very stately.
"I will ask Mrs. Vansittart to come out and speak to you--" she began.
"No, no! I don't wish that. You might tell her I am all right. That is
the limit. And--may I make a suggestion?"
"Pray do."
"It will help considerable if the women-folk take it in turn to get into
the beds or bunks. Then, some of their linen could be dried at the
stove. I will take charge of that part of the business, if I may.
Otherwise, some of them will die."
The girls agreed that this was a capital idea. Constance went upstairs.
In the first room she inquired:
"Is Mrs. Vansittart here?"
"Yes," said a sweet but rather querulous voice.
A lady, who had already appropriated the lower bunk, raised herself on
an elbow.
The little apartment, like every part of the building, save the rooms
reserved by Brand's directions, was packed almost to suffocation. This,
if harmful in one respect, was beneficial in another. The mere animal
warmth of so many human beings was grateful after the freezing effect of
the gale on people literally soaked to the skin.
The girl, not unmoved by curiosity, held the light so that it illumined
Mrs. Vansittart. A woman of forty, no matter how good-looking and
well-preserved she may be, is in sorry plight under such conditions.
Constance saw a beautiful face, deathly white and haggard, yet animated
and clearly chiseled. The eyes were large and lustrous, the mouth firm,
the nose and chin those of a Greek statue. Just now there were deep
lines across the base of the high forehead. The thin lips, allied to a
transient hawk-like gleam in the prominent eyes, gave a momentary
glimpse of a harsh, perhaps cruel disposition. A charming smile promptly
dispelled this fleeting impression. Instantly Constance was aware of
having seen Mrs. Vansittart before. So vivid was the fanciful idea that
she became tongue-tied.
"Do you want me?" asked the stranger, with a new interest, and still
smiling. Constance found herself wondering if the smile were not
cultivated to hide that faintly caught suggestion of the bird of prey.
But the question restored her mental poise.
"Only to say that Mr. Pyne--" she began.
"Charlie! Is he saved?"
Mrs. Vansittart certainly had the faculty of betraying intense interest.
The girl attributed the nervous start, the quick color which tinged the
white cheeks, to the natural anxiety of a woman who stood in such
approximate degree of kin to the young American.
"Oh, yes," said the girl, with ready sympathy. "Don't you know that all
of you owe your lives to his daring? He asked me to--to say he was all
right, and--that he hoped you were not utterly collapsed."
The addendum was a kindly one. No doubt, Mr. Pyne had meant her to
convey such a message. Mrs. Vansittart, it was evident, had received a
shock. Perhaps she was a timorous, shrinking woman, averse to the sudden
stare of others.
"I know nothing," she murmured. "It was all so horrible. Oh, God! shall
I ever forget that scene in the saloon. How the people fought. They were
not human. They were tigers, fierce tigers, with the howls and the
baleful eyes of wild beasts."
This outburst was as unexpected as her staccato question. Constance bent
over her and placed a gentle hand on her forehead.
"You must try to forget all that," she said, soothingly. "Indeed, it
must have been very terrible. It was dreadful enough for us, looking
down at things through a mist of foam. For you--But there! You are one
of the few who escaped. That is everything. God has been very good to
you!"
She was stooping low and holding the lantern in her left hand.
Suddenly, Mrs. Vansittart's eyes gleamed again with that lambent light
so oddly at variance with her smile. The slight flush of excitement
yielded to a ghostly pallor. With surprising energy she caught the
girl's arm.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Tell me, child, who are you?"
"My father is the lighthouse-keeper," said Constance. "I am here quite
by chance. I--"
"But your name! What is your name?"
"Constance Brand."
"Brand, did you say? And your father's name?"
"Stephen Brand. Really, Mrs. Vansittart, you must try to compose
yourself. You are over-wrought, and--"
She was about to say "feverish." Indeed, that was a mild word. The
strange glare in Mrs. Vansittart's eyes amazed her. She shrank away, but
only for an instant. With a deep sigh, the lady sank back on the pillow
and fainted.
Constance was then frightened beyond question. She feared that the
seizure might be a serious one, under the circumstances. To her great
relief, another woman, who could not help overhearing the conversation
and witnessing its sequel, came to the rescue.
"Don't be alarmed," she said. "Mrs. Vansittart is very highly strung.
She fainted in the saloon. She does not realize that Mr. Pyne not only
saved her, but nearly every woman here, when the door was broken open.
Now, don't you worry, my dear, I will look after her. You have a great
deal to do, I am sure."
Constance realized that the advice was good. She could not attend to one
and neglect many.
Telling the women of the plan to dry their underclothing in sections,
she asked them to help her by arranging matters so that their garments
should be divided into lots. Then she went to the second bedroom and
made the same suggestion. The case of the sufferers in the hospital
required more drastic measures. The little girl she stripped with her
own hands and clothed her in one of Brand's flannel shirts and a
commandeered reefer jacket.
Two of Brand's spare suits and a couple of blankets enabled the two
injured women, who were able to walk, to get rid of their wet garments
in the crowded room beneath, and the lockers of Jackson and Bates made
it possible for the men who most needed attention to be made comfortable
by the invaluable hospital orderly.
Constance was kept busy flying up and down to the kitchen, whilst Enid,
having met all immediate demands in the matter of a hot beverage and
something to eat, supplemented her labors.
Pyne worked like a Trojan. As each pile of sodden garments was delivered
to him he squeezed out as much water as possible with his hands and then
applied himself to the task of baking them dry. He did this, too, in a
very efficient way, speedily converting the kitchen into a miniature
Turkish bath. At the end of an hour, he had succeeded so well that more
than one-half of the females were supplied with tolerably dry and warm
under-clothing. With their heavier garments, of course nothing could be
done.
Once, on the stairs, Enid detained Constance for a moment's chat.
"Mrs. Vansittart is odd," she said.
Constance, so taken up was she with many errands, had forgotten the
lady.
"How thoughtless of me," she cried. "Is she better?"
"Yes. But when I went in just now to give her her clothes, she said to
me: 'Are you the sister of the other--of Constance Brand?' It was no
time for explanations, so I just said 'Yes.' She gave me such a queer
look, and then smiled quite pleasantly, apologizing for troubling me."
Constance laughed.
"Perhaps she knew dad years ago," she said.
"What do you think Mr. Pyne said about her?"
"How can I tell? Did you speak of her to him?"
"I told him she had fainted when you delivered his message. He said:
'Guess she can faint as easy as I can fall off a house.' Isn't he
funny?"
"I think he is splendid," said Constance.
The wreck was now wholly demolished. The first big wave of the
retreating tide enveloped the lighthouse and smote it with thunderous
malice. Screams came from the women's quarters.
"Go, Enid," said Constance. "Tell them they have nothing to fear. They
must expect these things to happen for nearly two hours. Tell them what
dad said. Twenty-five years, you know."
Brave hearts! What infinite penetration inspired the man who first said
"_Noblesse oblige!_"
Constance looked in at the kitchen. Pyne loomed through a fog of steam.
"Pay no heed to these--" she was interrupted by another mighty thump and
cataract roar--"these blows of Thor's hammer," she cried.
"Play me for an anvil," he returned.
She descended to the depths, to reassure the men. Talking with shrill
cheerfulness at each doorway was easy. It helped her to go down, down,
feeling stone and iron trembling as every surge was hurled many feet
above her head. At last, she stood on the lowest floor. Beneath her feet
was naught but granite and iron bars. Here was solidity. How grateful to
know of this firm base, rooted in the very world. Her heart leaped to
her mouth, but not with fear. She was proud of the lighthouse, strong in
the knowledge of its majestic strength.
Nevertheless, in this place, the source of her own sense of security,
she found uneasiness among the men. They were all sailors in this lowest
habitable region. Their pre-conceived ideas had been rudely reversed.
The ship, the noble structure which defied the storm by yielding to its
utmost fury, had for them no terrors. But the stark pillar which
flinched from no assault bewildered them. It was impossible to believe
that it could withstand the strain. Ha! Listen to that. The
battering-ram of ocean applied to a thin shaft of stone. Surely it must
be pounded into fragments.
Said one, with indefinite bellow amidst the black turmoil: "I can't
stand this, mates."
"Up aloft for me!" cried another.
"Let's die with our eyes open, anyhow," chimed in a third.
But a light flashed in the rolling orbs of the man who was already on
the stairs. Astounded, he drew back. Constance stood in their midst, a
mere girl, radiant, smilingly unconcerned, addressing them in calm words
broken only by the fitful noises.
"Sorry your quarters--so very unpleasant. Only last a--couple of hours.
Twenty-five years--far worse gales. Want any more cocoa?"
"Thank you kindly, miss, we're quite comfortable." This from the man who
wished to die with his eyes open.
"Please, miss, may we smoke?" said he who couldn't stand it.
Constance hesitated. Blithely unconscious that a whiff of mutiny had
swept through the storm-tossed fold, she pondered the problem. She saw
no harm in it.
"Yes," she said. "Smoke by all means. I will ask my father, and if it
should be dangerous I will come back and let you know. In a few hours it
will be daylight and if the sea falls he will come and open the door."
By sheer inspiration she had uttered the formula destined to annihilate
the necromantic bluster of the hammering waves. Open the door! So this
ponderous racket was a mere tidal trick, a bogey, which each passing
minute would expose more thoroughly.
"All right, miss, an' Gawd bless yer," growled one who had not spoken
hitherto. There was a chorus of approval. Constance gave a little gulp.
The cultured and delicate lady lying in the bunk above had not spoken
so.
"Indeed," she gasped, "God has blessed some of us this night."
Then she fled, further utterance failing her.
Nearer the sky, Brand tended the lamp and discussed matters with chief
officer Emmett. The sailor, with the terse directness of his class,
told how the _Chinook_ had made an excellent voyage from New York until
she ran into bad weather about four hundred miles west of the Lizard.
"It seems to me," he said, "as if we dropped onto the track of that
hurricane after it had curved away to the norrard, and that the d----d
thing swooped down on us again when we were abreast of the Bishop
Light."
Brand nodded. This surmise agreed with his own theory of the storm, as
indicated by the sea.
Mr. Emmett held out a clenched fist with thumb jerked towards the reef.
"I wouldn't breathe a word if _he_ wasn't gone," he said, "but the old
man was drivin' her too hard. I knew it, and the chief knew it"--he
meant the chief engineer--"but he wouldn't listen to either Mac or me.
Fact is, he was fair crazy to set up a new record for the boat. She's
been crossin' the Atlantic forty times a year for upwards of twenty
years, and the recent alterations, although they added fifty feet to her
length, only increased her engine-power in proportion."
"You surprise me," broke in Brand. "You speak as if the _Chinook_ were
nearly as old as this lighthouse, yet I have never even heard her name
before."
"You know her well enough all the same," said the other ruefully. "This
is her maiden voyage since she was altered; an' they rechristened her,
too--always a d----d unlucky thing to do, I say. Bless your heart, man,
she is the old _Princess Royal_. Eh? What's that?"
He guffawed mournfully at Brand's involuntary exclamation.
"Certain! Well, surely I ought to know. I have passed most of my service
with the company in her, and when I took a crew to Cramp's to navigate
her to New York after she was smartened up I little imagined I would see
her laid by forever the next time we saw the lights of Old England. My
goodness, even what was left of the old girl ought to know her way
better'n that."
"But what did really happen?"
"Drivin' her, I tell you--drivin' her full pelt to land the mails at
Southampton twelve hours ahead of schedule. With that awful sea liftin'
her, and a shaft twenty feet longer, what could you expect? Poor
Perkins! A rare hard worker, too. Now he's gone down with his ship an'
over two hundred passengers an' crew."
"Judging by the number saved I feared that more were lost."
"It's the off season, you know. The passenger list was light. For the
Lord's sake, think of what it might have been in May or June!"
"It is bad enough as it is. All has not ended with the disappearance of
the vessel."
The sailor shot a sharp glance at Brand.
"You can't be thinkin' anyone was to blame--" he commenced. But Brand
waved aside the fancied imputation.
"Blame!" he said. "With a broken shaft! In that whirlwind! No, no. I
sent for you to talk over the new difficulty which has to be faced.
There are food, water and fuel here for three men for two months. If
you do a little sum you will find that the available stores on the basis
of full rations will maintain eighty-one people for two days and a
quarter."
"But we're only six miles from the mainland." Mr. Emmett had not yet
grasped the true meaning of the figures.
"I have been here more than once for six weeks at a stretch, when, for
all the assistance we could receive, we might as well have been within
the Arctic Circle."
Again the sailor jerked his thumb towards the reef.
"Is it as bad as all that?" he queried anxiously.
"Yes."
"But six weeks. Good Lord!" Mr. Emmett had done the little sum.
"That is exceptional. A week is the average unless the unexpected
happens, after a gale like this. And a week will test our endurance to
the limit."
Mr. Emmett whistled softly. A grisly phantom was creeping at him. He
shivered, and not from cold.
"By Jove!" he said. "What's to be done?"
"In the first place, you must help me to maintain iron discipline. To
leave the rock today or tomorrow will be an absolute impossibility. On
the next day, with luck and a steady moderation of the weather, we may
devise some desperate means of landing all the active men or getting
fresh supplies. That is in the hands of Providence. I want you to warn
your officers, and others whom you can trust, either sailors or
civilians. Better arrange three watches. My daughters will have charge
of the stores. By going through the lists in the store-room I can
portion out the rations for six days. I think we had better fix on that
minimum."
"Of course I will back you up in every way," said Mr. Emmett, who felt
chillier at this moment than at any time during the night. "I know you
are acting wisely, but I admit I am scared at the thought of what may
happen--if those days pass and no help is available."
Brand knew what would happen, and it was hard to lock the secret in his
heart. He alone must live. That was essential, the one thing carved in
stone upon the tablets of his brain, a thing to be fought out behind
barred door, revolver in hand.
Whatever else took place, if men and women, perhaps his own sweet girls,
were dying of thirst and starvation, the light must shine at night over
its allotted span of the slumbering sea. There, on the little table
beside him, lay the volume of Rules and Regulations. What did it say?
"The keepers, both principal and assistant, are enjoined never to allow
any interests, whether private or otherwise, to interfere with the
discharge of their public duties, the importance of which to the safety
of navigation cannot be overrated."
There was no ambiguity in the words, no halting sentence which opened a
way for a man to plead: "I thought it best." Those who framed the rule
meant what they said. No man could bend the steel of their intent.
To end the intolerable strain of his thoughts Stephen Brand forced his
lips to a thin smile and his voice to say harshly:
"If the worst comes to the worst, there are more than three thousand
gallons of colza oil in store. That should maintain life. It is a
vegetable oil."
Then Constance thrust her glowing face into the lighted area.
"Dad," she cried, cheerfully, "the men wish to know if they may smoke.
Poor fellows! They are so miserable--so cold and damp and dreary down
there. Please say 'Yes.'"
CHAPTER IX
MRS. VANSITTART
The purser, faithful to his trust, had secured the ship's books. He
alone, among the survivors of the _Chinook_, had brought a parcel of any
sort from that ill-fated ship. The others possessed the clothes they
wore, their money, and in some cases their trinkets.
Mr. Emmett suggested that a list of those saved should be compiled.
Then, by ticking off the names, he could classify the inmates of the
lighthouse and evolve some degree of order in the community.
It was found that there were thirty-seven officers and men, including
stewards, thirty-three saloon passengers, of whom nineteen were women,
counting the two little girls, and seven men and one woman from the
steerage.
"It isn't usual, on a British ship, for the crew to bulk so large on the
list," said Mr. Emmett huskily. "But it couldn't be helped. The
passengers had to be battened down. They couldn't live on deck. We never
gave in until the last minute."
"I saw that," said Brand, knowing the agony which prompted the broken
explanation.
"An' not a mother's soul would have escaped if it wasn't for young Mr.
Pyne," went on the sailor.
"Is that the name of the youngster who climbed the fore-mast?"
"That's him. It was a stroke of genius, his catching onto that way out.
He was as cool as a cucumber. Just looked up when he reached the deck
an' saw the lighthouse so near. Then he asked me for a rope. Planned the
whole thing in a second, so to speak."
"He is not one of the ship's company?"
"No, sir, a passenger, nevvy of Cyrus J. Traill, the Philadelphian
millionaire. Haven't you heard of Traill? Not much of a newspaper
reader, eh? There was a lady on board, a Mrs. Vansittart, who was coming
over to marry old Traill, so people said, and the weddin' was fixed to
take place in Paris next week. Young Pyne was actin' as escort."
"Is she lost? What a terrible thing!"
The chief officer glanced down the purser's lists and slapped his thigh
with much vehemence.
"No, by gosh! Here she is, marked O. K. Well, that beats the band."
"So the lad has discharged his trust to his uncle?"
Mr. Emmett was going to say something, but checked the words on his
lips.
"Queer world," he muttered. "Queer world."
With that he devoted himself to planning out the watches. Soon he and
the purser betook themselves to the depths with a roll-call. As they
crept below gingerly--these sailor-men were not at home on companion
ladders which moved not when the shock came--they met Enid, for the
first time. She, coming up, held the swinging lantern level with her
face. They hung back politely.
"Please come," she cried in her winsome way. "These stairs are too
narrow for courtesy."
They stepped heavily onward. She flitted away. Emmett raised his lantern
between the purser's face and his own.
"What do you think of _that_?" he whispered, awe-stricken.
The man of accounts smiled broadly.
"Pretty girl!" he agreed, with crudely emphatic superlatives.
Emmett shook his head. He murmured to himself: "I guess I'm tired. I see
things."
Enid handed an armful of dry linen to the damp, steaming women in the
lower bedroom. She was hurrying out; someone overtook her at the door.
It was Mrs. Vansittart.
"Miss Brand," she said, with her all-sufficing smile, "give me one
moment."
They stood in the dark and hollow-sounding stairway. The seas were
lashing the column repeatedly, but the night's ordeal was nearly ended.
Even a timid child might know now that the howling terror without had
done its worst and failed. From the cavernous depths, mingling with the
rumble of the storm, came the rhythm of a hymn. Those left in gloom by
the withdrawal of Mr. Emmett's lantern were cheering their despondent
souls.
Surprised, even whilst Enid awaited the older woman's demand, the
listeners heard the words:
"Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice."
The rough tones of the men were softened and harmonized by the distance.
It was a chant of praise, of thanksgiving, the offering of those who had
been snatched from death and from mortal fear more painful than death.
The singing ceased as suddenly as it began. Mr. Emmett and the purser
were warning the first watch.
The interruption did not seem to help Mrs. Vansittart. She spoke
awkwardly, checking her thoughts as though fearful she might be
misunderstood, or say too much.
"I am better," she explained, "quite recovered. I--gave up my bunk to
one who needed it."
"I am sure we are all doing our best to help one another," volunteered
Enid.
"But I am restless. The sight--of your sister--aroused vague memories.
Do you mind--I find it hard to explain--your name is familiar. I
knew--some people--called Brand--a Mr. Stephen Brand--and his wife."
She halted, seemingly at a loss. Enid, striving helplessly to solve the
reason for this unexpected confidence, but quite wishful to make the
explanation easier, found herself interested.
"Yes," she said. "That is quite possible, of course, though you must
have been quite a girl. Mrs. Brand died many years ago."
Mrs. Vansittart flinched from the feeble rays of the lantern.
"That is so--I think I heard of--of Mrs. Brand's death--in London, I
fancy. But--they had only one child."
Enid laughed.
"I am a mere nobody," she said. "Dad adopted me. I came here one day in
June, nineteen years ago, and I must have looked so forlorn that he took
me to his heart--thank God!"
Another solemn chord of the hymn floated up to them:
"Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear."
The rest of the verse evaded them. Probably a door was closed.
Mrs. Vansittart seemed to be greatly perturbed. Enid, intent on the
occupation of the moment, believed their little chat was ended. To round
it off, so to speak, she went on quickly:
"I imagine I am the most mysterious person living, in my early history,
I mean. Mr. Brand saw me floating towards this lighthouse in a deserted
boat. I was nearly dead. The people who had been with me were gone,
either starved and thrown into the sea or knocked overboard during a
collision, as the boat was badly damaged. My linen was marked 'E. T.'
That is the only definite fact I can tell you. All the rest is
guess-work. Evidently, nobody cared to claim me. And here I am."
Mrs. Vansittart was leaning back in the deep gloom, supporting herself
against the door of the bedroom.
"What a romance!" she said, faintly.
"A vague one, and this is no time to gossip about it. Can I get you
anything?"
Enid felt that she really must not prolong their conversation, and the
other woman's exclamation threatened further talk.
"No, thank you. You'll excuse me, I know. My natural interest--"
But Enid, with a parting smile, was halfway toward the next landing, and
Mrs. Vansittart was free to re-enter the crowded apartment where her
fellow-sufferers were wondering when they would see daylight again. She
did not stir. The darkness was intense, the narrow passage draughty, and
the column thrilled and quivered in an unnerving manner. She heard the
clang of a door above and knew that Enid had
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