Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

  CHAPTER LIV

  BRUNTSEA DEFEATED

  Little sleep had I that night. Such conflict was in my mind about theproper thing to be done next, and such a war of the wind outside, aboveand between the distant uproar of the long tumultuous sea. Of that soundmuch was intercepted by the dead bulk of the cliff, but the wind swungfiercely over this, and rattled through all shelter. In the morning thestorm was furious; but the Major declared that his weather-glass hadturned, which proved that the gale was breaking. The top of the tidewould be at one o'clock, and after church we should behold a sight hewas rather proud of--the impotent wrath of the wind and tide against hispatent concrete.

  "My dear, I scarcely like such talk," Mrs. Hockin gently interposed."To me it seems almost defiant of the power of the Lord. Remember whathappened to poor Smeaton--at least I think his name was Smeaton, orStanley, was it? But I dare say you know best. He defied the strengthof the Lord, like the people at the mouth of their tent, and he wasswallowed up."

  "Mary, my dear, get your prayer-book. Rasper's fly is waiting for us,and the parson has no manners. When he drops off, I present to theliving; and I am not at all sure that I shall let George have it. Heis fond of processions, and all that stuff. The only procession in theChurch of England is that of the lord of the manor to his pew. I will bethe master in my own church."

  "Of course, dear, of course; so you ought to be. It always was so in myfather's parish. But you must not speak so of our poor George. He may be'High-Church,' as they call it; but he knows what is due to his family,and he has a large one coming."

  We set off hastily for the church, through blasts of rain and buffets ofwind, which threatened to overturn the cab, and the seaward windowwas white, as in a snowstorm, with pellets of froth, and the drift ofsea-scud. I tried to look out, but the blur and the dash obscured thesight of every thing. And though in this lower road we were partlysheltered by the pebble ridge, the driver was several times obliged topull his poor horse up and face the wind, for fear of our being blownover.

  That ancient church, with its red-tiled spire, stands well up in thegood old town, at the head of a street whose principal object nowcertainly is to lead to it. Three hundred years ago that street hadbusiness of its own to think of, and was brave perhaps with fine men andmaids at the time of the Spanish Armada. Its only bravery now was thegood old church, and some queer gables, and a crypt (which was trueto itself by being buried up to the spandrels), and one or two cornerswhere saints used to stand, until they were pelted out of them, andwhere fisher-like men, in the lodging season, stand selling fish caughtat Billingsgate. But to Bruntsea itself the great glory of that streetwas rather of hope than of memory. Bailiff Hopkins had taken outthree latticed windows, and put in one grand one of plate-glass, with"finishing" blinds all varnished. And even on a Sunday morning Bruntseawanted to know what ever the bailiff was at behind them. Some said thathe did all his pickling on a Sunday; and by putting up "spectacle glass"he had challenged the oldest inhabitant to come and try his focus.

  Despite all the rattle and roar of the wind, we went on in churchas usual. The vicar had a stout young curate from Durham, who couldoutshout any tempest, with a good stone wall between them; and theBruntsea folk were of thicker constitution than to care an old hat forthe weather. Whatever was "sent by the Lord" they took with a grumble,but no excitement. The clock in front of the gallery told the timeof the day as five minutes to twelve, when the vicar, a pleasantold-fashioned man, pronounced his text, which he always did thrice overto make us sure of it. And then he hitched up his old black gown, anddirected his gaze at the lord of the manor, to impress the whole churchwith authority. Major Hockin acknowledged in a proper manner thiscourtesy of the minister by rubbing up his crest, and looking even morewide-awake than usual; whereas Aunt Mary, whose kind heart longed tosee her own son in that pulpit, calmly settled back her shoulders, andarranged her head and eyes so well as to seem at a distance in raptattention, while having a nice little dream of her own. But suddenly allwas broken up. The sexton (whose license as warden of the church, andeven whose duty it was to hear the sermon only fitfully, from the towerarch, where he watched the boys, and sniffed the bakehouse of his owndinner)--to the consternation of every body, this faithful man ran upthe nave, with his hands above his head, and shouted,

  "All Brownzee be awash, awash"--sounding it so as to rhyme with"lash"--"the zea, the zea be all over us!"

  The clergyman in the pulpit turned and looked through a window behindhim, while all the congregation rose.

  "It is too true," the preacher cried; "the sea is in over the bank, myfriends. Every man must rush to his own home. The blessing of the Lordbe on you through His fearful visitation!"

  He had no time to say more; and we thought it very brave of him to saythat, for his own house was in the lower village, and there he had awife and children sick. In half a minute the church was empty, and thestreet below it full of people, striving and struggling against theblast, and breasting it at an incline like swimmers, but beaten backever and anon and hurled against one another, with tattered umbrellas,hats gone, and bonnets hanging. And among them, like gulls before thewind, blew dollops of spray and chunks of froth, with every now and thena slate or pantile.

  All this was so bad that scarcely any body found power to speak, orthink, or see. The Major did his very best to lead us, but could by nomeans manage it. And I screamed into his soundest ear to pull Aunt Maryinto some dry house--for she could not face such buffeting--and to letme fare for myself as I might. So we left Mrs. Hockin in the bailiff'shouse, though she wanted sadly to come with us, and on we went to beholdthe worst. And thus, by running the byes of the wind, and craftilyhugging the corners, we got to the foot of the street at last, and thencould go no further.

  For here was the very sea itself, with furious billows panting. Beforeus rolled and ran a fearful surf of crested whiteness, torn by thescreeching squalls, and tossed in clashing tufts and pinnacles. Andinto these came, sweeping over the shattered chine of shingle, giganticsurges from the outer deep, towering as they crossed the bar, andcombing against the sky-line, then rushing onward, and driving thehuddle of the ponded waves before them.

  The tide was yet rising, and at every blow the wreck and the havoc grewworse and worse. That long sweep of brick-work, the "Grand Promenade,"bowed and bulged, with wall and window knuckled in and out, likewattles; the "Sea Parade" was a parade of sea; and a bathing-machinewheels upward lay, like a wrecked Noah's Ark, on the top of the"Saline-Silico-Calcareous Baths."

  The Major stood by me, while all his constructions "went by the board,"as they say at sea; and verily every thing was at sea. I grieved for himso that it was not the spray alone that put salt drops on my cheeks. AndI could not bear to turn and look at his good old weather-beaten face.But he was not the man to brood upon his woes in silence. He might haveused nicer language, perhaps, but his inner sense was manful.

  "I don't care a damn," he shouted, so that all the women heard him. "Ican only say I am devilish glad that I never let one of those houses."

  There was a little band of seamen, under the shelter of a garden wall,crouching, or sitting, or standing (or whatever may be the attitude,acquired by much voyaging and experience of bad weather, which can notbe solved, as to centre of gravity, even by the man who does it), andthese men were so taken with the Major's manifesto, clinched at once andclarified to them by strong, short language, that they gave him a loud"hurrah," which flew on the wings of the wind over house-tops. So queerand sound is English feeling that now Major Hockin became in truth whathitherto he was in title only--the lord and master of Bruntsea.

  "A boat! a boat!" he called out again. "We know not who are drowning.The bank still breaks the waves; a stout boat surely could live insideit."

  "Yes, a boat could live well enough in this cockle, though never amongthem breakers," old Barnes, the fisherman, answered, who used to take usout for whiting; "but Lord bless your honor, all the boats are thumpedto pieces, except yonner one, an
d who can get at her?"

  Before restoring his hands to their proper dwelling-place--hispockets--he jerked his thumb toward a long white boat, which we had notseen through the blinding scud. Bereft of its brethren, or sisters--forall fluctuating things are feminine--that boat survived, in virtue ofstanding a few feet higher than the rest. But even so, and mountedon the last hump of the pebble ridge, it was rolling and reeling withstress of the wind and the wash of wild water under it.

  "How nobly our Lyceum stands!" the Major shouted, for any thing lessthan a shout was dumb. "This is the time to try institutions. I am proudof my foundations."

  In answer to his words appeared a huge brown surge, a mountain ridge,seething backward at the crest with the spread and weight of onset.This great wave smote all other waves away, or else embodied them, andgathered its height against the poor worn pebble bank, and descended.A roar distinct above the universal roar proclaimed it; a crash ofconflict shook the earth, and the shattered bank was swallowed in aworld of leaping whiteness. When this wild mass dashed onward into theswelling flood before us, there was no sign of Lyceum left, but stubs offoundation, and a mangled roof rolling over and over, like a hen-coop.

  "Well, that beats every thing I ever saw," exclaimed the gallant Major."What noble timber! What mortise-work! No London scamping there, mylads. But what comes here? Why, the very thing we wanted! Barnes, lookalive, my man. Run to your house, and get a pair of oars and a bucket."

  It was the boat, the last surviving boat of all that hailed fromBruntsea. That monstrous billow had tossed it up like a school-boy'skite, and dropped it whole, with an upright keel, in the inland sea,though nearly half full of water. Driven on by wind and wave, it laboredheavily toward us; and more than once it seemed certain to sink as itbroached to and shipped seas again. But half a dozen bold fishermenrushed with a rope into the short angry surf--to which the polledshingle bank still acted as a powerful breakwater, else all Bruntsea hadcollapsed--and they hauled up the boat with a hearty cheer, and ran herup straight with, "Yo--heave--oh!" and turned her on her side to drain,and then launched her again, with a bucket and a man to bail out therest of the water, and a pair of heavy oars brought down by Barnes, andnobody knows what other things.

  "Naught to steer with. Rudder gone!" cried one of the men, as thefurious gale drove the boat, athwart the street, back again.

  "Wants another oar," said Barnes. "What a fool I were to bring onlytwo!"

  "Here you are!" shouted Major Hockin. "One of you help me to pull upthis pole."

  Through a shattered gate they waded into a little garden, which had beenthe pride of the season at Bruntsea; and there from the ground they toreup a pole, with a board at the top nailed across it, and the followingnot rare legend: "Lodgings to let. Inquire within. First floor front,and back parlors."

  "Fust-rate thing to steer with! Would never have believed you had thesense!" So shouted Barnes--a rough man, roughened by the stress of stormand fright. "Get into starn-sheets if so liketh. Ye know, ye may beuseful."

  "I defy you to push off without my sanction. Useful, indeed! I am thecaptain of this boat. All the ground under it is mine. Did you think,you set of salted radicals, that I meant to let you go without me? Andall among my own houses!"

  "Look sharp, governor, if you has the pluck, then. Mind, we are morelike to be swamped than not."

  As the boat swung about, Major Hockin jumped in, and so, on the spur ofthe moment, did I. We staggered all about with the heave and roll,and both would have fallen on the planks, or out over, if we had nottumbled, with opposite impetus, into the arms of each other. Then agreat wave burst and soaked us both, and we fell into sitting on aslippery seat.

  Meanwhile two men were tugging at each oar, and Barnes himself steeringwith the sign-board; and the head of the boat was kept against thewind and the billows from our breakwater. Some of these seemed resolved(though shorn of depth and height in crossing) to rush all over us anddrown us in the washer-women's drying ground. By skill and presenceof mind, our captain, Barnes, foiled all their violence, till we got alittle shelter from the ruins of the "Young Men's Christian Institute."

  "Hold all!" cried Barnes; "only keep her head up, while I look aboutwhat there is to do."

  The sight was a thing to remember; and being on the better side now ofthe scud, because it was flying away from us, we could make out a greatdeal more of the trouble which had befallen Bruntsea. The stormy fiordwhich had usurped the ancient track of the river was about a furlong inwidth, and troughed with white waves vaulting over. And the sea rushedthrough at the bottom as well, through scores of yards of pebbles, as itdid in quiet weather even, when the tide was brimming. We in the tossingboat, with her head to the inrush of the outer sea, were just likepeople sitting upon the floats or rafts of a furious weir; and if anysuch surge had topped the ridge as the one which flung our boat to us,there could be no doubt that we must go down as badly as the Major'shouses. However, we hoped for the best, and gazed at the desolationinland.

  Not only the Major's great plan, but all the lower line of old Bruntsea,was knocked to pieces, and lost to knowledge in freaks of wind-lashedwaters. Men and women were running about with favorite bits offurniture, or feather-beds, or babies' cradles, or whatever they hadcaught hold of. The butt ends of the three old streets that led downtoward the sea-ground were dipped, as if playing seesaw in the surf, andthe storm made gangways of them and lighthouses of the lamp-posts. Theold public-house at the corner was down, and the waves leaping in at thepost-office door, and wrecking the globes of the chemist.

  "Drift and dash, and roar and rush, and the devil let loose in the thickof it. My eyes are worn out with it. Take the glass, Erema, and tellus who is next to be washed away. A new set of clothes-props for Mrs.Mangles I paid for the very day I came back from town."

  With these words, the lord of the submarine manor (whose strength ofspirit amazed me) offered his pet binocular, which he never went withoutupon his own domain. And fisherman Barnes, as we rose and fell, oncemore saved us from being "swamped" by his clever way of paddling througha scallop in the stern, with the board about the first floor front tolet.

  The seamen, just keeping way on the boat, sheltered their eyes withtheir left hands, and fixed them on the tumultuous scene.

  I also gazed through the double glass, which was a very clear one; butnone of us saw any human being at present in any peril.

  "Old pilot was right, after all," said one; "but what a good job as itcome o' middle day, and best of all of a Sunday!"

  "I have heered say," replied another, "that the like thing come to passnigh upon three hunder years agone. How did you get your things out, JemBishop?"

  Jem, the only one of them whose house was in the havoc, regarded with asailor's calmness the entry of the sea through his bedroom window, andwas going to favor us with a narrative, when one of his mates exclaimed,

  "What do I see yonner, lads? Away beyond town altogether. Seemeth to melike a fellow swimming. Miss, will you lend me spy-glass? Never seed adouble-barreled one before. Can use him with one eye shut, I s'pose?"

  "No good that way, Joe," cried Barnes, with a wink of superiorknowledge, for he often had used this binocular. "Shut one eye for onebarrel--stands to reason, then, you shut both for two, my son."

  "Stow that," said the quick-eyed sailor, as he brought the glass to bearin a moment. "It is a man in the water, lads, and swimming to save thewitch, I do believe."

  "Bless me!" cried the Major; "how stupid of us! I never thought once ofthat poor woman. She must be washed out long ago. Pull for your lives,my friends. A guinea apiece if you save her."

  "And another from me," I cried. Whereupon the boat swept round, and thetough ash bent, and we rushed into no small danger. For nearly half amile had we to pass of raging and boisterous water, almost as wild asthe open sea itself at the breaches of the pebble ridge. And the risk ofa heavy sea boarding us was fearfully multiplied by having thus to crossthe storm instead of breasting it. Useless and helpless, and
only inthe way, and battered about by wind and sea, so that my Sunday dress wasbecome a drag, what folly, what fatuity, what frenzy, I might call it,could ever have led me to jump into that boat? "I don't know. I onlyknow that I always do it," said my sensible self to its mad sister, asthey both shut their eyes at a great white wave. "If I possibly survive,I will try to know better. But ever from my childhood I am getting intoscrapes."

  The boat labored on, with a good many grunts, but not a word from anyone. More than once we were obliged to fetch up as a great billow toppedthe poor shingle bank; and we took so much water on board that themen said afterward that I saved them. I only remember sitting down andworking at the bucket with both hands, till much of the skin wasgone, and my arms and many other places ached. But what was that to becompared with drowning?

  At length we were opposite "Desolate Hole," which was a hole no longer,but filled and flooded with the churning whirl and reckless dominanceof water. Tufts and tussocks of shattered brush and rolling wreck playedround it, and the old gray stone of mullioned windows split the washlike mooring-posts. We passed and gazed; but the only sound was thewhistling of the tempest, and the only living sight a sea-gull, weary ofhis wings, and drowning.

  "No living creature can be there," the Major broke our long silence."Land, my friends, if land we may. We risk our own lives for nothing."

  The men lay back on their oars to fetch the gallant boat to the windagain, when through a great gap in the ruins they saw a sight thatstartled manhood. At the back of that ruin, on the landward side, on awall which, tottered under them, there were two figures standing. One atall man, urging on, the other a woman shrinking. At a glance, or witha thought, I knew them both. One was Lord Castlewood's first love, theother his son and murderer.

  Our men shouted with the whole power of their hearts to tell thatmiserable pair to wait till succor should be brought to them. And theMajor stood up and waved his hat, and in doing so tumbled back again.I can not tell--how could I tell in the thick of it?--but an idea or aflit of fancy touched me (and afterward became conviction) that whilethe man heard us not at all, and had no knowledge of us, his motherturned round and saw us all, and faced the storm in preference.

  Whatever the cause may have been, at least she suddenly changed herattitude. The man had been pointing to the roof, which threatened tofall in a mass upon them, while she had been shuddering back from thedepth of eddying waves below her. But now she drew up her poor bentfigure, and leaned on her son to obey him.

  Our boat, with strong arms laboring for life, swept round the old gableof the ruin; but we were compelled to "give it wide berth," as CaptainBarnes shouted; and then a black squall of terrific wind and hail burstforth. We bowed our heads and drew our bodies to their tightest compass,and every rib of our boat vibrated as a violin does; and the oars werebeaten flat, and dashed their drip into fringes like a small-toothedcomb.

  That great squall was either a whirlwind or the crowning blast of ahurricane. It beat the high waves hollow, as if it fell from the skyupon them; and it snapped off one of our oars at the hilt, so that twoof our men rolled backward. And when we were able to look about againthe whole roof of "Desolate Hole" was gone, and little of the walls leftstanding. And how we should guide our course, or even save our lives, weknew not.

  We were compelled to bring up--as best we might--with the boat's headto the sea, and so to keep it by using the steering gear against thesurviving oar. As for the people we were come to save, there was nochance whatever of approaching them. Even without the mishap to the oar,we never could have reached them.

  And indeed when first we saw them again they seemed better off thanourselves were. For they were not far from dry land, and the man (askillful and powerful swimmer) had a short piece of plank, which he knewhow to use to support his weak companion.

  "Brave fellow! fine fellow!" the Major cried, little knowing whom he wasadmiring. "See how he keeps up his presence of mind! Such a man as thatis worth any thing. And he cares more for her than he does for himself.He shall have the Society's medal. One more long and strong stroke, mynoble friend. Oh, great God! what has befallen him?"

  In horror and pity we gazed. The man had been dashed against somethingheadlong. He whirled round and round in white water, his legs werethrown up, and we saw no more of him. The woman cast off the plank, andtossed her helpless arms in search of him. A shriek, ringing far onthe billowy shore, declared that she had lost him; and then, without astruggle, she clasped her hands, and the merciless water swallowed her.

  "It is all over," cried Major Hockin, lifting his drenched hat solemnly."The Lord knoweth best. He has taken them home."