Part 22

“She didn’t think I was good enough,” explained Harper hastily.

“She told ye that!--oh, Lord! They ‘ve been at her about that pious psalm-singer Clement Scott. Ye try again when we get ashore. She’s goin’ to stop a bit wi’ Aunt Barnes, at South Yarra, this Christmas. T’ auld girl hates t’ psalm-singer, an’ she ‘ll do the job for ye. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I ‘m starved wi’ the cold.”

“It ‘s not so long now,” said Harper, and suddenly he felt as if the night were stretching itself into interminable years. The bar that Susy had thought so hopeless, so insurmountable, was it really but a thing of straw? Was there really a chance for him yet? Was there really anything in the lad’s careless words? And hope awoke again in his breast, and with the hope a raging bitterness against the fate that was putting a barrier once more between him and the attainment of those hopes. She loved him, she had acknowledged that she loved him, and now to be free to win her! The eagerness for life awoke in him again. Who said the world was dreary? Who said life was not worth living? A bright, fair world stretched enticingly before him, and he was dying. Yes, dying--they were all dying, the old ship was breaking up fast, and if succour did not come quickly--He drew a long breath and looked down through the rain, that was falling in torrents now, at the decks below. One moment all was hidden by the raging seas, the next by the faint moonlight he saw the cracks widening--widening--then came another great sea, and he felt the ship bump heavily on the rocks. No, it was the poorest chance that she should last till morning, they--these men hanging to the rigging--had no chance whatever of living in the sea that boiled around them. Wider and wider grew the cracks on deck, the water was pouring into the hold, and the cargo was being washed out of her. One bale of wool--two--three--rose up on the next wave. A bale of wool! What is a bale against a man’s life? And yet the skipper was moaning pitifully over their loss.

“My great Scott! eighteen hundred bales of wool gone! What will the owners say? The poor old barkie! The poor old barkie! How shall I face the owners?”

So! so! and his chances of facing those owners seemed so pitifully small, and yet the old man’s thoughts were full of it. Sometimes he moaned over the wife and children in faraway England, but not as one who gives up all hopes of seeing them again, only as one who maybe had brought them to bitter poverty and pain by his mischance, for would the owners give him another ship, now he had lost the old Vanity? “Hardly likely,” he muttered to himself. “Hardly likely.” And so the bitter night wore on. There was nothing to mark the hours as they passed. Now a man moaned a little, now another cried aloud that he could hold on no longer, that he must fall and die before morning. Always there was the sea, sweeping over the decks and halfway up the mast towards them, with wearisome monotony. Great squalls of rain came up every now and then, blotting out all else and making all round inky-black; then they passed, and the pale and watery moon showed them the shore quite close, and the raging waters between. The tongue of the ship’s bell had broken loose somehow, and the wash of the sea made it toll with mournful cadence. It rose clear and loud, even above the shrieking of the gale, and Harper fitted its notes to his own words. “Never more,” it seemed to say; and then, as a heavier sea than usual swept over the wreck, shaking her down to her very keel, “Never, never more.”

And yet on shore the fire leaped and danced. Kindly anxious hands were feeding it, and it was impossible not to think that the men who would stay out on such a bitter night, were not doing all they knew for the help and succour of these helpless men. There were rocket apparatus stationed along the coast, and if the ship would only hold together long enough, why should they not all be saved? If she only would. Ben Harper was feverish in his desire for life now. He must live; he must see Susy once again, he must--he must! And eagerly he watched for the dawn.

So long the night, so long, so long. Is it a truth that our hours of gladness and our hours of pain are all of a length? Surely not. The night wore on, and it seemed to those waiting men that the longed-for morning would never come. But gradually the moon sank behind the dark mass of the land to leeward, and in the east came the first faint streaks of dawn.

A shout rose up from the weary waiting men, a shout Harper fancied he heard echoed faintly from the shore. Then the day was born, stormy and cold, and the light only showed them a handful of men clinging to a wreck, which each sea threatened to break into a thousand pieces.

“Merciful God!” cried the skipper, as the daylight showed him the full extent of his peril, “my poor wee wife!”

But if the daylight showed them their danger it showed them too that those on shore had not been unmindful of them. The ugly cliffs, steep and inaccessible, were not very high, and on the nearest point to the wreck, not indeed one hundred yards away, a little knot of men were getting ready the rocket apparatus. There were women there too, with shawls thrown over their heads, and Harpers heart beat as he thought of seeing his love again. Surely now--now that he came to her from the very jaws of death--cast up out of the cruel sea--she would not reject him. Would she not rather take it as a sign from her God that she was to wed this man? Surely she would. In another few minutes he would be by her side--a little longer and he might hold her in his arms again. How long--how long? O God! if they would only make haste. Could they not see that every moment was precious, that the old ship was breaking up fast?

He began to count the men in the rigging, nineteen of them, men and boys, and the skipper was helpless with a broken leg. It would take them some time to get off. And yet not so long though--once they had the rope aboard.

They got the apparatus fixed at last, and then “swish.” They could not see anything, for it was broad daylight now, but they heard the sigh of the rocket as it passed and knew it had missed. A despairing cry went up from the perishing men, for they, like the second mate, were counting their chances and reckoning them poor indeed. It almost seemed a matter of minutes now.

Again the men on shore tried, and this time the shout that went up was one of triumph. The thin line lodged beautifully over the mast, and the men in their awkward position hauled it in, and it seemed as if they had home and happiness within their grasp when the block came along.

Very carefully they made the thick rope fast round the mizzen lower masthead, the bo’sun still brisk and cheerful after the terrible night which he had spent in the rigging, his only covering a pair of torn dungaree trousers.

“None of your darned men-o’-war slippery hitches about this,” said he; and Harper, as he saw the breeches-buoy come along the stout cable, could have shouted as the men were doing. Here was happiness and safety--here was the woman he loved--nay, should he not say rather the woman who loved him--waiting on shore for him, and would she deny him now he had come through so much? His little girl, his darling! One by one he watched the men go, he watched the breeches-buoy swallowed up in the raging waters, he watched them received on shore as men risen from the dead, and he counted eagerly the moments till his turn should come. They knew now on shore the name of the ship. Was that woman on shore looking seaward, his Susy? She had a red shawl, he remembered, as we do remember trifles in the supreme moments of our life. That must be Susy, and she was thinking of him. Only six now. And now only five. For one brief moment he felt as if he were tasting the bliss of perfect happiness. Could he have doubted that a merciful God ruled this world of ours? Ah, little girl, you shall learn a newer, purer, more pitiful faith, and Ben Harper will be your teacher, and then--and then---- All the exultation went out of his heart, for his eye fell on the tail of the block and he saw that it was stranded. It had lain there--that thick rope--in its house, carefully kept against the day of need, day after day, week after week, year after year, and the long waiting had told on the stout rope, slowly it had rotted, slowly--and no man knew it. And now in the day of need when a good man’s life depended on it, it was failing. Was it though? Only three more men. And now only two--only the old skipper and himself. No one had noticed the rope, and where was the good of speaking of it. He watched the breeches-buoy, coming back to them, and clearly, clearly he read as in letters of fire that one of those two must die. Twelve hours ago he would have given his life for the skipper’s, gladly, willingly; but now--now it was different. It was his right to live, he’ told himself fiercely--his right, just as it was the right of the skipper to be the last to leave the ship. He was an old man, what was his life to him?--loyal enough to his owners--a rough old sea-dog, hard and even cruel at times--he was old, he had lived his life, he must be the one to stay. Even for the wife and children’s sake--the owners were not hard men--they would see they did not starve. And he must see Susy again--just hold her in his arms once again. Sweetheart, sweetheart, who so dear in all the world? It was his right to go, he told himself again. Then he cut the lashings with which they had bound the skipper to the mast, the breeches-buoy was so close now and it was easier for him to do it. The old man might find a difficulty by himself, and he would want to be all clear when next the buoy came back. When next the buoy came back! He looked at the stranded rope and knew that the buoy would never come back. Hardly would it reach the shore. Certain it was it would never come back, and the wreck was breaking up fast. It was his right to go, and no one would know. And even if they did, he was only taking his rights. How could he give his life, with all its fair possibilities, all its high hopes, for this worn-out old shellback? And the buoy was here!

“You go, sir. It’ll only make a few minutes’ difference, and I can help you. You’re hurt, and you’ll find it hard to manage by yourself.”

The old man demurred a moment--staunch old sailor, he would have stuck to the ship to the last, but the mate said again, “It only makes the difference of a minute or two, sir. That’s nothing.”

He could not send a message--not one. Why should he? They would never understand. The fair-haired girl would never know how he had longed for her this night.

Down, down went the buoy, and the waters swallowed it up. A great wave--another--he had done with life, for the rotten rope had parted at last!

But on shore there was great rejoicing, for they hauled the skipper up out of the sea, bruised and hurt and half drowned, but still alive; and the cry went round that he was the last man left aboard the Vanity.

Then the bo’sun put up his hands and squinted through them seaward.

“Jimini! there’s the mizzen mast gone! Poor old girl!”

“An’,” said another voice, the voice of the man who had left before the skipper, “there was two men aboard when I left, an’ one of ‘em was the second mate. Where is he?”

“Gone to ----,” but a woman’s bitter cry cut short the bo’sun’s speech.

DICK STANESBY’S HUTKEEPER

“Hallo! Dick. You here! Why, I thought you were away up tea-planting in Assam.”

“And I thought you were comfortably settled down on the ancestral acres by this time.”

“No such luck. The ancient cousin is still very much to the fore. Has taken to himself a new wife in fact, and a new lease of life along with her. She has presented her doting husband with a very fine heir; and, well, of course, after that little Willie was nowhere, and departed for pastures new.”