Chapter Twenty Seven.
On the Casquettes.
Bob’s hearing was not at fault, this sense of his remaining perfect though his mind was wandering; and so, the unwonted sound that fell upon his ear had got woven amongst his delirious fancies.
It was, without doubt, a real bell, which if it might not summon pious folk to prayer, yet fulfilled almost as sacred a duty, warning, as it did, poor mariners of impending peril and so answering the petition oft put up “for those travelling by sea.”
This ball belonged to the lighthouse-tower erected on the highest peak of the Casquettes, a terrible group of rocks jutting out into the Channel, just off the French coast hard by Alderney, some six miles to the north-west of which island they lie. Rocks that are cruel and relentless as the surges that sweep over them in stormy weather, and which are so quaintly named from their helmet, or “casque”-like resemblance—rocks, concerning which the poet Swinburne has sung in his eloquent verse, that breathes the very spirit of the sea in depicting the strife of the elements:
“From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken,
With change everlasting of life and of death,
Where hardly by morn if the lulled ear hearken
It hears the sea’s as a tired child’s breath,
Where hardly by night, if an eye dare scan it,
The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard,
As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite
Respond one merciless word.
“Sheer seen and far, in the sea’s life heaven,
A sea-mew’s flight from the wild sweet land,
White plumed with foam, if the wind wake, seven
Black helms, as of warriors that stir, not stand,
From the depths that abide and the waves that environ
Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight masks;
And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as iron
On the steel of the wave-worn casques.
“Be night’s dark word as the word of a wizard,
Be the word of dawn as a god’s glad word,
Like heads of the spirits of darkness visored
That see not for ever, nor ever have heard,
These basnets, plumed as for fight or plumeless,
Crowned by the storm and by storm discrowned,
Keep word of the lists where the dead lie tombless
And the tale of them is not found!”
Hither the boat had drifted in the course of the three days that had elapsed since she had been first becalmed off Spithead, or rather between the Nab and Warner lights; for, it was then that the wind had dropped, leaving her at the mercy of the stream, going whither the current willed.
She had pursued a most erratic course, however, to reach this point.
To commence with, she had floated on the ebb-tide, which for two hours after high-water runs south by west, out into the Channel past the Isle of Wight; the wind, slight as it was, that subsequently sprung up from the eastward, to which point it had veered after the sea-fog had risen, combined with the westward action of the tideway, making the little vessel take almost a straight course across the stream of the current towards the French coast.
When about midway, however, she got into a second channel current, which swept her nearer and nearer to Cape La Hogue.
Then, again, when still some miles out from the land, yet another current took charge of her, bringing her within the influence of the strong indraught which runs into the Gulf of Saint Malo; by which, finally, she was wafted, in a circular way, up to “the Caskets,” or “Casquettes,” to adopt the proper French version.
Here she had arrived at the time of Bob’s delirium, drifting in closer and closer to the rocks, on which the cutter would probably have been dashed to pieces and her fragments possibly picked up anon on the opposite side of the Atlantic, had not fate intervened.
It was in this wise.
The little cutter drifted in near the rocks while it was still early morning; and the reason for the bell on the lighthouse ringing was because some of the mist, or fog, that had been blown across the Channel, yet lingered in the vicinity, as if loth to leave altogether the waters over which it loved to brood.
When, however, the rays of the bright morning sun sent this nightmare of a mist to the right-about, a small French fishing lugger might have been seen working out towards the offing from Saint Malo, giving the “Casquettes” a pretty wide berth you may be sure; those who have to do with seafaring matters across Channel knowing full well of the dangerous race that runs by the fatal rocks, ever seeking in its malice to engulph passing crafts and bear them away to destruction!
Two men were in the lugger; one, as usual, attending to the helm, the other minding the sheets and sitting midway between the bows and stern of the vessel, so as to be handy when required and thus save unnecessary locomotion.
Sailors, it may here be mentioned in confidence, especially those hailing from la belle France, never give themselves more trouble than they can help; which philosophic way of going through life might be studied to advantage, perhaps, by some shore folk!
These mariners, consequently, were taking it very easy, the one forward sitting on the break of the “fo’c’s’le” and smoking a pipe, there not being much to do in the rope-hauling or letting go, as the lugger was only creeping lazily along through the almost still water with the aid of the light breeze then blowing.
Presently, this latter gentleman, casting a casual eye around, spied the poor mastless, derelict-looking little yacht, rolling about in the heavy tide-race that was taking her on to the rocks.
Instantly, sailor-like, he became all animation; taking his pipe out of his mouth and shouting out to his fellow-voyager astern with much gesticulation.
“Tiens, Jacques!” he cried, “voilà un bâteau qui courre sur les brisants!”
“Quoi?” carelessly asked the other. “Vous moquez vous!”
But the one who had first spoken repeated what he’d said, to the effect that there was “a boat drifting on the rocks, and likely to be wrecked.” “Jacques,” however, as his comrade had called him, did not seem much interested in the matter, merely shrugging his shoulders, implying that it was “none of his concern.”
“C’est bien,” said he. “Pas mon affaire.”
The other, though, seemed more taken with the little craft, climbing up a couple of steps into the rigging in order to have a better look at her.
He had not gazed a moment when his excitement became intensified.
“Mon Dieu, Jacques!” he sang out. “Il-y-a quelqu’un à bord! Deux personnes, et des garçons je crois; mais, ils sont morts!”
“Pas possible,” cried the helmsman, showing a little more interest. “Really?”
“Parbleu, c’est vrai! Vire que nous nous en approchions.”
“C’est fait,” exclaimed Jacques, now quite as much excited - as the other, and eager to rescue any one in peril or distress, as every sailor of every nationality always is—that is, a true sailor. “Starboard it is!”
“Babord!” cried out Antoine, as the helmsman called him, telling the latter he was to put the tiller over. “Port.”
Jacques replied by a counter order.
“Toi, Antoine,” shouted he, “lache la grande voile!” meaning him to “slacken off the mainsheets,” whereupon the lugger was brought alongside the wreck of the cutter.
Our friend Antoine, without wasting a moment, at once stepped on board, exclaiming, “Tenez bon dessus—Hold on.”
The man was shocked at what he saw, the dead bodies, as he thought, of Bob and Dick lying across each other on the floor of the little cabin, half in and half out of which the boys were exposed to his view at the first glance.
“Pauvres garçons!” he cried in a husky voice, wiping away a tear that sprang unbidden to his eye, with the characteristic ready emotional sympathy of his countrymen. “Pauvres garçons.”
Jacques, who was a little longer in coming to inspect the derelict, hearing what his companion said, called out for further information.
“De quel pays sont-ils?” he asked. “Can you tell their nationality?”
“Anglais, sans doute!” was his reply. “Je le crois par leur air.”
This made Jacques prick up his ears.
“Comment?” said he; and, without waiting to hear anything else he, too, jumped down into the boat. “Anglais? Mon Dieu!”
Jacques was a man of common-sense; so, instead of contenting himself with staring at the apparently lifeless boys, as Antoine did, he bent down to see whether they yet breathed.
“Bête! Quant aux enfants, ils ne sont pas plus morts que
toi ou moi!” he sang out indignantly. “You fool! The boys are no more dead than you or me.”
But Jacques was a kind-hearted man as well as one possessed of common-sense.
So, under his directions, he and Antoine between them transshipped the apparently lifeless but still animate forms of Bob and Dick from the wrecked cutter into the fo’c’s’le of the lugger, where a charcoal, fire was smouldering in a small stove on which simmered a saucepan containing something savoury, judging by its smell.
Here Jacques proceeded to rub the bodies of the boys alternately with a piece of flannel dipped in spirit, which he first held in front of the stove to warm; Maître Antoine, meanwhile, attending to the navigation of the lugger and guarding lest she should run upon the Casquettes, or get led astray out of her course by Alderney Race, a current of these regions which, like the Saint Malo stream, is not to be played with when the wind’s on shore!
Not content with merely rubbing them down with the spirit, Jacques presently varied his external application of some brandy, a remedy with him for most complaints to which flesh is heir, by administering to each boy in turn a few drops internally of the spirit, forcing it dexterously between their lips as soon as respiration was restored and they began to breathe with some regularity; Bob, however, progressing much more rapidly than Dick, whose pulse obstinately remained feeble and barely perceptible, while the author of all the mischief was nearly all right.
Bob opened his eyes almost as soon as he tasted the brandy.
“Where am I?” he stammered out, gazing round the little fo’c’s’le of the lugger in wonder. “Where am I?”