PERIL AND PRIVATION.
BY JAMES PAYN.
THE LOSS OF THE "HALSEWELL."
On Sunday, the 1st of January, 1786, the Halsewell, a vessel of 758 tons burden, bound for the East Indies, sailed through the Downs with a fair wind and under exceptionally favorable circumstances. She had a well-tried commander, Captain Pierce, good officers, and a numerous crew. To these were added a considerable number of soldiers of "John Company," as the East India Company was called, so that security seemed assured both by sea and land.
There were, moreover, several lady passengers aboard, most of whom were known to one another, including the daughters of the Captain, two of his cousins, and one still younger lady, Miss Mansell, returning from a school in England to her parents in Madras. The chief mate too was related to Captain Pierce, so that the company in the chief cabin was almost a family party.
On Monday very thick weather came on, so that the ship was compelled to anchor, and on Tuesday a gale arose that obliged her to cut her cables and run out to sea. The gale grew to a tempest, which continued for three days, and on Friday night the ship ended her voyage.
At two in the morning of that day she was driving to her doom on the sharp rocks between Peverel Point and St. Alban's Head, in Dorsetshire. These rocks run sheer down to the sea, so that to approach them even in fine weather is fraught with danger.
There is a story told by the great humorist Thomas Hood of a terrible scene on board ship, when every one was running about distracted with fear, save one cheerful old lady. "There is nothing whatever to be alarmed at," she said, when some one asked her how it was she showed such courage, "for the Captain has just told me we are 'running on shore.'" To her the land seemed like safety. And so it doubtless was with some of the poor ladies on board the Halsewell.
The Captain, as they drove nearer the rocky shore on that awful night, consulted with his second mate, Mr. Meriton, as to their chances of escape, and especially with reference to his daughters.
"We can do nothing, sir, but wait for the morning," was the sad reply; and even while he spoke the ship struck with a violence that dashed the heads of those standing in the cuddy, as the saloon in an Indiaman was called, against the deck above them.
A frightful scene followed. The sailors had acted ill throughout the storm, and, skulking in their hammocks, had compelled their officers and the soldiers, who behaved admirably, to man the pumps; but now that the catastrophe, which they might have helped to avert, was upon them, they exhibited a frantic fear.
The ship lay beating against the rocks, with her broadside toward them, and the Captain's advice was that each man should take what opportunity should offer itself to reach the land. The ensign staff was accordingly unshipped, and laid between the ship's side and a rock; but it snapped asunder with the weight of the first man who attempted to cross, so that there was nothing for the rest to do but to drop into the raging sea, and trust to the waves to carry them to the unknown shore.
This desperate attempt, made by a number of the men, was of course impossible for the ladies, who with the passengers, three black women, and two soldiers' wives, had collected in the roundhouse upon deck to the number of no less than fifty. The Captain, whose use was gone in these dreadful straits, sat on a cot with a daughter upon each side, whom he alternately pressed to his breast. The scene was indescribably mournful. Mr. Meriton procured a quantity of wax candles, and stuck them about the place in which it was their hope to wait for dawn; then perceiving that the poor women were parched with thirst, he brought a basket of oranges, with which they refreshed themselves. This was the last meal they were ever to take on earth.
At this time they were all tolerably composed, except Miss Mansell, who lay sobbing upon the floor. Mr. Meriton thought he perceived that the sides of the ship were visibly giving way; that her deck was lifting, and that consequently she could not much longer hold together.
On leaving the roundhouse to see whether his suspicions were correct, they received a terrible confirmation. The ship had separated in the middle, and not a moment was to be lost in seizing the slender chance of saving his life. As a great sea struck the ship the poor ladies cried out: "Oh, poor Meriton, he is drowned! Had he staid with us he would have been safe." Whereupon Mr. Rogers, another officer, offered to go and look for him. This they opposed, lest he should share the same fate.
Rogers and the Captain, however, went out with a lantern, but being able to see nothing but the black face of the perpendicular rock, the Captain returned to his daughters, and was no more seen. A very heavy sea struck the ship, and burst into the roundhouse, and Mr. Rogers heard the ladies shriek at intervals until the water drowned their voices.
He seized a hen-coop, and was carried by a wave on to a rock, where it left him, miserably bruised, in the company of no less than one hundred and twenty-four persons, among whom he found Mr. Meriton. The meeting between these two was very touching, for they were old friends, and had just survived a calamity, little less terrible, in another Indiaman, between which event and their present peril an interval of only twenty-five days had elapsed. They were prevented, however, from the interchange of mutual congratulations by at least twenty men between them, none of whom could move without imperilling his life.
They were, in fact, on the ledge of a cavern overhung by the precipice, as closely packed and with as little room to move in as those sea-birds which we often see clustered on some ridge of rock. The full horror of their situation was, however, hid from them. They could not even see the ship they had just quitted, though in a few minutes a universal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, and in which the voice of female agony was plainly distinguishable, informed them that she had gone to pieces. Not one atom of the wreck of the Halsewell was ever afterward beheld.
This terrible incident gave such a shock to the poor trembling wretches on the ledge that many of them, being already unnerved and weak from bruises, lost their feeble hold, and fell upon the rocks below. Their groans and cries for succor increased the misery of the survivors. After three hours, which seemed as many ages, the daylight broke, and revealed the fact that unless aid was given from the cliff above them, escape was impossible, while the total disappearance of the ship left no evidence of their position, their guns and signals of distress through the night having been unheard by reason of the roaring of the gale.
The only hope of escape was to creep along the ledge to its extremity, and then, on a ridge nearly as broad as a man's hand, to turn a corner, and then scale a precipice almost perpendicular and two hundred feet in height! Such was the courage of their despair that even this was essayed. What with fear and fatigue, many lost their footing, and perished in the attempt. The cook and quarter-master alone succeeded in reaching the cliff top, and at once hastened to the nearest house.
This chanced to be the residence of the steward of the Purbeck stone quarries, who instantly collected his workmen, and furnished them with ropes. Next to the two men who had escaped, and after an interval in which many must have failed, a soldier and Mr. Meriton were trying to make their way to the summit, as the quarrymen arrived. They perceived the soldier, and dropped him a rope, of which he laid hold, but in the effort loosened the stone on which he stood, which also supported Mr. Meriton. The latter, however, seized another rope as he was in the very act of falling. He had probably the narrowest escape of all.
The perils of the rest were by no means at an end. The most fortunate crawled to the edge of the ledge and waited for the rope held by two strong men at the very brink of the cliff. Other ropes were tied about them and fastened to an iron bar fixed in the ground. Four other men, standing behind these, also held the rope which was let down, and we may be sure that they pulled with a will when the word was given.
Many of the poor shipwrecked souls, however, were too benumbed and weak to help themselves even thus far; and for these the rope, with a strong loop at the end of it, had to be let down. The force of the wind blew the rope into the cavern, when whoever was so fortunate as to catch it put the noose round his body and was drawn up. Many even of these perished from nervousness or loss of presence of mind. One especially, who lost his hold, fell into the sea, and being a strong swimmer, added to the general distress by dying, as it were, by inches before the eyes of the survivors.
It was evening before they found themselves in safety; indeed, one poor fellow, a soldier, remained in this perilous position until the next morning. On being mustered at the steward's house, they were found to number seventy-four out of a crew of two hundred and fifty.
They were treated with the utmost hospitality, and word of their coming was sent to the towns through which they would have to pass on their way to London, that they might be helped along. "It is worthy of commemoration," says the biographer, in which all my readers will agree, "that the landlord of the Brown Inn at Blandford not only refreshed all these distressed seamen at his house, but presented each with half a crown."
As one lies on the cliff-top above Peverel Point in the summer sun, with the blue sea below smiling so smoothly, it is difficult to imagine what took place in that unseen cavern beneath, or even the tears of joy which were shed by those who, after such a night of horror, set foot for the first time upon that grassy slope.
[THE SPECKLED PIG.]
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
"I'm glad spring's come," remarked Grandmother Gates, as she looked out through the kitchen window, "if it's only so that boy can spend his time out-of-doors. There isn't any house can hold him."
"What, Bun?" said Aunt Dorcas, while the skimmer in her hand was dripping over the soap-kettle. "He's all spring and India rubber. What's he doing now?"
"Doing?" said grandmother. "I'd say so! If he hasn't rigged some leathers and strings, and he's trying to harness that little speckled pig into his wagon. Can't you hear the pig squeal?"
"He's always a-squealing," said Mrs. Gates, from the milk-room. She was a large, motherly looking woman; but now she hurried to the door, and shouted, "Audubon, my son, what are you doing to that poor critter?"
"Why, mother, spring's come, and it's time he did something. I can drive him if I can once get him harnessed. He's half in now; but he does just plunge around!"
The speckled pig was a small one, truly, and he was well acquainted with Bun Gates; but his present occupation was new to him. The wagon matched him fairly well as to size, and it was only a little too plain that he had strength enough to haul it anywhere the moment he should have a fair chance. The best he could do at that moment was to make music, and his voice was uncommonly clear and shrill.
"Dorcas! mother!" exclaimed Mrs. Gates, "do come here and look at that boy."
"I see him," said grandma, but Aunt Dorcas put down her skimmer, and came to the door just as another boy, a head shorter than Bun, trotted up the garden walk to see what was the matter with the pig.
"Harnessed! harnessed! Oh, what a horse! I'll get in for a ride."
"Jump in, Jeff," said Bun. "You take the reins that belong to his head, and I'll hold on to the rein that goes to his hind-leg. We'll break him in."
Jeff was hardly more than eight years old, while his stoutly built and chubby elder brother was at least thirteen. There was "boy" enough in either of them, but the "spring" was tremendously developed in Bun. He was so full of it that he could hardly stand still. Neither could the pig stand still, and while the women at the kitchen door and window were laughing until the tears came into their eyes, the speckled unfortunate was dodging in every direction in a desperate effort to regain his freedom. Bun had deceived him when he enticed him from the barn-yard. The gate through which he had consented to be driven was well known to Speckle as leading into the garden, and all the free rooting to be desired of any pig could be had there. He had marched through the gate meekly enough, and he had looked over the "promised land," with its neatly kept walks and beds, and with all its green things just coming up, and yet here he was with a rope still restraining his hind-leg and a queer net-work of pig harness all over him. No part of that harness worked as a muzzle, and Speckle did what he could with his voice to express his opinion of the matter.
"Don't you let him get away from you," said Aunt Dorcas. "There's no telling what he'd do."
Jeff was in the wagon now, and grandmother was on the point of remarking, "Do?—why, he might run away with that there child, and break his precious neck," when the precise help Bun Gates was wishing for came hurrying through the front gate.
"What you got there, Bun? I'm a-coming. Hold him."
"You hold the shaft on that side, Rube, till we get him aimed right. I want to point him for the front gate, and drive him into the street. We'll have more room there to train him."
"Biggest kind of an idea ever was," said Rube. "I saw a learned pig once. He could play checkers, and count twenty. Smoke a pipe too. He was bigger'n this one."
"This one knows more'n most people now."
"Can't he squeal, though!"
"Audubon," said Mrs. Gates, "I want you to go to the store for me pretty soon. You'll have to take your wagon."
"All right," said Bun.
"Stand back, Rube. Hold on tight, Jeff. He'll make things rattle. Look, mother!"
She looked, and so did Grandmother Gates and Aunt Dorcas, but it was half a minute before there was anything to see, and Bun punched his queer "horse" with a long stick to set him going. A short sharp grunt replied to the punch, and suddenly the speckled pig made a plunging dart forward, and the wagon went with him.
"See!" shouted Bun. "That harness is just beautiful. It pulls first-rate. He'll go anywhere."
The pig felt about it in that way exactly, and the only drawback, so far as he was concerned, was the strong cord that was so well knotted around his left hind-leg. It had been a very strong cord in its day, and it was so now in many places, but there was about an inch of it, not a foot away from the pig's leg, that had seen its best and cordiest days. It was frayed and worn out and weak, and it had been severely tested all that morning. Fibre after fibre and strand after strand had given way, until now it needed but one more long, strong, willful tug with a boy pulling one way and an angry pig another, and the cord parted at its weak spot.
His first rush was straight forward for several yards; but the wagon did not seem to hinder him at all, even with Jeff pulling his best upon the "reins." He would have had to pull that pig's head nearly off before he could have stopped him in that manner, and it was fastened on too strongly.
"Stop him!" shouted Jeff. "He's running away; he's dodging."
That meant that he was making a sudden wheel across the grass-plot, under the big cherry-tree, and that brought him in full view of the garden.
The pig knew where he wanted to go now, and he sprang away in that direction with all his might and main. The boys were after him; but Rube's first attempt at heading him off only made him give so sudden a side rush that poor Jeff was pitched out, as the wagon keeled over, right into the middle of the raspberry bushes. The kick he gave as he landed set the wagon back on its wheels again, and it was easier running for the pig after that.
"OH, THAT PIG!"
"Oh, my son!" was all Mrs. Gates could say, and nobody could guess whether she meant Bun or Jeff; but Jeff himself was remarking at that very moment, "Oh, that pig!" and it was plain enough of whom he was speaking. Aunt Dorcas and Grandmother Gates were at the same instant, as with one united voice, saying the same words, and Aunt Dorcas added:
"The garden'll just be ruined. There he goes, right through the tomato plants, and they ain't but just been sot out."
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Bun. "He's stopped in the spinach bed, and he's gone to rooting right away."
"Never mind," said Rube. "The wagon's all right. He might have broken that."
"We must get him out somehow."
Yes, that was precisely the task they had before them; but the pig was in the garden, and he knew it, and believed that he too had duties to perform. He could run, and he could dodge, and he could change work from one bed to another, but at any moment when he got at all away from those boys, he found uses for his long, busy, root-hunting nose.
Jeff crept out from among the raspberry bushes right away, and when his mother and the two other women reached that spot, he was able to answer them: "No, I ain't hurt a bit, but I'm scratched the worst kind. Oh, that pig!"
"Run, Jeff," said Aunt Dorcas, "and hold the barn-yard gate open. Don't let any other pigs get in. There are three more out of the pen. Must be Bun let 'em out when he went for that one."
The pig was now making a stand among the young beets; but suddenly an idea came to Bun, and he sprang forward. In an instant he was seated in the wagon, and was goading his victim with the sharp end of his long stick.
"Got him, Rube! I've got him, mother! He'll have to go now."
"Oh, my son! Yes, Dorcas, he's starting off. Look, mother; if he isn't pulling wagon and all!"
"He's going for the barn-yard gate, too," said Rube. "Punch him, Bun. We'll train him in the barn-yard."
Jeff was holding the gate open, but he was also shouting loudly at the other pigs, and it was an open question—as wide open as the gate itself—whether or not all three of them would not soon be at work in the garden. Very likely they would have been but for Bun's presence of mind in getting into the wagon. That puzzled the speckled pig, and the sharp stick made it worse for him. He saw the open gate, and he made a desperate rush for it. There was a deep drain furrow just before he reached it, and Bun was thinking, "He can't pull me over that," when the fore-wheels went down into it. The pig uttered the loudest squeal he had squealed all that morning as he struggled forward. The three women shouted in one breath, "Oh, Bun!"
Rube Hollenhauser stooped down to pick up a stone, and Bun punched harder than ever; but the pig had the best of it. That harness had not been calculated for any such strain. There was a faint snap, then another, and the pig was free.
He did not pause to look back at the garden he had lost, but he dashed wildly through the open gate, and Jeff banged it shut after him.
"Mother," said Bun, "I believe I can train him to draw."
"Draw?" exclaimed Aunt Dorcas. "He draws well enough now. The trouble is to steer him. What'll your father say to that garden?"
"I'll tell him my 'horse' ran away," said Bun.
"Well," said his mother, "don't you bring him into this yard again. Do your pig-training on the pigs' side of the fence. Come, now; it's time you went on your errand."
"Come on, Rube," remarked Bun. "We'll see about a better harness."
"May I go too?" asked Jeff. "I'm all scratched up."
"Come on, then. You may haul the wagon if you want to."
In a few minutes more they were all away up the street; but the speckled pig over in the barn-yard seemed to be in a manner grunting his morning's experiences for the information of his three relatives. Every now and then, too, one of them answered him with a grunt that seemed to have surprise in it, for neither of them had ever before heard of or from a pig in harness.
"SAIL A BOAT."
MOVING DAY.
.
How the Postmistress wishes, on these bright May mornings, that she could turn herself into a fairy godmother!
"What would she do then," do you ask?
Why, print ever so many more of the dear little letters, bright stories, and tangled puzzles which every day are dropped for her into Uncle Sam's great mail-bags by the children's hands.
Her heart almost aches sometimes when she has to put aside so many clever, amusing, and affectionate letters which can not possibly be crowded into Our Post-office Box. Still, the dear little folks are too sensible to be vexed at the Postmistress, when she can not possibly help herself. You all know she must try to be fair in her treatment of each of her host of correspondents.
When you have anything interesting to write, do not mind even though you may have sent two or three letters already and they have not appeared. Write again.
Now for a word to the Exchangers. I am sorry that several complaints have come about careless little people who forget, when they send their exchanges, to inclose plain directions as to where they live; and, worse still, stories have been told about some who appear to be dishonorable. I will not believe that a single boy who reads Young People ever willfully cheats another boy. I am sure this can not happen. But I fear that some lads do not attend as they ought to the standing notice at the head of our exchange list, and I think some may not be sufficiently careful to fully prepay the postage on their budgets, and so the pretty treasures and rare curiosities are sent away to the Dead-letter Office.
Please be very careful about this in future.
Charlie's letter has been waiting its turn a long time, but his pleasant way of telling about what he saw on the other side of the Atlantic has lost nothing of its freshness, while lying in the Postmistress's drawer:
New York City.
I went up to the top of Mount Vesuvius, and it burned my feet, and almost suffocated me with smoke. We were about three hours going up. First we rode in a carriage for two hours, and then we took a car, something like the car at Mount Washington, except that the engine did not go along with us, but was left at the station from which we started, and we were pulled up by a wire rope. When we got out of the car, mamma and papa were carried in chairs on men's shoulders, but as I am only nine years old, a man took me on his back and carried me up. I had been carried in Switzerland on a man's back before this, when we crossed the Mer de Glace (that is French for sea of ice). The man said I was a heavy boy, but I think I am not so fat now as then.
I brought home a lot of foreign coin and stamps and curiosities. A little girl gave me a bullet at Waterloo that she said she found in the field. I drove over the road that Napoleon built across the Alps, and saw at the house where the monks live the big dogs that go out and find travellers when lost in the snow. I like to read about Napoleon. I went to his tomb when we were in Paris; it is all built of marble, and the church too.
We had awful bad weather coming home, and I had a big pitcher of water thrown all over me when asleep in my berth.
Charlie P. R.
Carlinville, Illinois.
I would like to tell Wickie J. M., of Ann Arbor, about two little brothers who are as fond of playing marbles as he is. Their names are Harry and Louis W., of this place. I am Harry. Mamma does not think marbles a very nice game, because we wear such big holes in the knees of our pants and stockings. We don't intend to play it very often any more, but are trying to get a collection of pretty ones. I would like to take a peep into that bag of beautiful marbles of yours, Wickie. We never play keeps.
Louis is six and I am eight years of age. We both go to school, and take lessons on the piano. The only pets we have now are four little kittens, whose eyes are just open. We once had two rabbits, but they were killed by dogs. The mother of our little kittens is a beautiful tortoise-shell and white cat. She does not like children very much, but she catches rats and mice. She always wants mamma to notice her when she has a mouse, and when she can will bring it to her and purr and rub around her until she speaks to her.
There are apple-trees in our yard, and every spring a great many robins and other birds come and build in them. Louis and I often feed them. One day we put some bread in some empty cigar-boxes and set them on the ground for the birds; but they did not eat out of the boxes, so we emptied the bread off the ground, and very soon we saw a number of birds eating it. I think they did not like the smell of tobacco which was about the boxes. Last year two robins had a nest of young ones in one of the trees. The old cat killed the mother, and the father fed and took care of the little robins until they were grown. The cat killed so many birds last year that we had to keep her shut up in the chicken-coop a great deal of the time.
I must tell you that we have a dear little blue-eyed brother nearly three years old, named Willis, whom we all think lovelier and sweeter than any other pet.
Mamma wishes me to tell you of a few funny things that Louis has said. One day, when he was about five years old, mamma was teaching him his Sunday-school lesson, and she asked the question, "How did Adam and Eve feel when the angel drove them out of the garden?" He answered, "Dus spendid." He had been told a story of a little boy who was lost. After the parents and friends had searched the woods and town in vain, he was found in the hay-loft fast asleep. Louis said, "When a little boy is lost, you must always look in the hay-loft, for that is a specially place for boys." One very warm and dusty day, while at play, Louis in some way got the top of his head quite covered with dirt and ashes. When mamma saw it, she said, "Why, Louis, I believe I could plant potatoes on the top of your head." He said, "But you mustn't; for if you should, when I go up town everybody would say, 'Hello, garden!'"
I have not learned to write with a pen, and I suppose you will think my letter is not written very nicely. If it will do to put in the Post-office Box, it will surprise and please my papa very much to see it there.
Harry W.
If the four new kittens should resemble their mother, I'm afraid the robins will have to fly away from your apple-trees, Harry. Thank your mamma for remembering those nice stories about Louis. Next time she must tell us some of your droll little speeches.