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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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THE black evening overhead and the wild grey sea below were shutting together like the covers of a dusky tome as a strong ship plunged heavily through the white North Sea waves, with a fierce easterly gale whistling round her salt-wet masts, and the straining cordage above, while close ahead lay the English shore. And sea and sky were closing in truth that evening upon the rough lives of those who manned that dripping, reeling vessel! A week before she had come out of the Baltic, rolling through the green Helsingborg Sound, with a waist-deep cargo of red Swedish iron-ore; a day from soundings the wind had gone round, blowing with ever-gathering force from the north, and behind it the sky had dropped down until the eddying grey clouds seemed scarcely higher than the truck on the mainmast head, and sun and stars were alike hidden from view.
Happily for those who sailed that ship, a fair sea-way lay before her and through the mist and fog, without knowledge or guidance, they had plunged, passing ghostly shadow ships now and again, and seeing the flocks of sea-mews sweep by them as white as the foam which shot mast-high into the air every time a wave burst in thunder and confusion on their counter.
Day after day they had flown before the gale, through those signless grey sea wastes, and now to-night, with the darkness closing down, the English coast should have been somewhere close at hand, but how near or how far not one of that dripping, oil-skinned crew who stared out ahead into the gathering twilight could tell for certain.
Up in the bows, his right arm linked in the fore-shrouds, his thick blue jacket buttoned to the chin, the white swirl of the water the last wave had sent on board, playing ankle-deep about his great sea-boots, stood the captain, a pleasant young fellow to look upon, broad-shouldered, burnt with the bronze of stronger sunshine than any known to northern seas, the touch of salt Atlantic gales in his crisp black hair—it was but natural he should be anxious standing there alone, with the driving spray in his face, and the tough ship under him trembling in every fiber, as she lurched into the white confusion of the darkness ahead. And yet that anxiety in his frowning face was not all of the sea! Was it England he was approaching, he kept saying to himself—really England! He glanced back down the deck to see how nearly any of his men were watching him, then turned again to where the tumbled fields of water were running into the haven of the darkness, and frowned, and sighed, and stared with eyes that took little note of sea or sky.
A YEAR ago he had left this very coast, swearing in a hot fit of passion never to see it again, and leaving behind him as fair and broken-hearted a girl as has ever put her trust in a handsome face, and been betrayed and deserted. But before John Motram had sailed a week that fit of baseless anger was over, and he was sorry; before the ink was well dry on the indenture which bound him to the long voyage that was only just ending, the glamour of that sweet girl on shore, the full perception of his own baseness, and the misery he had left her to, did all that her tears and supplications had failed to do, and he loved her with all the poignancy which absence lends to affection, loved her as though that fit of waywardness, and the fatal outburst of wrath had parted them, had never been.
All round the world he had been haunted with a remembrance of that last morning in the little fisher-cottage by the Yorkshire beach where she dwelt with her bedridden father; he had felt again and again the press of her arms as she strove to move him to compunction; her hot white tears on his strong brown hands as he threw her off—maddened for the moment by a trivial cause of shameful inadequacy; the cruel quivering cry of her shame and betrayal had rung in his ears and followed him from east to west, the sight of her as he strode fiercely from the cottage door, her white arms out upon the cottage table, her white face hidden in her clasped hands, her fair brown hair all aspread upon the board had haunted him from sea to sea and shore to shore.
And here he was upon the vast coast again, penitent and humble, not knowing whether she loved or hated, whether she were alive or dead. John Motram was thinking it all over again as he stood there facing the blackness with the thunder of the storm drowning every sound—he was so deep in thinking he did not notice the watch set up lights, or how strangely those twin lanterns shone on the close wall of drift and spume to right and left of the laboring ship frosting the feathered tops of the hungry waves that rushed leaping at them from the void beyond with transient brightness, his eyes were with his thoughts.
That morning was so clear before him that he started as some salt spray drops fell upon his hand, they were so like those other tears he was thinking of, and as he frowned at his own weakness, and turned to look aside on a watery spume-erected ridge that rose up and up, as though it would never stop, was a broad outspread trail of brown seaweed—undulating, silky, soft—heaving with the pent emotion below just as hers had heaved. And up above the wind was wailing just as she had wailed back somewhere in the village on the coast. Bah! He was a fool, he said to himself, and this was folly.
TO-MORROW they might reach a harbor, and then if he could find her, and if she would forgive, and still loved him, but there was too many ifs for such a night of turmoil and confusion, so shaking the water angrily from his coat and making a way back to his cabin, down decks that reeled and strained at every buffet of the waves, he set a double watch in the bows, and bidding the leadsman get to work, he began again to pore over his charts, telling and re-telling each day's runs, and waiting eagerly for the first glimpse of star or haven-light that should tell him which way the gale was taking them.
About 8 o'clock he went on deck once more, and as he struggled up the companion ladder, the wind struck him like a hard material hand, it was if anything wilder than before, with a point or two more east in it, and though the sea fog had thinned out a good deal, the night was dark as ebony.
Aft at the wheel the binnacle light was shining up yellow on to the bearded faces of the two men who stood at the wheel, their features, disembodied and supportless, gleaming strange and unnatural against the gloom beyond. More forward there were two golden studs of brightness in the deck, shining and disappearing as the waters rushed across them, where the rays from the forecastle shone up through the thick glass skylight holes, but neither above nor below was there another gleam or speck to relieve the impenetrable veil of the night.
In the waist of the ship, as the captain floundered forward in his tall sea boots, he found a muffled figure vast and dim. In oil-skins, heaving the lead. To him Motram shouted:
"What do you make it, Andrews?"
And from the hollow of that worthy's deep-sea helmet came the answer: "Pretty steady at fifteen fathoms, sir!"
"Why that will float her," said the other cheerfully, and again the lead flew from the seaman's hand, and the line cut a spinning cleft in the arched back of a wave as the weight fled downwards.
Motram went on, and in the bows were two other figures holding on under the lee of the capstan, and gazing out into the night as stolidly as though the decks that reeled under them were pleasant English meadows, or the bitter squalls of driving spray that ever and anon ran in cataracts from their garments were the tepid showers which fall, soft as thistledown on the pink apple buds between a hay-scented May sunrise and breakfast time. It nearly made even stalwart Motram giddy to be there beside them.
At one moment the steep black prow of that strong ship was sinking into the white caldron her own rushing stem turned up, sinking into that yeasty pool as though it would never stop, down again with a heavy, deadly sinking sensation, down until the ship was but a barge, a raft, and Motram's hands were involuntarily spread out to clutch at something from the catastrophe that seemed so near, down until all that deck was but a flat, a dark smudge on the seething white.
And then as that ghostly white came sweeping in over the bulwarks in cascades and sheets, and even that flat itself was sunk below the twirling sea-lace, and a solid wall of water rose up in front to the steep crest of the next surge—horrible and overshadowing!—out of the litter and the turmoil, up with a reeling heave came the prow, up until the watcher's heart was sick, and his head swam, and the pale tumbling water raced away aft, and the fore-deck was a steep black hill, and the waves like howling wolves far below, and the black night clouds piled atop of the bowsprit; then down again, as though the bottom had dropped from the good ship, and the black seas were parting to their centers to let her through.
Even Motram was almost giddy as he stood balancing himself for a moment before that dancing picture, then he turned to one of the men, and waiting for a pause between the cannonading of the surf on the bows asked if he had seen or heard anything?
The man answered him, "Well, nothing 'bove or below till just now."
"What then?"
"We are not rightly certain, sir, whether it were aught or not. 'Twas just as you came up, a something went by upon the starboard maybe ten yards or so away. 'Twas like a floating buoy with a gird above, and painted it seemed with black and yellow checkers. I clapped my hand on Harry's arm here," said the man, "and pointed to it, but he could not see it, and only laughed, and said the Dutch rum we had at supper was stronger than the English liquor I was accustomed to. 'It was just my fancy—a mottled patch of spume riding on the waves,' and yet I somehow thinks it was a mark."
"What color was it, did you say?" asked the mate, a grizzly-bearded veteran of these seas, who had come up while they were speaking, and caught a word or two.
"It was but a flash," answered the lookout man, "a dim round something just where the water creeps under the edge of the darkness, but it seemed to me as it spun to be black and yellow in squares set point-wise one to another, and an open iron ball on top."
"Do you know of any buoy like that?" asked Motram of the mate with a curious keenness as to his answer.
The veteran wiped the water from his dripping beard as he thought a moment, and then replied, "There was one just like that set down to mark the Spaniards' shoal off Holbeach Head last year—"
"Where?" exclaimed Motram, with a gasp and start.
"Off Holbeach Head, sir, to mark the passage through the Spaniards' sands and if that were the buoy he saw then the sooner we go about and lie to till morning the better."
But the captain hardly heard him. "Holbeach Head!" Why it was right across to that jutting Yorkshire promontory the geranium-hidden window of the little cottage he wotted of looked out, looked out over miles of dangerous water when the tide was high, and leagues of barren sandy flats at ebb, where many a ship had found her ending; was it conceivable fate had brought him up from the furthest world and was taking him, prow on, to the very spot which had haunted his thoughts by day and night? It was unlikely, impossible! William Seth, who kept the watch, was drunk or dozing; there was no buoy there; it was but a tangled patch of foam riding on a wave top; the land was fifty miles away at least, and Motram, angry with the fate that would not let his conscience rest, turned from the peak, and going down the deck, hailed the leadsman.
"Ha, there! How much water have we now?"
"Still fifteen fathoms by the last throw, sir," said the man, coiling up the line to cast again.
"Good!" answered Motram; he was so certain the land was far away he did not wait for another cast, but turned to go, and had got all but to his door, his foot on the gangway step, when he heard the leadsman, who knew he was within earshot, call out from his sling:
"By the deep—five!"
"You are mad," shouted Motram, at his side in a moment; "five fathom! Cast again—the line caught—here, Gasper!" he shouted to the mate in a voice that rang over the thunder of the gale, as the leadsman, with eager haste, made ready for another try—"call all hands on deck and stand by to put the ship about."
THE men came scrambling from below; the lead line went streaming into the depth, the tags of red and blue that marked the fathoms on it rushed through the linesman's fingers, and the instant the heavy plummet touched the bottom he called out "Four fathoms—a scanty four!"
No sailor needed to have that cry interpreted, and sooner than Motram could turn around to give his orders they had sprung into the riggings. But it was too late; the ship would have travelled before that gale had there not been a stitch of straining black canvas up aloft, as it was even as Motram put his hands to his mouth and shouted the first syllable of that command to change the vessel's course his men understood so well there came a dull, tremulous shock utterly different from the manner of the heavy surges on the bows, a staggering plunge, that brought a great black sea on board and washed three shrieking wretches into the white trail under the stern, a plunge, a stagger, another shock, and as the strain upon the shrouds was relaxed for a moment and then came on again, the topmasts flicked across the sky like fishing rods and, snapping at the cross-trees, came hurtling to the deck with a crowd of canvas, ropes and lumber, cleaving one seaman's head from crown to shoulder, and burying a dozen other struggling figures under that hopeless ruin.
Motram staggered to his feet from the channels where the great sea had washed him, and as he steadied himself in the knee-deep water, Gasper, the mate, rose up from the wreck beside him.
"She floats again," cried the grizzled veteran of a hundred storms, "see, see how she pitches!"
And indeed the ship was floundering heavily through a havoc of shallow white waters, coming more and more broadside on to the wind each moment as the fallen hamper trailing overboard dragged her round.
"She floats again, 'twas but a bar," cried Gasper. and as the gallant fellow sprang to the rack for an ax to cut away the lumber with, and then rushed shouting forward to collect his men out of the black night above, like a stone from a giant's sling, came a pulley-block swinging from a broken rope, striking him full upon the chest with frightful impetus and hurling him upon the deck a bloody corpse.
Motram saw him fall, and swearing an oath between his teeth, snatched the hatchet from his dying hand. As he did so the end came—the ship struck once more, every timber in her groaning as though she were full of life, and rose once more high on the back of a sleek, black mountain of water, ribbed and crested with hissing strands of foam, and came down as though she were dropped from the outer skies upon the hard sands below, her strong ribs bursting to that mighty impact with noise like cannon shots, her deck planks starting and bulging up, her bottom ripping open from stem to stern, her masts snapping by the board, and as that unhappy ship rolled over on her side a battered wreck, the black seas hurrying one upon another escaladed and swept her decks from fore to aft of every loose and living thing.
THE captain was a strong swimmer. When he came up to the surface he first shook himself free of his heavy boots and thick coat; then turning his back on the dim mound which was all that was left of the ship, struck out desperately to where, from the trend of the waves, he judged the shore to be. He could have gone in no other direction, for the surf ran steep and high, and before many minutes were over he was struggling for very life in the trough of a fierce ring of breakers that were thundering on a black, invisible shore.
The swim through the cauldron of surf had been play to that landing. He was battered and bruised, thrown up by a wave, and dragged back by its return into the arching shadow of the next, until spent and bleeding, he felt there was but one more effort in him, and making it with despairing strength in a minute of confusion—scarcely knowing how it had happened—he was alone, half-naked and gasping, on the wet sand.
But it was not the shore. All round him, as far as he could see, stretched ooze and sandy wastes dotted with pools of tide-water showing a thought lighter than the ground about them, a dreary and desolate wilderness with the wind howling over it and a white foaming surf fining out into invisible threads on either hand. Motram was sensible enough to know he was not home yet, and as he peered into the flawless darkness or listened to the desolate piping of the gale over those wind-swept tracks, and the confused noise of the sea—just then at its lowest ebb—it seemed to him he had but exchanged a swift and merciful death for a slow and horrible one.
In a short time the tide must come up again, and one by one those acres of mud and ooze be swallowed up; it would be possible for a man hemmed in in such a place to die by inches, to sit and see his fate creep in upon him through endless minutes and long dreadful hours of expectation.
The thing was not to be thought of. He scrambled to his feet and began groping through the darkness all along the edge of the ooze, and the first thing he found was the dead body of one of his men just in the wash of the waves, which were rolling him uneasily from side to side.
The castaway dragged that hapless victim up ten yards, and eagerly stooped down to see if he lived, but the heart had stopped, the face was livid, the fists tight-clenched, and Motram turning away in disgust set off to walk hard, he knew not whither.
HE walked hard for half an hour, stumbling and plunging along in the gloom, the wind chilling him through his sodden clothes to his bones, and the sharp edges of shells and stones cutting his bleeding feet, while the ominous thunder of the surf seemed creeping up ever closer to him, as he plunged along with reckless haste. Then, when he thought he had gone a mile or so, he saw something dark lying on the beach ahead, and walking up to it, found it was a dead man, and turning him over saw it was the very same he had dragged from the surf a short time before. He was not an inch nearer his deliverance—had come back to the very spot he had started from.
Then Motram sat down, and hid his face in his hands and groaned, thinking of all those things he had thought of so often before, and wondering who would find his body in the morning on this unknown shore, he dozed, and prayed at times, and thought. He was nearly asleep, crouching there with his head upon his knees, when the cold lapping of the water running in before the waves of the now swiftly advancing tide again roused him. He stared round him.
It was a miserable place to die in, and miserable to sit crouching there waiting for the slow death that played with him, coming on and stealing back before the great waves that crept up over the sands with all the black terror, of the empty sea behind them. Even a single star would give him a chance—would be something to guide his feet by, but the sky above was black as ink, and not a glimmer in it.
He got up. As he turned away in bitterness and despair he thought, low down, where the air was clearer, along the flats he had seen something glimmer. It was a pin-point, a yellow speck no bigger than a mote, and yet his heart bounded at the supposition. He stared and wiped his eyes upon his sodden sleeve and looked again.
Yes, there it was without a doubt, a golden point far away over the wind-swept sands too low, and yellow, and steady for a real star; a light on shore, it must be beckoning him as it were towards it, and Motram set off running with the tide now over the ridge of the flats racing after him, close upon his heels, like a wild beast balked of its prey; floundering knee-deep through treacherous quicksands, and racing over the mussel bed whose thousand knife edges were so many ingenious tortures; floundering into deep cold pools, and losing sight of that pale strange sign for a moment; plunging recklessly into broad muddy channels, up with the strong salt midnight tide was already streaming, and swimming across them supported by the hope of that twinkling guide beyond. Nothing could have kept Motram up but the roar of the tide behind, and that happy chance in front, that strange, mysterious speck of light.
And then presently the ground hardened under his feet, he passed some piles hung with green sea-weed, then an empty lobster-pot or two, and the ribs of a deserted boat; he was coming near to land, with an inconceivable quickness, as it seemed to him, after his long misery, he found himself upon a gravelly beach, with cottages and trees looming darkly above him.
On to the cobbled landing place he dragged his trembling limbs. There was a little inn by the water side, with a green fence around it, and benches and tables for the men to drink at; beyond again, a sloping village street, every house in it silent and deserted, save where, from a cottage near the top, through a latticed window came that yellow shine which had saved him. He would go there, he thought; they were the only folks awake, and as fisher people would surely sympathize with and succor him. He staggered up the street, only now recognizing how spent he was, pushing open the wicket gate that inclosed the marigold plot before the cottage, and before he claimed admittance something prompted that battered and bleeding mariner to look through the latticed, half-curtained window, whose shine had called him from the certainty of a miserable death out yonder.
There was a woman, her back towards him, but young and slim, nursing a baby by the fire, and all Motram's blood ran backwards in his veins with sudden surprise as he looked at her.
Then, before he had quite recovered that first shock, he saw an older woman. He knew her in an instant as the white-locked village nurse whose long life had been spent by death-beds, come from the inner room, and through the window, a cleft open, he heard her go to the girl and say, "Put the child down, my lass, your father raves, and is near his ending!" and as the girl hastily set the little one aside, the old woman went on. "He talks of a tide that brings you something, a wrecked ship he says he sees, then starts and whispers in his sleep, and says, 'John Motram's in the garden, and coming to marry you,'" and Motram at that saw the girl start nervously, and turn to the lattice. It was she herself, and she saw him, and her hand upon the old crone's arm, stood white-faced. and pointing at him a minute, then flew into the little passage and tore the door open, and so they met.
They had not had time to say a word, they had not half done the first kisses of that unspoken reconciliation, when out came hurriedly the nurse, and beckoned them to the inner room.
MOTRAM could hardly unravel for many days afterward the exact sequence of it, but there he was in a minute kneeling at the bedside of a dying man, his wet rags, his matted hair upon his haggard face, his arm about the waist of a sobbing girl, a baby whimpering in its cot beyond, and an ancient, grey-haired woman, to whom life and love and death were all indifferent, making ready a winding-sheet on the bare deal table by the window.
Then, somehow, it seemed his fingers were closed upon the girl's who wept and prayed by him, the old man's hands were over both in blessing; the baby whimpered; the wind gently shook the casement; and then all else that Motram's giddy brain could remember was an old woman snuffing out the candles one by one, and a fair girl weeping her eyes out in his arms with mingled joy and sorrow.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.