ed scholars to whom mankind owes the preservation and revival of learning at one of the most critical periods recorded in history. From Good Words. WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH. BY SARAH TYTLER, AUTHOR OF "LADY BELL," ETC. CHAPTER XIX. RIDING FOR THE ROCKETS. BUT there was one man and that was Joel Wray-in the crowd who was as ignorant as the shipwrecked men of the fatal nature of the impediments to any attempts at deliverance, and who, within ear-shot of explanations freely vouchsafed to him, flatly refused to be convinced. He kept thrusting himself into the front rank, and calling for a boat, declaring any money would be given for a boat, and volunteering to get afloat himself, while he summoned a crew to join him, in the name of God and Christ and all manhood. As he urged and entreated, standing there in his labouring-man's clothes among sailors and fishers and those whom Long Dick considered gentlefolks to the like of him, Joel Wray's pleasant brown face seemed ennobled by the workings of disinterested emotion, while his dark eyes were shining, and his whole figure was instinct with energy and daring. The Cheam crowd, under the pressure of the circumstance to which they themselves rose, bore better than might have been expected Joel Wray's forward and uncalled-for interposition. It was not an unheard-of thing for men, especially young men, to lose their heads before such a spectacle as that which presented itself on the Beacon Rock. It truly did in a manner level all distinctions of rank and calling, and make strangers and natives equal, before the calamity they regarded with common sorrow, and were alike powerless to prevent. makin' some mother, maybe, lose her bread-winner, and yon furriners not a straw-breadth farrer removed from the watery grave as is appointed for them, and what is we that we can stay the appointment? We didn't make the Beacon Rock and the Gannet Bay, as is impassable for boats in a storm, no more than we made the winds and the waves." These protests, seasoned by an oath or two, where the men were roughest, were the worst remonstrances that Joel encountered. It was Long Dick that was specially scandalized by his fellow's unreasonable, "owdacious conduct. "Stand still, man, and dunno behave like a Jack fool, or a woman," he said grimly; "ould you 'a a score more widders and orphans and them near at home-than need be ? D'you think nobody has a heart in 's breast, or blood in 's body 'cept yoursen? D'you think the worsen on us 'ouldn't do as much for yon poor perishin' wretches as you did for me in the Broad, if we seed the least chance, which there ain't? You may know summat about fresh water, but them's owd seamen and fishers to right and left on you, and I 'a took a voyage in my time. When we bide still, and can't lift a finger like this, you may 'a the grace to allow that the time 'a come for you to set your teeth and be quiet, and look at what God A'mighty 'a ordained and man cannot hinder, athout makin' a din like a 'oman, or a chile, or a bull o' Bashan, as can do nowt but holler and squeal and fight with the air-not that Pleasance behaves as comes to thatten; see what a brave lady she is." Pleasance was standing wedged in among the crowd, stock-still and pale, with her fingers tightly interlaced, but uttering neither moan nor murmur. Yet she took in everything, from the raging gulph which yawned beneath the frail ship, held there thrust through, and grating on the rock, to the devouring concern and agony of Joel Wray. "This be no pleasure sight for you, Pleasance, and you may get your dead on cowd stan'in' there," said Long Dick to Thee knowest nowt about it, lad." her. "Will I take you back to granny's, "Thee mayest trust us, the thing ain't to sin I can do nowt, and there be nowt to be be done, not for love nor money." Ay, done, but wait for the ship partin' miday, neither for God's love, nor for good ships, and her hands bein' washed in a money." "Go afloat with you! It's liker minent out of sight, till their corpses come we'll lay violent hands on you for a young up on the beach, in a week or ten days' madman of a ploughman, or a cowman- time, wind and weather permittin'." as has had no traffic with the water beyond the horse-ponds and hold you back by main force, from castin' your life away, and "Oh no," said Pleasance, with a little gasp and shudder; "I could not go and seek shelter for myself, and leave fellow creatures hanging there; I ain't cold speak of, I must watch with the rest." toured every change on the laboring shipfrom the snapping like a twig of her bowJoel had forgotten her, but she did not sprit, to the straining of her mainmastmind that; it seemed only natural and and calculated with beating hearts how right that he should forget her at such a long she would hold out. It seemed to moment, though she could not lose sight give the bystanders a faint idea of how the of him with his glistening eyes, and quiv-time passed with the little group of men ering lips; his desperate longing to peril himself to the utmost, so that something the most desperate thing- were tried for those in great jeopardy. "Rockets!" cried Joel suddenly, with a loud voice, and the proposal did not fall to the ground, like that for the boat, but was taken up and canvassed quickly in various tones by many voices. It was just possible that by means of rockets a rope might be thrown to the vessel. They had not been thought of sooner, because none was to be had at Cheam, or nearer than at Dene-Fleet, a coastguard station six miles off. It was certainly worth while, in the horrible inaction that was forced upon the people, to go in search of the rockets; but the probability was that the ship would not last till the return of a messenger. The jagged rocks in Gannet Bay did their work as speedily as surely. The tide was coming in; some weather-judges held that the storm had not even yet reached its worst, and it was not likely to abate before the turn of the tide. Ere then a ship of twice the tons' burden of this Norwegian brig would, in its position, according to precedent, split asunder, and be dashed rib from rib, and spar from spar. If a single foot hold could have been of much matter in such a sea, not one would be left for frozen and cramped feet and hands to stay themselves by, and cling to with the last tenacity of life in death. I'll get a horse from the nearest inn, and ride like mad," said Joel, preparing to start off on the instant, and only Long Dick contradicted him this time. My lad, let me go; the nearest stabling is at the Ship Ahoy. Landlord be acquent with me, not with you; he'll trust me with his beast when he may stickle at givin' en to you, even on sich an errand.” The argument was incontrovertible, yet Joel hesitated; but he was put down and compelled to stay, chafing, where he was. Long Dick hurried away, followed by an escort of boys anxious to see him ride off post-haste, with the flints flying from his horse's feet. The interval between his going and coming again, was trying to those who stood in the blast and watched and keenly meas730 LIVING AGE. VOL. XV. the people on the shore counted five men and a boy who still kept together at the stern, and still raised from time to time that piercing cry, growing bitter with the foretaste of death, of "Boat! boat!" to those whom the sufferers might judge inhumanly indifferent to the fate of their fellows, or basely careful of their own welfare. "Men, an' we could on'y tell en that they need not fault us, as does all we can we does, when we stands here and waits for the rockets, ready to run out in the surf and fling en with all our might! They might trust and forgive we with their last breath," complained an old boatman, wiping the sweat from his brow. Pleasance, in her large and tender heart, freely forgave Joel Wray for his complete neglect of her. Nay, she turned to comfort him, where he stood in his misery of suspense, his hands clenched and his back turned for a moment upon the spectacle. She managed to push her way to him, and put her hand half-timidly on his arm. 66 Long Dick will soon be back, Joel," she said softly. He looked round on her with a faint, absent smile, took her hand and drew it within his arm, but dropped it the next moment and sprang forward to hail Long Dick, who came clattering down the rough road by which carts were wont to drive from the country round to the Dene and the sands for loads of seaweed. But a second glance showed that Dick came empty-handed. The coastguardsman at Dene-Fleet in whose charge the rockets were kept had been absent, and his subordinate, a prey to official etiquette, had refused to give them to Dick, unless he were furnished with a letter from the harbor-master, who bustled forward, too late, at the mention of his name, or from some other person in authority at Cheam. “And did you not ride to the next justice or clergyman, and compel the rockets to be given up?" demanded Joel Wray anxiously. Long Dick dismounted, and looked hurt at the reproach. "I'a not thought on it," he said; "ought I to 'a done it? Squire and passon might 'a not had the power, or crisis. not trusted to me, no more than coast- | hoarse and shrill, in anticipation of the guardsman did. I thought it bessen to ride back fust thing. Joel Wray was not listening to him; he was tightening the girths of the smoking horse. "He is good for the six miles back to Dene-Fleet," he said, "and I shall get a fresh horse there." And before Dick Blennerhasset could guess what Joel Wray was about, he had snatched the whip from Dick's hand, leapt on the horse, and was taking it back by the way it had come, considerably faster than Dick had ridden it. Dick ran some steps, calling, "Stop en, stop en; he'll break 's neck and Muster Bennet's beastes's knees. What 'll Muster Bennet say? and the drownded men not saved when all is done. Joel Wray ain't the man, sure-ly, what'll get the rock-yets, as were refused to me.” 66 Joel Wray was beyond recall. Some of the bystanders said he was a daredevil, and some that he was a chap of spirit and resource, who might succeed. A betterdressed man came out of the crowd, the tanner to whom the unfortunate ship Christian," of Bergen, was due, and said that he would make good any loss to the landlord of the Ship Ahoy by the overriding of his horse. And the harbormaster tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and wrote a line with a pencil on the crown of his hat, his grey hair fluttering wildly in the wind, as he performed the feat, to be despatched by a third messenger, sent after Joel to confirm his appeal. No doubt it was a boon to those who were reduced to be mere spectators, to do even so little; and Pleasance followed Joel's headlong course with a passionate hope and prayer, not for his safety-she never doubted that-but that he might be permitted to prevail, and change destiny itself. The minutes ceased to lag; they seemed rather to flash past like lightning, and but a few more were gone, when the mainmast of the brig was seen to part clean from the deck, and go over the side, raising such a whirl and spout of water, that for a second the gazers believed that the brig itself had broken up, and sunk bodily. "Her's gone, it is all over," was the involuntary hushed cry, as when a human creature dies, and a portion of the crowd, consisting mostly of women, hardly knowing what they did, but unable to bear the desolation that they anticipated, broke off from the crowd, turned their backs and began to flee from the sight, which they had braved the morning's exposure to witness. But not only did the vessel still remain, her crew, of whom only one man had been crushed and washed overboard by the fall of the mast, still clinging, huddled together to the sinking stern, were keenly alive, in their misery, to what passed on the partially revealed shore, to which they looked in vain for salvation. They marked what seemed the dispersion of the crowd, and there arose again that cry of "Boat! boat!" in such a wail of despairing anguish, as those who heard it never forgot, and which caused many of the people present to cover their ears to shut out the sound. It was the last effort of the foreign sail-ors; within another minute, when a bigger wave broke over the pitiable wreck, it disappeared as in the twinkling of an eye, without another cry to ring its knell, save from the strange men and women on the shore. All that was left of the ship had been carried back in the trough of the wave, leaving nothing but the water more fiercely churned than before, and here and there a black speck of a floating yard, as the sole vestige of beams and rigging the sole token where a ship had sailed the sea and carried on board of her human hearts with their freight of hopes and fears. Not a man was there clinging to plank or spar-the men's strength had been worn out by the long and fruitless struggle, their spirit had been broken by Pleasance heard experienced men say, the denial of their prayer-in the inciunder their breath, that the very minutes dents of the final moment, no so-called of the ship were numbered. She was happy accident had flung one man of them aware that the lamentations and cries of within reach of a stay, however slight, the horror which had greeted the ship's strik-bitterness of death was past, and the last ing, but which had died out in the long conflict was brief. watch, were beginning to rise again, In the mean time the raging storm knew no slackening; the battered, bruised ship began to sway where before it had been held as by a vice, and to heel over more and more on its beam-ends, while its hull was perceptibly lower in the fierce strife of the water. If Joel rode like the wind he might be back in time. no slower, Pleasance was too sick at heart to in dulge in that "good cry" taken by the other women who had stayed to see the end of the "Christian" of Bergen, or to moralize with them on those "Norroway" women, whose men had perished before their English eyes, those women who would have so little knowledge at this moment, in the comfort and cheerfulness of their homes, of the terrible evil that had befallen them. Still Pleasance resisted being taken back to granny's, when almost everybody was going away, and was fain to stay with the few who lingered in the dreary scene, and share, if she could not solace, what would be Joel Wray's sore disappointment and regret, when he should arrive and find that even though he had been successful, all his exertions were too late. wreck was over, and no more was to be seen, could reject. "Thee's earned thee's meal, lad," she even said, patronizingly, to one who, as she had been told, had contributed creditably, for a landsman, to the day's great doings. "Thee mun be nation hungry, after assistin' at sich a wreck as ain't to be seen often in them days, though they was plenty as blackberries when I were young; fall to thee's victuals, and cut a figure at them, as thee'st cut at thee's first wreck." But Joel cut no figure either in eating or conversation, and joined in no proposal to make the best of all that was left of the holiday, which had been planned so auspiciously, but the greater part of which had been claimed perforce from the holiWhen Joel did come, he looked at first day-makers, by the misery at their door. as if he took the trial more quietly than The storm, as if it had stayed only to might have been expected from his pre-wreak its worst on the wrecked ship, and vious conduct. He had been aware of the drowned men, had began to sink as the extinction of the last chance, before suddenly as it had risen, growling in exhe had got to the Dene he had seen from haustion. the road that the ship had vanished, and his pain might have been partly spent. Anyway, though he alighted in silence, and the tears came into his eyes as he laid down the box of rockets which he had brought with him, and although he quickly and decidedly refused the offer of reward which was pressed upon him both by the harbor-master and the tanner who had an interest in the lost brig, Joel arranged calmly enough to take the strange horse, which he had got somehow, to the stable of the Ship Ahoy, and to assure the landlord of the safety of his horse at DeneFleet, and of the transfer of the respective beasts in the course of the afternoon. Then Joel agreed to follow Pleasance and Long Dick to granny's, whence the party must take their way, in the course of the afternoon, back to the manor farm. It would soon be possible even for Lizzie to venture abroad, and see what was to be seen in the town and on the shore, but nobody had any heart left for the excursion. Lizzie had kept the house patiently enough, though in trembling solicitude, lest the chimney should fall - lest Long Dick, who was so strong and venturesome, should think of going afloat, though granny said it could not be done. She was too thankful to have them all back, safe and sound, with Long Dick, towering in the midst of them, the safest and soundest of all; she was too content to listen open-mouthed to the dismal account of the wreck, and Dick's somewhat heavy reflections upon the same, to wish for any fresh movement on her account. And those who should have been the life and soul of the holiday, Pleasance and Joel, were not themselves that afternoon to take double joy out of the fragments, as arrears of what had been lost to them. Joel was pale, troubled, almost distraught, as it seemed, and Pleasance's BUT when Joel Wray appeared at gran-heart was swelling with pity for him. ny's, it was clear that the composure which he had assumed at the Dene had been the result of self-restraint, and that he was upset and wretched because of the calamity which he had failed to avert. CHAPTER XX. THE GROUND-SWELL IN THE SEA AND He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, mutely declining the viands to which granny, notwithstanding her preoccupation, had added a fresh store, and which she could not conceive that any man in his senses, now that the 66 They be past pain now," said Long Dick, with an enviable assurance that he was giving comfort to himself and all around by the unanswerable statement. "The thing be done and ended, and no more at present," went on Dick, vaguely, as if he were finishing a letter, "it beant no better than crying over spilt milk, as well as cryin' out agin Providence to get down in the mouth or go into the dumps and that," and here he looked hard at "The next thing," said granny, briskly, "will be the corpses bein' washed ashore; if so be, they beant carried away eastward, norard, or sudard out of our wash. There beant no sharkses in our waters like as I 'a heard my owd man tell on sharkses in furrin seas; but the Gannet Bay rocks 'are wors'n sharkses. Howsomever, the corpses, what's left on them, 'll be laid out clean and purpose in the lock-up, or sich like, though you don't be here to see, till so be passon find time to bury 'em." Joel writhed and looked up hastily, as if he were going to speak, but said nothing. "Wool," said Long Dick, still taking the most agreeable view of things under the circumstances, "the poor chaps 'll sleep as sound in the graveyard here at Cheam as in their ownst; and as for murners, why they'll 'a murners enough as is their own people, in time, when the news travels. They ain't friends of ourn, that we should murn for en," ended Dick with a strong sense of the mingled liberty taken and impropriety committed by such extraneous, uncalled-for mourning. Still Joel Wray, usually so quick, would not take the hint, and still Pleasance was weighed down with his sorrow. tence; "well, then, I may turn up again at Manor Farm, if any one cares to have me there." "The lad, he be in a creel," said granny, putting her word in, and using an old fish-wife's phrase, "what 'ould take thee to stop here for? We han't wrecks every day, and thee be'st full owd to take to the sea for a livin' after seeing it the master to-day." Even granny, with her passion for the sea, was puzzled by its conquest on this occasion. "Not take the cart home, lad!" said Long Dick in unfeigned' bewilderment, while he was far too simple and honest himself to catch at the suggestion of getting rid of Joel and his favored suit, by his own queer, extravagant thinskinnedness, his liability to moping, or whatever it was that was tending to produce in him this waywardness and fickleness. "To stop here 'ould belong to expense, and how could you get back again ?`" "Leave the expense to me," said Joel pettishly, in his pain; "and as for the road, it is a little bit to tramp it, as I tramped before; I have walked as far as that many a time before breakfast." "You are "But why d' you go for to stop?" argued Long Dick, impelled to protest "I'm thinkin' we mun be steppin'," said still farther, since it was evident to everyLong Dick at last, tired of his unusual body that Joel was in misery. office of being spokesman to so unrespon- a day's-man, and may bide away for a day sive an assembly-unless granny, who or a week, and be taken on again if bailiff went far beyond him in her philosophy, please; but there were no word on stoppen and Lizzie, who was apt to count for noth-behind when we started. It sounds coning with Dick, if she did not disgust him trary in you to be arter stoppin' at this by her unvarying admiration, except when he specially wanted sympathy or solace. "Pouney be fresh, no doubt, but the wind is scrowgin' yet and weather none to boast on; there be fourn on us, and one, leastways, well grown, and we be six good miles from Manor Farm; and Missus Balls -her can't abide lateness -do'ee hear, Pleasance?" Yes, Pleasance heard; and though she was inclined to have infinite patience with this mood of Joel Wray's, this malady of vicarious suffering on his part, yet for Joel's own sake, she was driven to welcome along with Long Dick the necessary diversion. When all the preparations were made, Joel started up from his absorption. "I ain't going back with you," he said, hurriedly, "I could not bear it-not to night, I mean. I shall stop a few days behind here, and then " he caught Pleasance's wondering, distressed, beseeching look, and seemed to change the end of his sen time o' day; you can't be so mad as to think t' sea will give up what 'a been swallowed right down all alive and kickin', so as it will be of any use for you to stop and lend a hand? Come, Joel, you be mighty fond on lendin' a hand, I know that, and thank you for it, as my own debt, but there's nowt to be done here; you 'a done your best, bor, more'n was called for, when you rid Muster Bennet's horse twice over. Let a-be what ain't to be betterned, and come with us. Why we 'ould 'a no peace to ride home and go to beds and to works to-morrer a-leaving you dazed and strook, and takin' the wreck to heart like this." "I have not done my best," said Joel Wray, standing at bay, passionately, "but you know nothing about it. I may have done wrong from the first; there seemed no good in retracting just then and who would have believed me? Never mind me, Long Dick, or you, Pleasance. I can take care of myself. I shall do very well. |