by Bram Stoker
‘Father! It’s me — Maggie! Dinna show a licht, but try to throw me a rope.’
With a shout in which were mingled many strong feelings, her father leaned over the bulwark, and, with seaman’s instinct of instant action, threw her a rope. She deftly caught it, and, making it fast to the bows of her boat, dropped her sail. Then someone threw her another rope, which she fastened round her waist. She threw herself into the sea, and, holding tight to the rope, was shortly pulled breathless on board the Sea Gull.
She was instantly the centre of a ring of men. Not only were her father and two brothers on board, but there were no less than six men, seemingly foreigners, in the group.
‘Maggie!’ said her father, ‘in God’s name, lass, hoo cam ye oot here? Were ye overta’en by the storm? God be thankit that ye met us, for this is a wild nicht to be oot on the North Sea by yer lanes.’
‘Father!’ said she, in a hurried whisper in his ear. ‘I must speak wi’ ye alane. There isna a moment to lose!’
‘Speak on, lass.’
‘No’ before these strangers, father. I must speak alane!’ Without a word, MacWhirter took his daughter aside, and, amid a muttered dissatisfaction of the strange men, signed to her to proceed. Then, as briefly as she could, Maggie told her father that it was known that a cargo was to be run that night, that the coastguard all along Buchan had been warned, and that she had come out to tell him of his danger.
As she spoke the old man groaned, and after a pause said: ‘I maun tell the rest. I’m no’ the maister here the noo. Mendoza has me in his grip, an’ his men rule here!’
‘But, father, the boat is yours, and the risk is yours. It is you’ll be punished if there is a discovery!’
‘That may be, lass, but I’m no’ free.’
‘I feared it was true, father, but I thocht it my duty to come!’ Doubtless the old man knew that Maggie would understand fully what he meant, but the only recognition he made of her act of heroism was to lay his hand heavily on her shoulder. Then stepping forward he called the men round him, and in his own rough way told them of the danger. The strangers muttered and scowled; but Andrew and Neil drew close to their sister, and the younger man put his arm around her and pressed her to him. Maggie felt the comfort of the kindness, and laying her head on her brother’s shoulder, cried quietly in the darkness. It was a relief to her pent-up feelings to be able to give way if only so far. When MacWhirter brought his tale to a close, and asked: ‘And now, lads, what’s to be done?’ one of the strangers, a brawny, heavily-built man, spoke out harshly:
‘But for why this? Was it not that this woman’s lover was of the guard? In this affair the women must do their best too. This lover of the guard — ’ He was hotly interrupted by Neil:
‘Tisna the part of Maggie to tak a hand in this at a’.’
‘But I say it is the part of all. When Mendoza bought this man he bought all — unless there be traitors in his house!’ This roused Maggie, who spoke out quickly, for she feared that her brother’s passion might brew trouble:
‘I hae nae part in this dreadfu’ affair. It’s no’ by ma wish or ma aid that father has embarked in this — this enterprise. I hae naught to dae wi ‘t o’ ony kind.’
‘Then for why are you here?’ asked the burly man, with a coarse laugh.
‘Because ma father and ma brithers are in danger, danger into which they hae been led, or been forced, by ye and the like o’ ye. Do ye think it was for pleasure, or, O my God! for profit either, that I cam oot this nicht — an’ in that?’ and as she spoke she pointed to where the little boat strained madly at the rope which held her. Then MacWhirter spoke out fiercely, so fiercely that the lesser spirits who opposed him were cowed:
‘Leave the lass alane, I say! Yon’s nane o’her doin’; and if ye be men ye’d honour her that cam oot in sic a tempest for the sake o’ the likes o’ me — o’ us’
But when the strangers were silent, Neil, whose passion had been aroused, could not be quieted, and spoke out with a growing fury which seemed to choke him:
‘So Sailor Willy told ye the danger and then let ye come oot in this nicht! He’ll hae to reckon wi’ me for that when we get in.’
‘He telt me naething. I saw Bella Cruickshank gie him the telegram, and I guessed. He doesna ken I’m here — and he maun never ken. Nane must ever ken that a warning cam the nicht to father!’
‘But they’ll watch for us comm in.’
‘We maun rin back to Cuxhaven,’ said the quiet voice of Andrew, who had not yet spoken.
‘But ye canna,’ said Maggie; ‘the revenue cutter is on the watch, and when the mornin’ comes will follow ye; and besides, hoo can ye get to Cuxhaven in this wind?’
‘Then what are we to dae, lass?’ said her father.
‘Dae, father? Dae what ye should dae — throw a’ this poisonous stuff that has brought this ruin owerboard. Lichten yer boat as ye will lichten yer conscience, and come hame as ye went oot!’
The burly man swore a great oath.
‘Nothing overboard shall be thrown. These belongs not to you but to Mendoza. If they be touched he closes on your boat and ruin it is for you!’ Maggie saw her father hesitate, and feared that other counsels might prevail, so she spoke out as by an inspiration. There, amid the surges of the perilous seas, the daughter’s heroic devotion and her passionate earnestness made a new calm in her father’s life:
‘Father, dinna be deceived. Wi’ this wind onshore, an’ the revenue cutter ootside an’ the dawn no’ far off ye canna escape. Noo in the darkness ye can get rid o’ the danger. Dinna lose a moment. The storm is somewhat lesser just enoo. Throw a’ owerboard and come back to yer old self! What if we be ruined? We can work; and shall a’ be happy yet!’
Something seemed to rise in the old man’s heart and give him strength. Without pause he said with a grand simplicity:
‘Ye’re reet, lass, ye’re reet! Haud up the casks, men, and stave them in!’
Andrew and Neil rushed to his bidding. Mendoza’s men protested, but were afraid to interfere, and one after another bales and casks were lifted on deck. The bales were tossed overboard and the heads of the casks stove in till the scuppers were alternately drenched with brandy and washed with the seas.
In the midst of this, Maggie, knowing that if all were to be of any use she must be found at home in the morning, quietly pulled her boat as close as she dared, and slipping down the rope managed to clamber into it. Then she loosed the painter; and the wind and waves took her each instant farther and farther away. The sky over the horizon was brightening every instant, and there was a wild fear in her heart which not even the dull thud of the hammers as the casks were staved in could allay. She felt that it was a race against time, and her over-excited imagination multiplied her natural fear; her boat’s head was to home, steering for where she guessed was the dim light on the cliff, towards which her heart yearned. She hauled the sheets close — as close as she dared, for now speed was everything if she was to get back unseen. Well she knew that Sailor Willy on his lonely vigil would be true to his trust, and that his eagle eye could not fail to note her entry when once the day had broken. In a fever of anxiety she kept her eye on the Girdleness light by which she had to steer, and with the rise and fall of every wave as she swept by them, threw the boat’s head a point to the wind and let it fall away again.
The storm had nearly spent itself, but there were still angry moments when the mist was swept in masses before fresh gusts. These, however, were fewer and fewer, and in a little while she ceased to heed them or even to look for them, and at last her eager eye began to discern through the storm the flickering lights of the little port. There came a moment when the tempest poured out the lees of its wrath in one final burst of energy, which wrapped the flying boat in a wraith of mist.
And then the tempest swept onward, shoreward, with the broken mist showing white in the springing dawn like the wings of some messenger of coming peace.
CHAPTER IV
Matters l
ooked serious enough on the Sea Gull when the time came in which rather the darkness began to disappear than the light to appear. Night and day have their own mysteries, and their nascence is as distant and as mysterious as the origin of life. The sky and the waters still seemed black, and the circle in which the little craft lived was as narrow as ever; but here and there in sky and on sea were faint streaks perceptible rather than distinguishable, as though swept thither by the trumpet blast of the messenger of the dawn.
Mendoza’s men did not stint their curses nor their threats, and Neil with passionate violence so assailed them in return that both MacWhirter and Andrew had to exercise their powers of restraint. But blood is hot, and the lives of lawless men are prone to make violence a habit; the two elder men were anxious that there should be no extension of the present bitter bickering. As for MacWhirter, his mind was in a whirl and tumult of mixed emotions. First came his anxiety for Maggie when she had set forth alone on the stormy sea with such inadequate equipment. Well the old fisherman knew the perils that lay before her in her effort to win the shore, and his heart was positively sick with anxiety when every effort of thought or imagination concerning her ended in something like despair. In one way he was happier than he had been for many months; the impending blow had fallen, and though he was ruined it had come in such a time that his criminal intent had not been accomplished. Here again his anxiety regarding Maggie became intensified, for was it not to save him that she had set forth on her desperate enterprise. He groaned aloud as he thought of the price that he might yet have to pay — that he might have paid already, though he knew it not as yet — for the service which had saved him from the after-consequences of his sin. He dared not think more on the subject, for it would, he feared, madden him, and he must have other work to engross his thoughts. Thus it was that the danger of collision between Neil and Mendoza’s men became an anodyne to his pain. He knew that a quarrel among seamen and under such conditions would be no idle thing, for they had all their knives, and with such hot blood on all sides none would hesitate to use them. The whole of the smuggled goods had by now been thrown overboard, the tobacco having gone the last, the bales having been broken up. So heavy had been the cargo that there was a new danger in that the boat was too much lightened. As Mendoza had intended that force as well as fraud was to aid this venture he had not stuck at trifles. There was no pretence of concealment and even the ballast had made way for cask and box and bale. The Sea Gull had been only partially loaded at Hamburg, but when out of sight of port her cargo had been completed from other boats which had followed, till, when she started for Buchan, she was almost a solid mass of contraband goods. Mendoza’s men felt desperate at this hopeless failure of the venture; and as Neil, too, was desperate, in a different way, there was a grim possibility of trouble on board at any minute.
The coming of the dawn was therefore a welcome relief, for it united — if only for a time — all on board to try to avert a common danger.
Lighter and lighter grew the expanse of sea and sky, until over the universe seemed to spread a cool, pearly grey, against which every object seemed to stand starkly out. The smugglers were keenly on the watch, and they saw, growing more clearly each instant out of the darkness, the black, low-lying hull, short funnel, and tapering spars of the revenue cutter about three or four miles off the starboard quarter. The preventive men seemed to see them at the same time, for there was a manifest stir on board, and the cutter’s head was changed. Then MacWhirter knew it was necessary to take some bold course of action, for the Sea Gull lay between two fires, and he made up his mind to run then and there for Port Erroll.
As the Sea Gull drew nearer in to shore the waves became more turbulent, for there is ever a more ordered succession in deep waters than where the onward rush is broken by the undulations of the shore. Minute by minute the dawn was growing brighter and the shore was opening up. The Sea Gull, lightened of her load, could not with safety be thrown across the wind, and so the difficulty of her tacks was increased. The dawn was just shooting its first rays over the eastern sea when the final effort to win the little port came to be made.
The harbour of Port Erroll is a tiny haven of refuge won from the jagged rocks that bound the eastern side of Cruden Bay. It is sheltered on the northern side by the cliff which runs as far as the Watter’s Mou’, and separated from the mouth of the Water of Cruden, with its waste of shifting sands, by a high wall of concrete. The harbour faces east, and its first basin is the smaller of the two, the larger opening sharply to the left a little way in. At the best of times it is not an easy matter to gain the harbour, for only when the tide has fairly risen is it available at all, and the rapid tide which runs up from the Scaurs makes in itself a difficulty at such times. The tide was now at three-quarters flood, so that in as far as water was concerned there was no difficulty; but the fierceness of the waves which sent up a wall of white water all along the cliffs looked ominous indeed.
As the Sea Gull drew nearer to the shore, considerable commotion was caused on both sea and land. The revenue cutter dared not approach so close to the shore, studded as it was with sunken rocks, as did the lighter draughted coble; but her commander evidently did not mean to let this be to the advantage of the smuggler. A gun was fired to attract the authorities on shore, and signals were got ready to hoist.
The crowd of strangers who thronged the little port had instinctively hidden themselves behind rock and wall and boat, as the revelation of the dawn came upon them, so that the whole place presented the appearance of a warren when the rabbits are beginning to emerge after a temporary scare. There were not wanting, however, many who stood out in the open, affecting, with what nonchalance they could, a simple business interest at the little port. Sailor Willy was on the cliff between the guard-house and the Watter’s Mou’, where he had kept his vigil all the night long. As soon as possible after he had sent out his appeal for help the lieutenant had come over from Collieston with a boatman and three men, and these were now down on the quay waiting for the coming of the Sea Gull. When he had arrived, and had learned the state of things, the lieutenant, who knew of Willy Barrow’s relations with the daughter of the suspected man, had kindly ordered him to watch the cliff, whilst he himself with the men would look after the port. When he had first given the order in the presence of the other coastguards, Willy had instinctively drawn himself up as though he felt that he, too, had come under suspicion, so the lieutenant took the earliest opportunity when they were alone of saying to Willy:
‘Barrow, I have arranged your duties as I have done, not by any means because I suspect that you would be drawn by your sympathies into any neglect of duty — I know you too well for that — but simply because I want to spare you pain in case things may be as we suspect!’
Willy saluted and thanked him with his eyes as he turned away, for he feared that the fullness of his heart might betray him. The poor fellow was much overwrought. All night long he had paced the cliffs in the dull routine of his duty, with his heart feeling like a lump of lead, and his brain on fire with fear. He knew from the wildness of Maggie’s rush away from him that she was bent on some desperate enterprise, and as he had no clue to her definite intentions he could only imagine. He thought and thought until his brain almost began to reel with the intensity of his mental effort; and as he was so placed, tied to the stake of his duty, that he could speak with no one on the subject, he had to endure alone, and in doubt, the darkness of his soul, tortured alike by hopes and fears, through all the long night. At last, however, the pain exhausted itself, and doubt became its own anodyne. Despair has its calms — the backwaters of fears — where the tired imagination may rest awhile before the strife begins anew.
With joy he saw that the storm was slackening with the coming of the dawn; and when the last fierce gust had swept by him, screaming through the rigging of the flagstaff overhead, and sweeping inland the broken fragments of the mist, he turned to the sea, now of a cool grey with the light of the coming dawn, a
nd swept it far and wide with his glass. With gladness — and yet with an ache in his heart which he could not understand — he realised that there was in sight only one coble — the Sea Gull — he knew her well — running for the port, and farther out the hull and smoke, the light spars and swift lines of the revenue cutter, which was evidently following her. He strolled with the appearance of leisureliness, though his heart was throbbing, towards the cliff right over the little harbour, so that he could look down and see from close quarters all that went on. He could not but note the many strangers dispersed about, all within easy distance of a rush to the quay when the boat should land, or the way in which the lieutenant and his men seemed to keep guard over the whole place. At first the figures, the walls of the port, the cranes, the boats, and the distant headlands were silhouetted in black against the background of grey sea and grey sky; but as the dawn came closer each object began to stand out in its natural proportions. All kept growing clearer and yet clearer and more and more thoroughly outlined, till the moment came when the sun, shooting over the horizon, set every living thing whose eyes had been regulated to the strain of the darkness and the twilight blinking and winking in the glory of the full light of day.
Eagerly he searched the faces of the crowd with his glass for Maggie, but he could not see her anywhere, and his heart seemed to sink within him, for well he knew that it must be no ordinary cause which kept Maggie from being one of the earliest on the look-out for her father. Closer and closer came the Sea Gull, running for the port with a speed and recklessness that set both the smugglers and the preventive men all agog. Such haste and such indifference to danger sprang, they felt, from no common cause, and they all came to the conclusion that the boat, delayed by the storm, discovered by the daylight, and cut off by the revenue cutter, was making a desperate push for success in her hazard. And so all, watchers and watched, braced themselves for what might come about. Amongst the groups moved the tall figure of Mendoza, whispering and pointing, but keeping carefully hidden from the sight of the coastguards. He was evidently inciting them to some course from which they held back.