Joining these groups,I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats,which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.
The tremendous sea itself,when I could find sufficient pause to look at it,in the agitation of the blinding wind,the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise,confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in,and, at their highest, tumbled into surf,they looked as if the least would engulf the town.As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar,it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach,as if its purpose were to undermine the earth.When some white-headed billows thundered on,and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land,every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.
Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind--for it is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there, that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow morning, in good time.
I went back to the inn;and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to sleep,but in vain, it was five o’clock in the afternoon.I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire,when the waiter, coming to stir it,as an excuse for talking,told me that two colliers had gone down,with all hands, a few miles away;and that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads,and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore.Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors, said he,if we had another night like the last!
I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary;and felt an uneasiness in Ham’s not being there,disproportionate to the occasion.I was seriously affected, without knowing how much,by late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me.There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections,that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance.Thus, if I had gone out into the town,I should not have been surprised, I think,to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London.So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind.Yet it was busy, too,with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened;and they were particularly distinct and vivid.
In this state, the waiter’s dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely?If he gave me the least reason to think so,I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.
I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard.I was none too soon; for the boat-builder,with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard-gate.He quite laughed when I asked him the question,and said there was no fear; no man in his senses,or out of them, would put off in such a gale of wind,least of all Ham Peggotty,who had been born to seafaring.
So sensible of this, beforehand,that I had really felt ashamed of doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do,I went back to the inn. If such a wind could rise,I think it was rising. The howl and roar,the rattling of the doors and windows,the rumbling in the chimneys,the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me,and the prodigious tumult of the sea,were more fearful than in the morning.But there was now a great darkness besides;and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.
I could not eat, I could not sit still,I could not continue steadfast to anything.Something within me,faintly answering to the storm without,tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them.Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts,wild running with the thundering sea,--the storm,and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the fore-ground.
My dinner went away almost untasted,and I tried to refresh myself with a glass or two of wine.In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire,without losing my consciousness,either of the uproar out of doors,or of the place in which I was.Both became overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror;and when I awoke--or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.
I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer,listened to the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes,and figures in the fire. At length,the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.
It was reassuring, on such a night,to be told that some of the inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense refined.
For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water;imagining, now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now,that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns;and now, the fall of houses in the town. I got up,several times, and looked out; but could see nothing,except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.
At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch,that I hurried on my clothes, and went downstairs.In the large kitchen,where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams,the watchers were clustered together,in various attitudes, about a table,purposely moved away from the great chimney,and brought near the door. A pretty girl,who had her ears stopped with her apron,and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared,supposing me to be a spirit;but the others had more presence of mind,and were glad of an addition to their company. One man,referring to the topic they had been discussing,asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down,were out in the storm?
I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once,I opened the yard-gate,and looked into the empty street. The sand,the sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by;and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again,and make it fast against the wind.