The Coxswain's Bride by Robert Michael Ballantyne (classic books for 7th graders txt) 📖

STORY ONE, CHAPTER 1.


THE RISING TIDE--A TALE OF THE SEA.

The coxswain went by the name of Sturdy Bob among his mates. Among the women of the village he was better known as handsome Bob, and, looking at him, you could not help seeing that both titles were appropriate, for our coxswain was broad and strong as well as good-looking, with that peculiar cast of features and calm decided manner which frequently distinguish the men who are born to lead their fellows.

Robert Massey, though quite young, was already a leader of men--not only by nature but by profession--being coxswain of the Greyton lifeboat, and, truly, the men who followed his lead had need to be made of good stuff, with bold, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing spirits, for he often led them into scenes of wild--but, hold! We must not forecast.

Well, we introduce our hero to the reader on a calm September evening, which blazed with sunshine. The sun need not have been mentioned, however, but for the fact that it converted the head of a fair-haired fisher-girl, seated beside Bob, into a ball of rippling gold, and suffused her young cheeks with a glow that rudely intensified her natural colour.

She was the coxswain's bride-elect, and up to that date the course of their true love had run quite smoothly in spite of adverse proverbs.

"I can't believe my luck," said Bob, gravely.

He said most things gravely, though there was not a man in Greyton who could laugh more heartily than he at a good joke.

"What luck do you mean, Bob?" asked Nellie Carr, lifting her eyes from the net she was mending, and fixing them on the coxswain's bronzed face with an air of charming innocence. Then, becoming suddenly aware of what he meant without being told, she gave vent to a quick little laugh, dropped her eyes on the net, and again became intent on repairs.

"To think," continued Bob, taking two or three draws at his short pipe-- for our hero was not perfect, being, like so many of his class, afflicted with the delusion of tobacco!--"to think that there'll be no Nellie Carr to-morrow afternoon, only a Mrs Massey! The tide o' my life is risin' fast, Nellie--almost at flood now. It seems too good to be true--"

"Right you are, boy," interrupted a gruff but hearty voice, as a burly fisherman "rolled" round the stern of the boat, in front of which the lovers were seated on the sand. "W'en my Moggie an' me was a-coortin' we thought, an' said, it was too good to be true, an' so it was; leastwise it was too true to be good, for Moggie took me for better an' wuss, though it stood to reason I couldn't be both, d'ee see? an' I soon found her wuss than better, which--"

"Come, come, Joe Slag," cried Bob, "let's have none o' your ill-omened growls to-night. What brings you here?"

"I've comed for the key o' the lifeboat," returned Slag, with a knowing glance at Nellie. "If the glass ain't tellin' lies we may have use for her before long."

Massey pulled the key from his pocket, and gave it to Slag, who was his bowman, and who, with the exception of himself, was the best man of the lifeboat crew.

"I'll have to follow him," said Bob, rising soon after his mate had left, "so good-bye, Nellie, till to-morrow."

He did not stoop to kiss her, for the wide sands lay before them with fisher-boys playing thereon--apparently in their fathers' boots and sou'-westers--and knots of observant comrades scattered about.

"See that you're not late at church to-morrow, Bob," said the girl, with a smile and a warning look.

"Trust me," returned Bob.

As he walked towards the lifeboat-house--a conspicuous little building near the pier--he tried to blow off some of the joy in his capacious breast, by whistling.

"Why, Slag," he exclaimed on entering the shed, "I do believe you've been an' put on the blue ribbon!"

"That's just what I've done, Bob," returned the other. "I thought you'd 'ave noticed it at the boat; but I forgot you could see nothin' but the blue of Nellie's eyes."

"Of course not. Who'd expect me to see anything else when I'm beside _her_?" retorted Bob. "But what has made you change your mind? I'm sure the last time I tried to get you to hoist the blue-peter ye were obstinate enough--dead against it."

"True, Bob; but since that time I've seed a dear woman that I was fond of _die_ from drink, an' I've seed Tom Riley, one of our best men, get on the road to ruin through the same; so I've hoisted the blue flag, as ye see."

"That's a good job, Slag, but don't you forget, my lad, that the blue ribbon won't save you. There's but _one_ Saviour of men. Nevertheless, it's well to fight our battles under a flag, an' the blue is a good one--as things go. Show your colours and never say die; that's my motto. As you said, Slag, the glass _is_ uncommon low to-day. I shouldn't wonder if there was dirty weather brewin' up somewhere."

The coxswain was right, and the barometer on that occasion was a true prophet. The weather which "brewed up" that evening was more than "dirty," it was tempestuous; and before midnight a tremendous hurricane was devastating the western shores of the kingdom. Many a good ship fought a hard battle that night with tide and tempest, and many a bad one went down. The gale was short-lived but fierce, and it strewed our western shores with wreckage and corpses, while it called forth the energies and heroism of our lifeboat and coastguard men from north to south.

Driving before the gale that night under close-reefed topsails, a small but well-found schooner came careering over the foaming billows from the regions of the far south, freighted with merchandise and gold and happy human beings. Happy! Ay, they were happy, both passengers and crew, for they were used by that time to facing and out-riding gales; and was not the desired haven almost in sight--home close at hand?

The captain, however, did not share in the general satisfaction. Out in "blue water" he feared no gale, but no one knew better than himself that the enemy was about to assail him at his weakest moment--when close to land. No one, however, could guess his thoughts as he stood there upon the quarter-deck, clad in oil-skins, drenched with spray, glancing now at the compass, now at the sails, or at the scarce visible horizon.

As darkness deepened and tempest increased, the passengers below became less cheerful, with the exception of one curly-haired little girl, whose exuberant spirit nothing could quell. Her young widowed mother had given in to the little one's importunities, and allowed her to sit up late on this the last night at sea, to lend a helping hand while she packed up so as to be ready for landing next day. Consent had been the more readily given that the white-haired grandfather of little Lizzie volunteered to take care of her and keep her out of mischief.

The other passengers were as yet only subdued, not alarmed. There were men and women and little ones from the Australian cities, rough men from the sheep farms, and bronzed men from the gold mines. All were busy making preparations to land on the morrow. With the exception of those preparations things on board went on much as they had been going on in "dirty weather" all the voyage through.

Suddenly there was a crash! Most of the male passengers, knowing well what it meant, sprang to the companion-ladder--those of them at least who had not been thrown down or paralysed--and rushed on deck. Shrieks and yells burst forth as if in emulation of the howling winds. Crash followed crash, as each billow lifted the doomed vessel, and let her fall on the sands with a shock that no structure made by man could long withstand. Next moment a terrific rending overhead told that one, or both, of the masts had gone by the board. At the same time the sea found entrance and poured down hatchways and through opening seams in cataracts. The inclined position of the deck showed that she was aground.

The very thought of being _aground_ comforted some, for, to their minds, it implied nearness to land, and _land_ was, in their idea, safety. These simple ones were doomed to terrible enlightenment. Little Lizzie, pale and silent from terror, clung to her grandfather's neck; the young widow to his disengaged arm. With the other arm the old man held on to a brass rod, and prevented all three from being swept to leeward, where several of the women and children were already struggling to escape from a mass of water and wrecked furniture.

"Come on deck--all hands!" shouted a hoarse voice, as one of the officers leaped into the cabin, followed by several men, who assisted the people to rise.

It is usual to keep passengers below as much as possible in such circumstances, but the position of the schooner, with her bow high on a bank, and her stern deep in the water, rendered a different course needful on this occasion.

With difficulty the passengers were got up to the bow, where they clustered and clung about the windlass and other points of vantage. Then it was that the true nature of their calamity was revealed, for no land was visible, nothing was to be seen around them but a hell of raging foam, which, in the almost total darkness of the night, leaped and glimmered as if with phosphoric light. Beyond this circle of, as it were, wild lambent flame, all was black, like a wall of ebony, from out of which continually there rushed into view coiling, curling, hoary-headed monsters, in the shape of roaring billows, which burst upon and over them, deluging the decks, and causing the timbers of the ship to writhe as if in pain.

"We've got on the tail o' the sands," muttered a sailor to some one as he passed, axe in hand, to cut away the wreckage of the masts, which were pounding and tugging alongside.

On the sands! Yes, but no sands were visible, for they had struck on an outlying bank, far from shore, over which the ocean swept like the besom of destruction.

It was nearly low water at the time of the disaster. As the tide fell the wreck ceased to heave. Then it became possible for the seamen to move about without clinging to shrouds and stanchions for very life.

"Fetch a rocket, Jim," said the captain to one of the men.

Jim obeyed, and soon a whizzing line of light was seen athwart the black sky.

"They'll never see it," muttered the first mate, as he got ready another rocket. "Weather's too thick."

Several rockets were fired, and then, to make more sure of attracting the lifeboat men, a tar-barrel, fastened to the end of a spar, was thrust out ahead and set on fire. By the grand lurid flare of this giant torch the surrounding desolation was made