In Garstin’s quarters, within the coastguard enclosure, I was introduced to his wife and the lad, Leopold. “What shall we call him?” Mrs. Garstin had asked, some fifteen years before. “I don’t know any seafaring man by the name of Leopold,” Garstin had replied, after a moment of reflection. So Leopold he was named.
Mrs. Garstin was a buxom, unimaginative woman, but she shared to the full her husband’s horror of the sea. She told me of nights when she lay alone listening to the moan of the wind overhead, and seeing the column of the Bishop rock upon its base, and of mornings when she climbed from the sheltered barracks up the gorse, with her heart tugging in her breast, certain, certain that this morning, at least, there would be no Bishop lighthouse visible from the top of the garrison.
“It seems a sort of insult to the works of God,” said she, in a hushed voice. “It seems as if it stood up there in God’s face and cried, ‘You can’t hurt me!’”
“Yes, most presumptuous and provoking,” said Garstin; and so they fell to talking of the boy, who, at all events, should fulfil his destiny very far inland from the sea. Mrs. Garstin leaned to the linen-drapery; Garstin inclined to the free library.
“Well, I will come down to the North Foreland,” said I, “and you shall tell me which way it is.”
“Yes, if—” said Garstin, and stopped.
“Yes, if—” repeated his wife, with a nod of the head.
“Oh! it won’t go this winter,” said I.
And it didn’t. But, on the other hand, Garstin did not go to the North Foreland, nor for two years did I hear any more of him. But two years later I returned to St. Mary’s and walked across the beach of the island to the little graveyard by the sea. A new tablet upon the outer wall of the church caught and held my eye. I read the inscription and remained incredulous. For the Bishop still stood. But the letters were there engraved upon the plate, and as I read them again, the futility of Garstin’s fears was enforced upon me with a singular pathos.
For the Bishop still stood and Garstin had died on the Christmas Eve of that last year which he was to spend upon rock lighthouses. Of how he died the tablet gave a hint, but no more than a hint. There were four words inscribed underneath his name:
“And he was not.”
I walked back to Hugh Town, wondering at the tragedy which those four words half hid and half revealed, and remembering that the tide runs seven miles an hour past the Bishop, with many eddies and whirlpools. Almost unconsciously I went up the hill above Hugh Town and came to the signal station on the top of the garrison. And so occupied was I with my recollections of Garstin that it did not strike me as strange that I should find Mrs. Garstin standing now where he had stood and looking out to the Bishop as he was used to look.
“I had not heard,” I said to her.
“No?” she returned simply, and again turned her eyes seawards. It was late on a midsummer afternoon. The sun hung a foot or so above the water, a huge ball of dull red fire, and from St. Mary’s out to the horizon’s rim the sea stretched a rippling lagoon of the colour of claret. Over the whole expanse there was but one boat visible, a lugger, between Sennen and St. Agnes, beating homewards against a light wind.
“It was a storm, I suppose,” said I. “A storm out of the west?”
“No. There was no wind, but — there was a haze, and it was growing dark.” Mrs. Garstin spoke in a peculiar tone of resignation, with a yearning glance towards the Bishop as I thought, towards the lugger as I know. But even then I was sure that those last words: “There was a haze and it was growing dark,” concealed the heart of her distress. She explained the inscription upon the tablet, while the lugger tacked towards St. Mary’s, and while I gradually began to wonder what still kept her on the island.
At four o’clock on the afternoon of that Christmas Eve, the lighthouse on St. Agnes’ Island showed its lamps; five minutes later the red beams struck out from Round Island to the north; but to the west on the Bishop all was dark. The haze thickened, and night came on; still there was no flash from the Bishop, and the islands wondered. Half an hour passed; there was still darkness in the west, and the islands became alarmed. The Trinity Brethren subsidise a St. Agnes’ lugger to serve the Bishop, and this boat was got ready. At a quarter to five suddenly the Bishop light shot through the gloom, but immediately after a shutter was interposed quickly some half-a-dozen times. It was the signal of distress, and the lugger worked out to the Bishop with the tide. Of the three keepers there were now only two.
It appeared from their account that Garstin took the middle day watch, that they themselves were asleep, and that Garstin should have roused them to light the lamps at a quarter to four. They woke of their own accord in the dark, and at once believed they had slept into the night. The clock showed them it was half-past four. They mounted to the lantern room, and nowhere was there any sign of Garstin. They lit the lamps. The first thing they saw was the log. It was open and the last entry was written in Garstin’s hand and was timed 3.40 P.M. It mentioned a ketch reaching northwards. The two men descended the winding-stairs, and the cold air breathed upon their faces. The brass door at the foot of the stairs stood open. From that door thirty feet of gun-metal rungs let in to the outside of the lighthouse lead down to the set-off, which is a granite rim less than a yard wide, and unprotected by any rail. They shouted downwards from the doorway, and received no answer. They descended to the set-off, and again no Garstin, not even his cap. He was not.
Garstin had entered up the log, had climbed down to the set-off for five minutes of fresh air, and somehow had slipped, though the wind was light and the sea whispering. But the whispering sea ran seven miles an hour past the Bishop.
This was Mrs. Garstin’s story and it left me still wondering why she lived on at St. Mary’s. I asked after her son.
“How is Leopold? What is he — a linen-draper?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and said:
“That’s the St. Agnes’ lugger from the Bishop, and if we go down to the pier now we shall meet it.”
We walked down to the pier. The first person to step on shore was
Leopold, with the Trinity House buttons on his pilot coat.
“He’s the third hand on the Bishop now,” said Mrs. Garstin. “You are surprised?” She sent Leopold into Hugh Town upon an errand, and as we walked back up the hill she said: “Did you notice a grave underneath John’s tablet?”
“No,” said I.
“I told you there was a mention in the log of a ketch.”
“Yes.”
“The ketch went ashore on the Crebinachs at half-past four on that Christmas Eve. One man jumped for the rocks when the ketch struck, and was drowned. The rest were brought off by the lugger. But one man was drowned.”
“He drowned because he jumped,” said I.
“He drowned because my man hadn’t lit the Bishop light,” said she, brushing my sophistry aside. “So I gave my boy in his place.”
And now I knew why those words— “There was a haze and it was growing dark” — held the heart of her distress.
“And if the Bishop goes next winter,” she continued, “why, it will just be a life for a life;” and she choked down a sob as a young voice hailed us from behind.
But the Bishop still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the North Foreland lights.
THE CRUISE OF THE “WILLING MIND.”
THE CRUISE HAPPENED before the steam-trawler ousted the smack from the North Sea. A few newspapers recorded it in half-a-dozen lines of small print which nobody read. But it became and — though nowadays the Willing Mind rots from month to month by the quay — remains staple talk at Gorleston ale-houses on winter nights.
The crew consisted of Weeks, three fairly competent hands, and a baker’s assistant, when the Willing Mind slipped out of Yarmouth. Alexander Duncan, the photographer from Derby, joined the smack afterwards under peculiar circumstances. Duncan was a timid person, but aware of his
timidity. He was quite clear that his paramount business was to be a man; and he was equally clear that he was not successful in his paramount business. Meanwhile he pretended to be, hoping that on some miraculous day a sudden test would prove the straw man he was to have become real flesh and blood. A visit to a surgeon and the flick of a knife quite shattered that illusion. He went down to Yarmouth afterwards, fairly disheartened. The test had been applied, and he had failed.
Now, Weeks was a particular friend of Duncan’s. They had chummed together on Gorleston Quay some years before, perhaps because they were so dissimilar. Weeks had taught Duncan to sail a boat, and had once or twice taken him for a short trip on his smack; so that the first thing that Duncan did on his arrival at Yarmouth was to take the tram to Gorleston and to make inquiries.
A fisherman lounging against a winch replied to them —
“If Weeks is a friend o’ yours I should get used to missin’ ’im, as I tell his wife.”
There was at that time an ingenious system by which the skipper might buy his smack from the owner on the instalment plan — as people buy their furniture — only with a difference: for people sometimes get their furniture. The instalments had to be completed within a certain period. The skipper could do it — he could just do it; but he couldn’t do it without running up one little bill here for stores, and another little bill there for sail-mending. The owner worked in with the sail-maker, and just as the skipper was putting out to earn his last instalment, he would find the bailiffs on board, his cruise would be delayed, he would be, consequently, behindhand with his instalment and back would go the smack to the owner with a present of four-fifths of its price. Weeks had to pay two hundred pounds, and had eight weeks to earn it in. But he got the straight tip that his sail-maker would stop him; and getting together any sort of crew he could, he slipped out at night with half his stores.
“Now the No’th Sea,” concluded the fisherman, “in November and
December ain’t a bobby’s job.”
Duncan walked forward to the pier-head. He looked out at a grey tumbled sky shutting down on a grey tumbled sea. There were flecks of white cloud in the sky, flecks of white breakers on the sea, and it was all most dreary. He stood at the end of the jetty, and his great possibility came out of the grey to him. Weeks was shorthanded. Cribbed within a few feet of the smack’s deck, there would be no chance for any man to shirk. Duncan acted on the impulse. He bought a fisherman’s outfit at Gorleston, travelled up to London, got a passage the next morning on a Billingsgate fish-carrier, and that night went throbbing down the great water street of the Swim, past the green globes of the Mouse. The four flashes of the Outer Gabbard winked him good-bye away on the starboard, and at eleven o’clock the next night far out in the North Sea he saw the little city of lights swinging on the Dogger.
The Willing Mind’s boat came aboard the next morning and Captain Weeks with it, who smiled grimly while Duncan explained how he had learnt that the smack was shorthanded.
“I can’t put you ashore in Denmark,” said Weeks knowingly. “There’ll be seven weeks, it’s true, for things to blow over; but I’ll have to take you back to Yarmouth. And I can’t afford a passenger. If you come, you come as a hand. I mean to own my smack at the end of this voyage.”
Duncan climbed after him into the boat. The Willing Mind had now six for her crew, Weeks; his son Willie, a lad of sixteen; Upton, the first hand; Deakin, the decky; Rall, the baker’s assistant, and Alexander Duncan. And of these six four were almost competent. Deakin, it is true, was making his second voyage; but Willie Weeks, though young, had begun early; and Upton, a man of forty, knew the banks and currents of the North Sea as well as Weeks.
“It’s all right,” said the skipper, “if the weather holds.” And for a month the weather did hold, and the catches were good, and Duncan learned a great deal. He learnt how to keep a night-watch from midnight till eight in the morning, and then stay on deck till noon; how to put his tiller up and down when his tiller was a wheel, and how to vary the order according as his skipper stood to windward or to lee; he learnt to box a compass and to steer by it; to gauge the leeway he was making by the angle of his wake and the black line in the compass; above all, he learnt to love the boat like a live thing, as a man loves his horse, and to want every scanty inch of brass on her to shine.
But it was not for this that Duncan had come out to sea. He gazed out at night across the rippling starlit water, and the smacks nestling upon it, and asked of his God: “Is this all?” And his God answered him.
The beginning of it was the sudden looming of ships upon the horizon, very clear, till they looked like carved toys. The skipper got out his accounts and totted up his catches, and the prices they had fetched in Billingsgate Market. Then he went on deck and watched the sun set. There were no cloud-banks in the west, and he shook his head.
“It’ll blow a bit from the east before morning,” said he, and he tapped on the barometer. Then he returned to his accounts and added them up again. After a little he looked up, and saw the first hand watching him with comprehension.
“Two or three really good hauls would do the trick,” suggested Weeks.
The first hand nodded. “If it was my boat I should chance it to-morrow before the weather blows up.”
Weeks drummed his fists on the table and agreed.
On the morrow the Admiral headed north for the Great Fisher Bank, and the fleet followed, with the exception of the Willing Mind. The Willing Mind lagged along in the rear without her topsails till about half-past two in the afternoon, when Captain Weeks became suddenly alert. He bore away till he was right before the wind, hoisted every scrap of sail he could carry, rigged out a spinnaker with his balloon fore-sail, and made a clean run for the coast of Denmark. Deakin explained the manoeuvre to Duncan. “The old man’s goin’ poachin’. He’s after soles.”
“Keep a look-out, lads!” cried Weeks. “It’s not the Danish gun-boat I’m afraid of; it’s the fatherly English cruiser a-turning of us back.”
Darkness, however, found them unmolested. They crossed the three-mile limit at eight o’clock, and crept close in under the Danish headlands without a glimmer of light showing.
“I want all hands all night,” said Weeks; “and there’s a couple of pounds for him as first see the bogey-man.”
“Meaning the Danish gun-boat,” explained Deakin.
The trawl was down before nine. The skipper stood by his lead. Upton took the wheel, and all night they trawled in the shallows, bumping on the grounds, with a sharp eye for the Danish gun-boat. They hauled in at twelve and again at three and again at six, and they had just got their last catch on deck when Duncan saw by the first grey of the morning a dun-coloured trail of smoke hanging over a projecting knoll.
“There she is!” he cried.
“Yes, that’s the gun-boat,” answered Weeks. “We can laugh at her with this wind.”
He put his smack about, and before the gun-boat puffed round the headland, three miles away, was reaching northwards with his sails free. He rejoined the fleet that afternoon. “Fifty-two boxes of soles!” said Weeks. “And every one of them worth two-pound-ten in Billingsgate Market. This smack’s mine!” and he stamped on the deck in all the pride of ownership. “We’ll take a reef in,” he added. “There’s a no’th-easterly gale blowin’ up and I don’t know anything worse in the No’th Sea. The sea piles in upon you from Newfoundland, piles in till it strikes the banks. Then it breaks. You were right, Upton; we’ll be lying hove-to in the morning.”
They were lying hove-to before the morning. Duncan, tossing about in his canvas cot, heard the skipper stamping overhead, and in an interval of the wind caught a snatch of song bawled out in a high voice. The song was not reassuring, for the two lines which Duncan caught ran as follows —
You never can tell when your death-bells are ringing,
Your never can know when you’re going to die.
Duncan tumbled on to the floor, fell about the cabin as
he pulled on his sea-boots and climbed up the companion. He clung to the mizzen-runners in a night of extraordinary blackness. To port and to starboard the lights of the smacks rose on the crests and sank in the troughs, with such violence they had the air of being tossed up into the sky and then extinguished in the water; while all round him there flashed little points of white which suddenly lengthened out into a horizontal line. There was one quite close to the quarter of the Willing Mind. It stretched about the height of the gaff in a line of white. The line suddenly descended towards him and became a sheet; and then a voice bawled, “Water! Jump! Down the companion! Jump!”
There was a scamper of heavy boots, and a roar of water plunging over the bulwarks, as though so many loads of wood had been dropped on the deck. Duncan jumped for the cabin. Weeks and the mate jumped the next second and the water sluiced down after them, put out the fire, and washed them, choking and wrestling, about on the cabin floor. Weeks was the first to disentangle himself, and he turned fiercely on Duncan.
“What were you doing on deck? Upton and I keep the watch to-night. You stay below, and, by God, I’ll see you do it! I have fifty-two boxes of soles to put aboard the fish-cutter in the morning, and I’m not going to lose lives before I do that! This smack’s mine!”
Captain Weeks was transformed into a savage animal fighting for his own. All night he and the mate stood on the deck and plunged down the open companion with a torrent of water to hurry them. All night Duncan lay in his bunk listening to the bellowing of the wind, the great thuds of solid green wave on the deck, the horrid rush and roaring of the seas as they broke loose to leeward from under the smack’s keel. And he listened to something more — the whimpering of the baker’s assistant in the next bunk. “Three inches of deck! What’s the use of it! Lord ha’ mercy on me, what’s the use of it? No more than an eggshell! We’ll be broken in afore morning, broken in like a man’s skull under a bludgeon…. I’m no sailor, I’m not; I’m a baker. It isn’t right I should die at sea!”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 767