A Dream of the North Sea Part 11

The skipper sprang to the grating abaft the wheel.

"Here he is. Glory be to G.o.d! Are you right, sir?"

No answer.

"My G.o.d! are you sure, skipper?"

"Sure. Look!"

Ferrier saw an object like a ma.s.s of seaweed, but the night was so pitchy that no outline could be made out.

"Who durst try to pa.s.s a line under his arms?"

"Hand here, skipper; I will."

"Oh, Lewis! Keep nerve and eye steady. The graves are twenty fathoms below."

Lennard was inert, and no one could tell how he held on until he was flung on the deck.

"Lend us that binnacle lamp, Jim. Turn it on him."

Then it was seen that Tom might have been hauled up without putting Ferrier in peril, for the rope was twice coiled under his arms and loosely knotted in front; he had taken that precaution after seeing Bob fall. Moreover, strange to say, his teeth were locked in the rope, for he had laid hold with the last effort of despair.

The wind volleyed; the darkness remained impenetrable, and every sea that came was a Niagara; yet the gallant smack stood to it, and Tom Lennard slumbered after the breath came back to him. His ribs had stood the strain of that rope, but he had really been semi-strangled, and he was marked with two lurid, extravasated bands round his chest. He never spoke before falling asleep; he only pressed Ferrier's hand and pointed, with a smile, upward.

"If it goes on like this, sir, there won't be many of us left by the morning."

"No, skipper. I hope the men will secure themselves like us. Mr. Lennard had a near thing. He has a jaw like a walrus, or his teeth must have gone."

So, in fitful whispers, the grim sc.r.a.ps of talk went on while the blare of the trumpets of the Night was loosened over the sea.

"Look--over the port-side, there. It's beginning."

Ferrier could make out nothing until the skipper gave him the exact line to look on. Then he saw a Something that seemed to wallow darkly on a dark tumble of criss-cross seas.

"He's bottom up, sir. If we'd been running and gone into him, we should have been at rest soon."

"How beautifully we are behaving, skipper. I suppose there's no chance of our going like that?"

"Not without something hits our rudder. We seem to have got away from the track now. While you were below, you see, I got her mainsail in, and that strip of sail has no more pull than a three-cloth jib. Please G.o.d, we may get through. If anything happens to my mainmast I shall give in--but it's a good spar."

Ferrier's mind went wandering with a sort of boding fierceness; he framed dramatic pictures of all that was pa.s.sing in the chaotic ruin of shattered seas that rushed and seethed around. He had often spoken of the gigantic forces of Nature, but the words had been like algebraic formulae; now he saw the reality, and his rebellious mind was humbled.

"To-morrow, or next day, I shall have to see the misery that this causes. But why should I talk of misery? The word implies a complaint.

A hundred smacksmen die to-night. Pitiful! But if this hurricane and all the lesser breezes did not blow, then millions would die who live now in healthy air. If the sea were not lashed up and oxygenated, we should have a stagnant pest-hole like an old rotten fishpond all round the world. England would be like Sierra Leone, and there would soon be no human race. Who talks of kindness and goodness in face of a scene like this? We know nothing. The hundred fishermen die, and the unpoisoned millions live. We are shadows; we have not a single right. If I die to-night, I shall have been spent by an Almighty Power that has used me.

Will He cast me to nothingness after I have fulfilled my purpose? Never.

There is not a gust of this wind that does not move truly according to eternal law; there can be no injustice, for no one can judge the Judge.

If I suffer the petty pang of Death while a great purpose is being wrought out, I have no more reason to complain than if I were a child sharply pushed out of the way to let a fireengine pa.s.s. The great Purpose is everything, and I am but an instrument--just as this hurricane is an instrument. I shall be humble and do the work next my hand, and I will never question G.o.d any more. If a man can reckon his own individuality as anything after seeing this sight, he is a human failure; he is an abortion that should be wiped out. And now I'll try to pray."

So in sharp, short steps the scholar's thought strode on, and the sombre storming of the gale made an awful accompaniment to the pigmy's strenuous musings. Ferrier's destiny was being settled in that cataclysm, had he only known it; his pride was smitten, and he was ready to "receive the kingdom of G.o.d as a little child," to begin to learn on a level with the darkened fishermen whom he had gently patronized. As soon as he had resolved that night on Self-abnegation, as soon as the lightning conviction of his own insignificance had flashed through him, he humbly but "boldly" came "to the Throne of Grace." Like every one else who thus draws near to G.o.d through the Saviour's merit, he learned what it is to "obtain mercy"; a brooding calm took possession of his purified soul, and he was born again into a world where pride, egotism, angry revolt, and despair are unknown.

There would be no good in prolonging the story of this wrestle; there was a certain sameness in every phase, though the dangers seemed to change with such protean swiftness. For three days it lasted, and on the third day Tom Lennard, Ferrier, the patients, and the crew, were far more interested in the steward's efforts to boil coffee than they were in the arrowy flight of the snow-ma.s.ses or the menace of towering seas.

Ferrier attended his men, and varied that employment by chatting with Lennard, who was now able to sit up. Tom was much shaken and very solemn; he did not like talking of his late ordeal.

"Lewis, my dear friend, I have looked on the Eternal Majesty, and now death has no more terror for me. He will hide me in the shadow of His wings. I have seen what was known to them of old time; I knew when the gun seemed to go off inside my head, and I could feel nothing more, I knew that I should live: and that was the last light I saw in this world until you saved me--G.o.d bless you! We won't ever speak of it again."

Thus spoke Tom, with a fluency and correctness of diction which surprised himself. And he has never dilated on his mishap throughout his life so far.

It is not uncommon--that same awe-stricken reticence. This writer knows a man, a great scholar, a specimen of the best aristocratic cla.s.s, a man fitted to charm both men and women. Long ago, he and two others slid two thousand feet down an Alpine slope. For two days and two nights the living man rested on a glacier--tied to the dead. "Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" My subject knows all about this; he has gazed on the Unutterable, and he has never mentioned his soul-piercing experience to any creature. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The worst of the ordeal was over; the snow ceased, the hurricane fined off, and only the turbulent water rus.h.i.+ng in discoloured mountains under the last impetus of the wind--only that cruel water persisted in violence. It seemed as if for days the sea were sentient, and could not forget its long torture. Then came a griping frost and a hard sky, with slight breeze and a quiet sea.

Oh, the marks of ruin and annihilation! The sea was strewn with wreckage; ma.s.ses of timber swung around in loose rafts; vessels, bottom up, pa.s.sed the smack from day to day; the fleet was dispersed, and only a few battered and ragged vessels could be seen rolling here and there in disorganized isolation. "Goodness knows when we shall ever see our people again, sir. We can't do nothin'; I'll keep a sharp look-out all through daylight, and we'll pick them up if we can, but I fancy most of them have run for home or the Humber. Before we settle to work again I was thinking of a little thanksgiving service. We're saved for some good purpose, sir, and it's only fit we should say a word humbly to our blessed Father in heaven."

And all on board met in the simple North Sea fas.h.i.+on, and even the patients had their say. Only Tom Lennard remained impenetrably silent; he knew too much; he was a past-master in the mystery of mysteries. The people used to say in Ravenna, "Behold, there is the man who has been in h.e.l.l," when they saw the awful face of Dante; poor, loose-brained Tom Lennard had also seen that which may not be made known.

"There's some on 'em right ahead, skipper, I think. Joe Questor's there, I know. He hasn't lost his new mainsail. See 'em, skipper?"

A few dark grey shadows like slim poles were all that Ferrier could see; but the man was right, and when the deft fingers--those miraculous fingers--of the seaman had set the mizen right, the smack was sailed with every st.i.tch on, until she buried herself in the sulky, slow bulges of the ground swell. Ferrier said, "You see, skipper, it's better to risk carrying away something, than to have some poor smashed customer waiting helpless." And the skipper cracked on with every rag he could show until, on a sealing frosty morning, he shot in among the dismal remains of the gallant fleet.

Ferrier's vessel would have pleased certain lovers of the picturesque if they had studied her appearance, but she was in a dreadful state from the prosaic seaman's point of view. Every wave had been laid under tribute by the frost, and a solid hillock had gathered forward; the anchor was covered in like a candied fruit; the boat was entirely concealed by a hard white ma.s.s; while as for the ropes--they cannot be described fittingly. Would any one imagine that a half-inch rope could be made the centre of a column of ice three inches in diameter? Would any one imagine that a small block could be the nucleus of a lump as large as a pumpkin? From stem to stern the vessel was caked in glossy ice, and from her gaffs and booms hung huge icicles like the stalagmites of the Dropping Cave. All the other smacks were in the same plight, and it was quite clear that no fis.h.i.+ng could be done for awhile, because every set of trawl-gear was banked in by a slippery, heavy rock.

There was something dismal and forlorn in the sound of the salutations as Ferrier ran past each vessel; the men were in low spirits despite their deliverance, for there was damage visible in almost every craft, and, moreover, the shadow of Death was there. When Lewis came alongside of the Admiral he sang out "What cheer?" and the answer came, "Very bad.

We shall be a fortnight before we get them together."

"Do you think many are lost?"

"I knows of seven gone down, but there may be more for all I know. Some that ran for home would get nabbed on the Winterton or the Scrowby."

"Up with our flag, skipper, and see about the boat." Ferrier knew that his task would soon be upon him, and he helped like a t.i.tan, with axe and pick, to clear away the ice. A spell of two hours' labour, and the expenditure of dozens of kettles of hot water, freed the boat, and she was put out, regardless of the chance of losing her. (By the way, the men care very little about a boat's being swamped so long as the painter holds. I have seen three go under astern of one vessel during the delivery of fish. The little incident only caused laughter.)

The chapter of casualties was enough to curdle the blood of any one but a doctor--a doctor with perfect nerve and training. All kinds of violent exertions had been used to save the vessels, and men had toiled with sacks sewn round their boots to avoid slipping on a gla.s.sy surface which froze like a mirror whenever it was exposed for a few seconds to the air between the onrushes of successive waves. Ferrier carried his life in his hand for three days as he went from vessel to vessel; the sea was unpleasant; the risk involved in springing over icy bulwarks on to slippery decks was miserable, and the most awkward operations had to be performed at times when it needed dexterity merely to keep a footing.

One man had the calf of his leg taken clean away by a topmast which came down like a falling spear; the frost had caught the desperate wound before Ferrier came on the scene, and the poor mortal was near his last.

The young man saw that the leg must go; he had never ventured to think of such a contingency as this, and his strained nerve well-nigh failed him. A grim little conversation took place in the cabin between the skipper, the doctor, and the patient. I let the talk explain itself, so that people may understand that Ferrier's proposed hospital was not demanded by a mere faddist. The man was stretched on a moderately clean tablecloth laid on the small open s.p.a.ce in the close dog-hutch below; a dull pallor appeared to s.h.i.+ne from _underneath_, and glimmered through the bronze of the skin. He was sorely failed, poor fellow. The skipper stood there--dirty, unkempt, grim, compa.s.sionate. Ferrier put away a bucket full of stained muslin rags (he had tried his best to save the limb), and then he said softly, "Now, my son, I think I can save you; but you must take a risk. We can't send you home; I can't take you with me until we get a turn of smooth water; if I leave you as you are, there is no hope. Do you consent to have the leg taken off?"

"Better chance it, Frank, my boy. I dursn't face your old woman if I go home without you."

"Will it give me a chance? Can I stand the pain?"

"You'll have no pain. You'll never know, and it all depends upon _afterwards_."

"I stand or fall with you, doctor. I have some little toebiters at home I don't want to leave yet."

"Very good. Now, skipper, stand by him till I come back; I have some things to bring."

Two wild journeys had to be risked, but the doctor's luck held, and he once more came on that gla.s.sy deck. Sharply and decisively he made his preparations. "Have you nerve enough to a.s.sist me, skipper?"