The Wreck.
Snow still kept away, but winter winds had come, and they swept over the bare ground, cutting like knives. About the first of the year the weather softened. The old gray heads, whose possessors occupied that village-throne of wisdom, the jackknife-carved bench by Silas Trefethen’s stove, prophesied “a spell of weather.”
“Storm brewin’! I feel it in my bones,” declared Simes Badger, squinting at the vane on Aunt Stanshy’s barn and then at the gray, scowling clouds above. The wind was from the “nor’-east.” It had a damp, chilly touch, so that the people shrank from it, and were glad to get near their cozy fires. All day threatening clouds rolled in from the sea, as if the storm had planted batteries there and the smoke from the cannonade was thickening. At night Charlie, passing a window in his chamber, heard the rain drumming on the panes. He had gone to his warm nest and been there only two minutes, when he said to himself, as he gaped, “If it would only rain so hard that I wouldn’t have to go to school to-mor—” Here the angel of sleep came along, and, putting his hand on the eyes of a tired boy, closed them and drowned in sweet oblivion all his school anxieties. It rained through the night. It rained all the next day. The tide, too, was unusually high. It rolled over the wharves, swept up the shipyards, and even ventured into the yard back of Silas Trefethen’s store, floating away a hencoop with its squawking tenants.
“It beats all!” said Simes Badger. “The oldest person round here never saw such a tide.”
The Up-the-Ladder Club did the tide the honor of making it a call in a body, and from the rear of Silas Trefethen’s store watched the swollen current beyond the yard.
“Let’s go down to the beach and see the waves to-morrow. It’s Saturday, you know, and the waves pile up tremendous in a storm. Who’s for it!” inquired Sid Waters. There was not a White Shield present who was unwilling to go. Some of them, however, went sooner than they expected.
Toward the morning of the next day, Will Somers was aroused by the ringing of a bell. He opened his ears, opened his eyes, and then he sprang out of bed.
“Fire!” he said. “Fire!”
He rushed to a window, threw it up, and put his head out into the black storm, through which echoed the notes of the bell of old St. John’s. They made such an impression it seemed as if they must be living things out in the darkness walking. So strange, so unreal was this, it was a relief to hear the approaching footsteps of somebody who was actually “flesh and blood.”
“Where’s the fire?” asked Will.
“Fire!” said the man, walking leisurely along. “I should think any booby might know this is not the night for a fire, when things are so wet; but it is the night for a wreck, and the feller pullin’ that bell tells me there is one off Gull’s P’int.”
“Is it? I am going, then, and I should think any one but a booby would be going in that direction,” retorted Will, noticing that the man was not moving toward the quarter where the wreck was. The stranger muttered something about knowing his own business best, while Will pulled in his head and slammed down the window.
“Charlie!” he said, stepping into the boy’s little chamber after lighting a lamp.
“What is it?” asked Charlie, winking his eyes at the blinding glare of the light.
“Do you want to go with me?”
“Go where?”
“To see a wreck.”
“O yes! Just wait a minute and let me ask Aunt Stanshy.”
He groped his way to his aunt’s bedroom.
“Aunt Stanshy, may I go with Will?”
In his eagerness he forgot to mention the object of this midnight expedition. Aunt Stanshy was not thoroughly awake, for the angel of sleep visiting Charlie had touched her eyes also. If awake, she might not have granted the request. The idea went confusedly through her brain that Charlie wanted to sleep with Will.
“Y-e-s,” she murmured, drowsily, and then the angel of sleep had her fully again under his control. Charlie stole down into Will’s room, his clothes on his arm.
“Now, dress quick as you can. Have you an overcoat?”
“Yes, but it is up in Aunt Stanshy’s closet.”
“We don’t want to disturb her again. Here, you put on the cape of my cloak and fold it about you.”
Charlie was proud to be thus enveloped. Will then completed his dressing, and looked like a Cape Codder just arrived from a fishing-smack. He took his young companion by the hand and off they started.
“Who’s that?” asked Will, as they turned from Water Street into Beach Street.
“That boy in the door where there’s a light? Why, that is Tony! He’s up. Tony, that you?” sang out Charlie.
“Yes! You going down to the beach?” said Tony, standing in the lighted door-way of a low-roofed house.
“Yes.”
“I heard the bell and got up, and one of the neighbors came and told us it was a wreck, and Mr. Grimes said I might go if I could go with somebody.”
“Come along,” said Will. “Tell him I will take care of you.”
Tony went eagerly back. He prepared for the trip, and then came out to join Will and Charlie.
“Now, boys, take hold of my hand and let’s put,” said Will.
They accordingly “put.”
“Isn’t this good fun, Tony.”
“Yes, Charlie, splendid.”
It was such good fun that Charlie thought he was willing to be a sailor on board that wreck even. He changed his mind, however, in a short time. Beach Street led down to a road that was called “Back Road.” This took as many turns as it pleased, and after a quarter of a mile struck the low, level marshes. Traversing the marshes, the road led Will and his companions up to the yellow hammocks, at whose base the breakers were discharging their fury in a terrible bombardment of the land. The road wound through the hummocks, and then the party stood upon the beach. It was a cold, ugly atmosphere, pierced by the missiles of the storm, while the surf crashed on the sand in one long, fierce, unearthly roar. People from the town were now gathering on the beach, some of them carrying lanterns that twinkled like stars knocked out of their places by the storm, fallen now to the level of the beach.
But where was the wreck? No sign of it anywhere; only rain, surf, storm, blackness—a wild medley.
“This is a sell!” said a man.
“Wish I was in bed agin,” exclaimed another.
“Let’s catch the feller that rang that church bell,” exclaimed a third, “and duck him in the surf.”
A fourth made a sensible suggestion: “Let’s go down to the life-saving station, and they can probably tell us there.”
A quarter of a mile up the beach was a life-saving station, and a light could be seen winking from one of its windows. Several, including Will and the boys, walked up the beach, past the crashing waves, and reaching the station, pushed open its door on the land-side of the building, and entered. Charlie looked about him with eager curiosity, for it was the first time he had ever been in such a place. The building was of two stories. The larger part of the lower story was taken up by a “boat-room” for various kinds of apparatus for reaching wrecks. Charlie also saw the inside of a kitchen, and Will told him there was a room up stairs for the beds of the men at the station. Charlie and Tony warmed themselves at the brisk fire in the store. The man on duty there did not seem to know any thing about the disaster reported in town, but he talked with Will and Charlie about shipwrecks and storms and efforts at rescuing the wrecked. After a while, Charlie said to Will, “Let’s go out and take a run along the beach, and see what’s going on.”
“Yes,” added Tony, “let’s do it.”
“A run up and down the beach to see what is going on, this stormy night? You are enterprising boys. Well, we will go. Button up your coats snug, though. Fold my cape about you, Charlie. There, you look like a small monk off on a tare. You fixed, Tony? Come, boys,” said Will.
Bang! How the wind slammed the door after them! And how the sea thundered and roared; then roared and thundered again! It seemed as if every throw of surf was heavier than that before, and yet none of this violence and wrath could be seen unless some one chanced to pass carrying a lantern. Then this thing that raged along the sands, this creature, this dragon from the deep, would show an angry whiteness, as if it were the opening of his jaws.
Will and the boys may have tramped a quarter of a mile along the beach, when Will exclaimed, “Hullo, there’s a light!”
It was a lively twinkle upon the sands that came nearer and nearer, and then stopped before the party.
“Who’s this?” asked a voice, pleasantly.
Charlie lifted up his face toward the shining of this friendly light.
“Bub, is this you down here at this time of night? Don’t you know the man who goes fishin’ from your Aunt Stanshy’s barn?”
“O yes, I know you.”
It was the junior member of the new firm, “Tyler & Fisher.”
“Are you a patrolman, Mr. Fisher?” asked Will.
“I am at spells, when a man at the station may be sick. You see I can’t go fishin’ in this storm, and it comes handy to be employed as a substitute at the station. But what are you here for?”
“We came down to find a wreck. Up in town St. John’s bell was rung and we were told there was a wreck at Gull Point. At the station, though, where we have been, a man said that he did not know of any.”
“I guess I know how that story got up to town. A little fool was down here with a squeaky voice and sharp little eyes, and he wanted to know if there were any wrecks. The fact is we had been looking for sich all day and through the evening and night. There were one or two vessels off the mouth of the harbor as night came on, trying to get in, and, pizen! they could no more get in than my old tarpaulin, and they wouldn’t stand a hundredth part of the chance she would. You see, a nor’easter rakes right across the mouth of our harbor and drives off any sail tryin’ to get in, and one of two things will happen—either a ship will be swept out to sea or swept on to Gull P’int. Well, that feller said to Joe Danforth—Joe and me were together—‘Has there been a wreck?’ ‘No,’ said Joe, ‘I think not,’ meaning to answer him. But I had said to Joe at that time, or just before that feller asked his question, ‘Hadn’t we better go to the station and get a bite?’ ‘Yes,’ said Joe, meaning to answer me, and that person—whoever it was, grabbed up the answer to me and thought it was for him, and went off accordingly. That is how that bell came to ring. It would be an awful night for a wreck, wouldn’t it? Hullo!” exclaimed John Fisher, stopping in his explanation, “What’s that? If that aint the crittur hisself!”
As the patrolman turned his face to the sea, the boys looked off in that direction, and they were quick enough to see a rocket exploding in the air, scattering down a shower of tinted stars. This bright constellation faded away into the night, when suddenly up, up into the darkness, shot two vivid lines of fire, parting as they swept higher and higher, exploding in stars till the whole seemed like immense forks of gold with spreading, jeweled prongs.
“They let go a couple then,” said Will.
“O look, Tony!” cried Charlie.
While the boys were watching the rockets, John Fisher was eagerly handling his Coston light. The design of this is to signal to any wreck, or to warn vessels away from an unsafe shore. John now ignited his light and, holding it up, ran along the beach. His big, burly form wrapped in a coarse, heavy suit, threw an immense shadow on the sands, while the light of his torch so colored the beach that he seemed to be trampling on red snow. The foam of the waves, broken into patches, changed till it became clots of blood. Beyond all, was that wrathful, howling, restless ocean. Away ran John Fisher, swinging his light, flinging out his big boots till he looked like a sea-monster, with unwieldy limbs, plunging through an atmosphere blood-tinged. At the station they had evidently become aware of the real situation of things, for there was a moving of lamps at the windows, then the opening of a door letting out a bright light. As Will and the boys reached the station, they saw the big door in one end of the building swinging back, and out rushed two men pulling a cart. John Fisher here came running up.
“Wreck is down at Gull’s P’int,” he said, “so some one told me, and that agrees with the place where the signals were seen. I guess she is on the nub of the P’int, and our wreck-gun will reach her.”
“What is a wreck-gun?” Charlie wanted to ask, but every body seemed too busy to answer questions.
“It will be morning soon,” exclaimed Will. “I fancy I see a whitish streak now in the east.”
Charlie was not looking at the sky, but, standing on his longest toe, was trying to get a peep into that mysterious cart dragged from the station. A man now stood on the axle and lighted a lamp on a pole. The lamp was inclosed so that the storm could not harm it. Charlie saw a stout reel in the cart, about which went many turns of a stout rope. Then there was the wreck-gun. There were also shovels and various apparatus.
“Now, boys,” shouted Captain Peters, who had charge of the station, “all hands for the P’int!”
That slow-moving, clumsy man that Charlie had seen in the station when he called, was now changed to a very nimble-footed being, and his comrades were as active. Away they went, threatening to leave Charlie and Tony far behind, but the boys grabbed Will by the hand and rapidly as possible pushed on after the enterprising apothecary.
“Getting to be morning,” shouted Will. While the shadows were still thick on the beach, over in the east was a grayish, uncertain light. There were occasional discharges of rockets from the vessel in distress.
“O dear!” said the breathless Charlie.
“I can’t hold out much longer,” thought Tony.
Will, though, pushed stoutly on, and it was manifest that a wreck excited him as much as a fire. The distance to Gull Point from the station was at least a mile and a half. The point itself was a rocky stretch into the sea measuring about six hundred feet in length. Day was creeping over the water; finally, a thin, sullen light, revealing a wild, ghostly tumult of waves. The surf that ordinarily broke near the shore seemed to whiten the water as far as the eye could reach. It was the angriest tumult of foam possible, as if the frothing of millions of enraged creatures of the sea.
“Ah, there she is!” shouted John Fisher, as the cart neared the shore-end of the point.
“We will get her!” screamed Charlie, as he reached the cart. The men laughed.
“It’s a three-masted schooner,” bawled Captain Peters, “and she’s where the life-boat can’t reach her, but our wreck-gun will. That craft has keeled over on Deep Rock, near the very P’int itself! Get out the gun!”
The men now took from the cart a small cannon, then a mass of rope, and then a rope of larger size.
“Take out that life-car, too!” shouted Captain Peters. Charlie watched every thing that was done with an intense curiosity. He sat down on the cannon to rest his short, fat legs.
“Sonny!” shouted John Fisher—the roar of the surf compelled every one to shout—“do you know what we are up to?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Well, that cannon is loaded, and—”
Up sprang Charlie. He did not want a seat like that.
“And the shot has a light but strong line hitched to it. A man will p’int the gun so that when the shot goes out it will fall over the vessel, and carry the line with it. Now watch him.”
Charlie watched. “Bang!” went the gun. Away went the shot, the long rope wriggling after it.
“Good!” cried John.
“What is good?” bawled Charlie.
“A good shot! The man sent the shot so that the rope has fallen across the vessel, I think.”
Others thought so, too, and a man quickly shouted, “They’re pulling on it! Hurrah!”
Then they all cheered. The crew on board the wreck were steadily drawing the rope through the water. Charlie looked intently with both eyes, and he wished that his ears also could be eyes for a little while.
“Come here!” shouted John to Charlie, and he led the boy around to a coil of rope, one end of which was attached to the line going through the water.
“See there, Bub! There is a block, what they call a single pulley-block, and this stouter rope is doubled through it. It will soon go to the wreck.”
Another explanation was then bawled at Charlie, who now wished his eyes were ears, so anxious was he to hear.
“Look at that block, and then there is what they call a tally-board, and it has some printed directions on it, telling the men on the wreck just what to do. Only watch!” he shouted.
The stouter rope had now started on its journey through the waters, and was taken on board the wreck.
“There,” said John, “you noticed the rope was doubled through that block?”
Charlie nodded assent.
“That gives us what we call an endless line—line. O, those noisy waves! The line runs through the block, I told you, which must have got to the wreck by this time. Here, you see, one end is made fast. At the wreck the tally-board told them just where to hitch it. Now watch! They are hitching on to the line a bigger one yet, and that will be hauled out to the schooner, and fastened above the other line. A second tally-board tells them what to do.”
Here John stopped to lay in a fresh stock of breath. Charlie saw that two of the men on shore had been rigging tackles to long supports planted firmly in the sand.
“Those tackles,” resumed John, “help us straighten that second line till it is above the breakers, and—now watch ’em—here comes the life-car, a sort of box, you see, that we suspend from the upper rope, and at the same time it is hitched to the lower or endless line. Now all we have got to do is to pull on that endless line, and the life-car, sliding along the upper rope, will spin right out to the vessel, and—here she goes!”
The life-car was moving along the upper line bound for the wreck. One or two halts occurred on the way, but the venture was ultimately successful, and Charlie saw the life-car as the crew of the wreck eagerly seized it.
“She’s coming back!” he cried.
Captain Peters shouted, “Here she comes, my hearties! Pull away on the whip!”
This was a title for the endless line.
“Suthin’ in that life-car!” sang out one of the men.
“Not so very much, I guess,” said another. “She runs sort of light.”
How the breakers tried to reach the car! Several times the sea threw itself spitefully, violently upward. One breaker seemed to make a spring for the car, wetting it with a cloud of spray.
“A real vixen, aint it?” said John. “It can’t harm any thing. But who is that in the car? A small cargo.”
It was not a large one certainly. One man doubted if any thing were there.
Nearer and nearer came the car, riding safely over that white, yeasty sea. It was pulled across the surf, and the outermost man laid his hands on it and pushed it. At the same time a little door in the top slid back, and a boy’s head rose higher and higher in the car, and as it stopped he was helped to get out. He seemed to be in a heap, and his movements were stiff, for his legs were cramped by the cold.
“There!” he screamed, “it’s the last time I ever want to go on that pesky old sea.”
“Wort Wentworth!” shouted Tony, springing forward to meet this returned knight.
“Hullo, Tony! Hullo, Charlie!”
“This you?” asked Charlie.
“Yes, it’s me just about drowned. They let me come alone. The others were not quite ready.”
“Haven’t you been through a lot?” asked Tony.
“More than I want to see again.”
“How many are on board the ‘White Shield?’”
“I feared it was she when I laid my eyes on her,” said Captain Peters.
“Five in the crew, my father, and one passenger.”
“Dis a s’prise,” said a new-comer, looking at Wort. It was Juggie.
“It is a surprise,” was Wort’s reply. “Catch me going again.”
“You’d rather be de keeper ob de great seal.”
“Yes, indeed!”
Among the arrivals by the life-car was the skipper of the “White Shield,” and there was also a man wrapped in a cloak.
“He aint a sailor,” said one of the station-hands, criticising the dress of the man in the cloak.
“It is the passenger,” said Wort.
He was a man still young, and his clothes had an outlandish cut. He walked up the beach, the four young knights having preceded him. Then he halted, and gave a look at the boys. The boys halted, and gave a look at him. Suddenly Tony bounded away, and bounded into the man’s arms.
What happened afterward, Charlie told Aunt Stanshy at the breakfast-table.
“Aunt Stanshy, guess what happened at the beach to Tony.”
“I don’t know, I am sure. I give it up.”
“Well, the ‘White Shield’ had a passenger, and when he got on the beach, the first thing we knew, Tony Blanco went rushing at him, and the man put his arms round Tony, and then Tony came pulling him along to us, and said, ‘It’s my father, boys!’ And he was real pleasant, and said he’d send as some oranges.”
“Tony’s father? How did he turn up? I thought he was in Italy.”
“Well, you see, aunty, he was in a ship coming from Italy, and the ship, I b’lieve, had a storm and was sinking when the ‘White Shield’ and another vessel came along, and they two took the people from Tony’s father’s ship. But that other vessel, you know, was going right to Italy, and so all but Tony’s father went back in her, because you know they were Italian sailors. Tony’s father, though, was a passenger, and he wanted to come to America, and so he got aboard the ‘White Shield’ and came here, right where Tony was; and, wasn’t that funny?”
“I should think it was.”
“He and Tony were real glad to see one another. Juggie called it, aunty, ‘a second s’prise.’”
The “s’prises,” though, were not all over. Charlie had a nap after breakfast, and finishing it, went to a window to see how the outside world looked. He stayed there only a minute, and then rushed to the head of the stairs leading down cellar, calling:
“Aunt Stanshy! Aunt Stanshy, come quick, do! There goes Tony’s father!”
Aunt Stanshy was down cellar fishing for pork in a capacious barrel. She dropped the piece for which she had successfully angled, and rushed to the stairs as if a whirlwind was after her. Breathless, she arrived at Charlie’s window.
“There, aunty, that is he!”
“What, Mr. Walton?”
“No, Mr. Walton is coming down the lane; but don’t you see that other man going up the lane?”
“O, yes, I see now.”
“Well, that is him.”
“But what are those two men doing? If they aint shaking hands! and now they’ve got their arms round one another, and there they go walking off together! It is the queerest proceeding! Why, they act as if they had known one another a long time!”
Aunt Stanshy had too much of the woman in her to let the matter drop there.
She said to herself, “If any one knows about this thing, it is Miss Persnips. I’ll clap on my bonnet and go up there.”
Miss Persnips generally had a bag full of news, and it was the only thing in the store for which she did not make a charge. Its mouth was hospitably open to all comers, and the distribution of its contents had an effect on her custom like the giving out of a chromo as a present. This morning, though, while the assortment in the bag was quite full and varied, it had nothing on the above subject. Aunt Stanshy went home disappointed. If she could have gone to Mr. Walton’s she would have witnessed something of interest.
Mr. Walton was leading the stranger into his house, when he said, “Stop a moment in the parlor and I will go into the sitting-room and prepare her.”
“All right.”
“Mother,” said Mr. Walton, stepping into the sitting-room, “would you like to see an old friend this morning? You feel comfortable?”
“O yes; bring him in.”
“Shall I tell you who it is?”
“No, let me have the surprise.”
Her son led the stranger in.
“Why, Fred!” exclaimed Mrs. Walton.
The man dropped on his knees, and put his head in her lap. And this was all that the mother did—she stroked his head with her hands, saying: “Why, Fred! Fred! my poor boy!”
That was the way the long-absent son came home.
Fred Walton had been a wayward young man, finally going to Italy in a sailing-vessel, engaging to do any work for the sake of his passage.
In Italy, he took the name of Blanco, purposing to build up a new character on the basis of a new name. The new character he needed, but his old name would have served him. He there married a young Italian lady who had met his older brother in his travels and was an object of deep interest to him, but he had relinquished her to the younger brother. Their married home was a pretty one, and a view of it Fred sent to his family in America. It was a picture of this home, taken at another season of the year, and from a different point of view, that his mother and brother had noticed, and yet failed to identify, when Tony’s pictures were inspected. Fred’s wife dying, leaving a little boy, Antonio, four years old, Fred wished to return to America, but concluded to remain in Italy, educating his boy in English as well as Italian. A year before this story opens, he wrote his mother that he was about to sail for a port in Algeria. It was a wild business enterprise, and he sent his little boy, Antonio, with friends—also named Blanco—to New York, expecting soon to follow them, and desiring in the meantime to make sure of a good home for Antonio. During his absence in Africa he wrote home, but his letters miscarried. Nothing had been heard since the day he sailed from Italy, and his old mother anxiously thought of him on stormy nights, fearing lest he had gone down into the wide grave of the sea. The Blanco family that cared for Tony in New York, obliged to leave the city by the failure of their work, came to Seamont to find it there awhile. When they returned to New York, as Tony was attached to Seamont, they left him with the Badger family for awhile. They were waiting to hear from Tony’s father about his plans for the boy, when he appeared in an unexpected fashion to look directly after Tony, and visit also his relatives; but they and the club were sorry to know that, contrary to his wishes, he must go back to Italy, and take Tony with him.
“Ah, now I understand about that boy,” said Mr. Walton, to his mother; “why he looked familiar, and if the people who brought him had had a different name, I might have looked into it, but I thought they must be relatives. Of course, not hearing from Fred, we had no thought that his child was here.”
And the mother said, “I hope my boy will now take his true name, and come again soon, and bring Antonio Walton with him.”
But would he and Tony ever come again? Tony came to bid good-bye to Charlie, and said, very soberly and touchingly, “We’d better kiss each other, for I feel that we shall never see each other again. Good-bye, for we shall never see each other any more.”
It was a very pathetic speech, and Charlie said, mournfully, as he kissed him, “Well, good-bye, Tony.”
Tony and his father went to Italy in a bark that left Seamont bound for the Mediterranean. Charlie watched the vessel from the barn window.
Like a gull that flying afar sinks lower and then disappears behind some rising billow, so the sails of the bark, receding farther and farther, vanished behind that blue rim of the horizon that rises up to check our sight and hide away the vessels that may hold our dearest hopes.