ON A LEE SHORE.
It is all safe, then; the captain will stand in a little longer; when suddenly, in the lull of the storm, a hoarse murmur is heard—surely the sound of the sea beating upon rocks! Yes! look! a white gleam upon the water! Breakers ahead! breakers ahead! Oh, a very knell of doom! The cry rings through the ship, ‘Down, down with the helm—round her to!’ Too late, too late! A crash, a shudder from stem to stern of the stout ship, the shriek of many voices in their agony, green seas sweeping over the vessel, and soon broken timbers, bales of cargo, and lifeless bodies scattered along the beach, while the shattered remnant of the hull is torn still further to pieces with each insweep of the mighty seas as they roll it to and fro among the rocks. Fearful and crafty the smile that darkened the face of the willing murderer who was leading the horse with the false light as he heard the crash of the vessel and the shrieks of the drowning crew! Fearful the smile that darkened the faces of the men and women waiting on the beach as they came out from their places, ready to struggle and fight among themselves for any spoil that might come ashore! A homeward-bound ship from the Indies! Great good fortune—rich spoil! Bale after bale is seized upon by the wreckers, and dragged high upon the beach out of the way of the surf. But, see! a sailor clinging to a bit of broken mast! With his last conscious effort he gains a footing on the shore, staggers forward, and falls. Is he alive? Not now! Why did that fearful old woman kneel upon his chest and cover his mouth with her cloak? Dead men tell no tales—claim no property!”
No fiction of the fancy, this! Only the last great day will ever reveal how many souls have perished at the hands of those who should have succored them. Think of a man and his wife reaching the shore after an exhausting struggle; the man leaving his wife in a sheltered nook while he goes in search of human habitations, and returning after a few moments to find his wife, a plundered, naked corpse! And yet, such practices were tolerably common, even within the range of a century past!
In striking contrast with the heartless wreckers are those known on the British coast as “hovellers.” These put out to sea in stormy weather to ascertain if vessels in the offing are in need of anything, or are otherwise crippled: and many a ship have they saved from wreck by their timely aid.
It appears strange that, among a people so dependent upon the sea as the English, no regularly organized methods of diminishing the losses by wreck existed till within the present century. Yet such is the fact. A hundred years ago, there was no boat that could safely venture in a heavy sea; and if, perchance, some humane people wished to succor a vessel in distress, few were the means and terrible the risks. The graphic pen of Dickens, in this abridged narrative, will illustrate the case. The scene is Yarmouth, England:
“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 tattooed 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 off short, 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