There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber,when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now,and, getting into bed again,fell--off a tower and down a precipice--into the depths of sleep.I have an impression that for a long time,though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes,it was always blowing in my dream. At length,I lost that feeble hold upon reality,and was engaged with two dear friends,but who they were I don’t know,at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.
The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant,that I could not hear something I much desired to hear,until I made a great exertion and awoke.It was broad day--eight or nine o’clock;the storm raging, in lieu of the batteries;and someone knocking and calling at my door.
‘What is the matter?’ I cried.
‘A wreck!Close by!’
I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?
‘A schooner, from Spain or Portugal,laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir,if you want to see her!It’s thought, down on the beach,she’ll go to pieces every moment.’
The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase;and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could,and ran into the street.
Numbers of people were there before me,all running in one direction, to the beach.I ran the same way, outstripping a good many,and soon came facing the wild sea.
The wind might by this time have lulled a little,though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of,had been diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds.But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night,was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last.Every appearance it had then presented,bore the expression of being swelled;and the height to which the breakers rose, and,looking over one another, bore one another down,and rolled in, in interminable hosts,was most appalling.In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves,and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion,and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather,I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck,and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves.A half-dressed boatman, standing next me,pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo’d arrow on it,pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then,O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
One mast was broken short off,six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side,entangled in a maze of sail and rigging;and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat--which she did without a moment’s pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable--beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing,with the rags of a rent sail,and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro.The ship had struck once,the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear,and then lifted in and struck again.I understood him to add that she was parting amidships,and I could readily suppose so,for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
There was a bell on board;and as the ship rolled and dashed,like a desperate creature driven mad,now showing us the whole sweep of her deck,as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore,now nothing but her keel,as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea,the bell rang; and its sound,the knell of those unhappy men,was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her,and again she rose. Two men were gone.The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned,and clasped their hands; women shrieked,and turned away their faces.Some ran wildly up and down along the beach,crying for help where no help could be.I found myself one of these,frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew,not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
They were making out to me,in an agitated way--I don’t know how,for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to understand--that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.
I ran to him--as well as I know,to repeat my appeal for help. But,distracted though I was,by a sight so new to me and terrible,the determination in his face,and his look out to sea--exactly the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after Emily’s flight--awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand!
Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck,we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow,beat off the lower of the two men,and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
Against such a sight,and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. ‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ‘if my time is come, ‘tis come. If ‘tan’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all!Mates, make me ready!I’m a-going off!’