The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands by Robert Michael Ballantyne (classic novels txt) 📖

some two dozen ships of considerable size, and a large fleet of small craft, have sought and found shelter on a coast which in certain conditions of the wind is fraught with danger. About the stores near the piers, Trinity men are busy with buoys, anchors, and cables; elsewhere labourers are toiling, idlers are loafing, and lifeboat--men are lounging about, leaning on the parapets, looking wistfully out to sea, with and without telescopes, from the sheer force of habit, and commenting on the weather. The broad, bronzed, storm-battered coxswain of the celebrated Ramsgate lifeboat, who seems to possess the power of feeding and growing strong on hardship and exposure, is walking about at the end of the east pier, contemplating the horizon in the direction of the Goodwin Sands with the serious air of a man who expects ere long to be called into action.

The harbour-master--who is, and certainly had need be, a man of brain as well as muscle and energy, to keep the conflicting elements around him in order--moves about actively, making preparation for the expected gale.

Early on the morning of the day referred to, Nora Jones threaded her way among the stalls of the marketplace under the town-hall, as if she were in search of some one. Not succeeding in her search, she walked briskly along one of the main thoroughfares of the town, and diverged into a narrow street, which appeared to have retired modestly into a corner in order to escape observation. At the farther end of this little street, she knocked at the door of a house, the cleanly appearance of which attested the fact that its owner was well-doing and orderly.

Nora knocked gently; she did everything gently!

"Is Mrs Moy at home?" she asked, as a very bright little girl's head appeared.

No sooner was Nora's voice heard than the door was flung wide open, and the little girl exclaimed, "Yes, she's at 'ome, and daddy too." She followed up this assurance with a laugh of glee, and, seizing the visitor's hand, dragged her into the house by main force.

"Hallo, Nora, 'ow are 'ee, gal?" cried a deep bass voice from the neighbourhood of the floor, where its owner appeared to be smothered with children, for he was not to be seen.

Nora looked down and beheld the legs and boots of a big man, but his body and head were invisible, being completely covered and held down by four daughters and five sons, one of the former being a baby, and one of the latter an infant.

Dick Moy, who was enjoying his month on shore, rose as a man might rise from a long dive, flung out his great right arm, scattered the children like flecks of foam, and sat up with a beaming countenance, holding the infant tenderly in his left arm. The baby had been cast under the table, where it lay, helpless apparently, and howling. It had passed the most tender period of life, and had entered on that stage when knocks, cuts, yells, and bruises are the order of the day.

"Glad to see you, Nora," said the man of the floating light, extending his huge hand, which the girl grasped and shook warmly. "You'll excuse me not bein' more purlite. I'm oppressed with child'n, as you see. It seems to me as if I'd gone an' got spliced to that there 'ooman in the story-book wot lived in the shoe, an' had so many child'n she didn't know wot to do. If so, she knows wot to do now. She's only got to hand 'em over to poor Dick Moy, an' leave him to suffer the consickences.-- Ah, 'ere she comes."

Dick rose as he spoke, and handed a chair to Nora at the moment that his better, but lesser, half entered.

It must not be supposed that Dick said all this without interruption. On the contrary, he bawled it out in the voice of a bo's'n's mate, while the four daughters and five sons, including the baby and the infant, crawled up his legs and clung to his pockets, and enacted Babel on a small scale.

Mrs Moy was a very pretty, tidy, cheerful little woman, of the fat, fair, and forty description, save that she was nearer thirty-five than forty. It was clear at a glance that she and Dick had been made for each other, and that, had either married anybody else, each would have done irreparable damage to the other.

"Sit down, Nora. I'm so glad to see you. Come to breakfast, I hope? we're just going to have it."

Mrs Moy said this as if she really meant it, and would be terribly disappointed if she met with a refusal. Nora tried to speak, but Babel was too much for her.

"Silence!" burst from Dick, as if a small cannon had gone off in the room.

Babel was hushed.

"Mum's the word for _three minutes_," said Dick, pointing to a huge Yankee clock which stood on the chimney-piece, with a model frigate in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on one side of it, and a model light-vessel in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on the other.

There was profound wisdom in this arrangement. If Dick had ordered silence for an indefinite space of time, there would have been discontent, approximating to despair, in Babel's bosom, and, therefore, strong temptation to rebellion. But three minutes embraced a fixed and known period of time. The result was a desperate effort at restraint, mingled with gleeful anticipation. The elder children who could read the clock stared eagerly at the Yankee time-piece; the younger ones who couldn't read the clock, but who knew that the others could, stared intently at their seniors, and awaited the signal. With the exception of hard breathing, the silence was complete; the baby being spell-bound by example, and the feeble remarks of the infant--which had been transferred to the arms of the eldest girl--making no impression worth speaking of.

"You are very kind," said Nora, "I'll stay for breakfast with pleasure. Grandmother won't be up for an hour yet, and father's not at home just now."

"Werry good," said Dick, taking a short black pipe out of his coat-pocket, "that's all right. And 'ow do 'ee like Ramsgate, Nora, now you've had a fair trial of it?"

"I think I like it better than Yarmouth; but perhaps that is because we live in a more airy and cheerful street. I would not have troubled you so early, Mr Moy"--("'Tain't no trouble at all, Nora; werry much the reverse")--"but that I am anxious to hear how you got on with poor Billy--"

At this point Babel burst forth with redoubled fury. Dick was attacked and carried by storm; the short black pipe was seized, and an old hat was clapped on his head and thrust down over his eyes! He gave in at once, and submitted with resignation. He struck his colours, so to speak, without firing a shot, and for full five minutes breasted the billows of a sea of children manfully, while smart Mrs Moy spread the breakfast-table as quietly as if nothing were going on, and Nora sat and smiled at them.

Suddenly Dick rose for the second time from his dive, flung off the foam, tossed aside the baby, rescued the infant from impending destruction, and thundered "Silence! mum's the word for three minutes more."

"That's six, daddy!" cried the eldest boy, whose spirit of opposition was growing so strong that he could not help indulging it, even against his own interests.

"No," said Dick sternly.

"It was three minutes last time," urged the boy; "an' you said three minutes _more_ this time; three minutes more than three minutes is six minutes, ain't it?"

"Three minutes," repeated Dick, holding up a warning finger.

Babel ceased; the nine pair of eyes (excepting those of the infant) became fixed, and Nora proceeded--

"I wanted to hear how you got on with Billy. Did they take him in at once? and what sort of place is the Grotto? You see I am naturally anxious to know, because it was a terrible thing to send a poor boy away from his only friend among strangers at such an age, and just after recovering from a bad illness; but you know I could not do otherwise. It would have been his ruin to have--"

She paused.

"To have stopped where he was, I s'pose you would say?" observed Dick. "Well, I ain't sure o' that, Nora. It's quite true that the bad company he'd 'ave seen would 'ave bin against 'im; but to 'ave you for his guardian hangel might 'ave counteracted that. It would 'ave bin like the soda to the hacid, a fizz at first and all square arterwards. Hows'ever, that don't signify now, cos he's all right. I tuk him to the Grotto, the werry first thing arter I'd bin to the Trinity 'Ouse, and seed him cast anchor there all right, and--"

Again Babel burst forth, and riot reigned supreme for five minutes more. At the end of that time silence was proclaimed as before.

"Now then," said Dick, "breakfast bein' ready, place the chairs."

The three elder children obeyed this order. Each member of this peculiar household had been "told off," as Dick expressed it, to a special duty, which was performed with all the precision of discipline characteristic of a man-of-war.

"That's all right; now go in and win," said Dick. There was no occasion to appeal to the Yankee clock now. Tongues and throats as well as teeth and jaws were too fully occupied. Babel succumbed for full quarter of an hour, during which period Dick Moy related to Nora the circumstances connected with a recent visit to London, whither he had been summoned as a witness in a criminal trial, and to which, at Nora's earnest entreaty, and with the boy's unwilling consent, he had conveyed Billy Towler. We say unwilling, because Billy, during his long period of convalescence, had been so won by the kindness of Nora, that the last thing in the world he would have consented to bear was separation from her; but, on thinking over it, he was met by this insurmountable difficulty--that the last thing in the world he would consent to do was to disobey her! Between these two influences he went unwillingly to London--for the sake of his education, as Nora said to him--for the sake of being freed from the evil influence of her father's example, as poor Nora was compelled to admit to herself.

"The Grotto," said Dick, speaking as well as he could through an immense mouthful of bacon and bread, "is an institootion which I 'ave reason for to believe desarves well of its country. It is an institootion sitooate in Paddington Street, Marylebone, where homeless child'n, as would otherwise come to the gallows, is took in an' saved--saved not only from sin an' misery themselves, but saved from inflictin' the same on society. I do assure _you_," said Dick, striking the table with his fist in his enthusiasm, so that the crockery jumped, and some of the children almost choked by reason of their food going down what they styled their "wrong throats"--"I do assure _you_, that it would 'ave done yer 'art good to 'ave seed 'm, as I did the day I went there, so clean and comf'r'able and 'appy--no mistake about that.