The gale passed on and struck our south-western coast, devastating the orchards of Cornwall and Devon and carpeting them with unborn fruit— dulcis vitæ ex-sortes. Amid this unthrifty waste and hard by, off Berry Head, the schooner One-and-All foundered and went down, not prematurely.
Foreseeing the end, her master had given orders to lower the whale-boat. The schooner might be apple-rotten, as her crew declared, but she carried a whale-boat which had inspired confidence for years and induced many a hesitating hand to sign articles; a seaworthy boat, to begin with, and by her owner's and master's care made as nearly unsinkable as might be, cork-fendered, fitted bow and stern with air tanks, well found in all her gear. Woe betide the seaman who abstracted an inch of rope from her to patch up the schooner's crazy rigging, or who left a life-belt lying loose around the deck or a rowlock unrestored to its due place after the weekly scrub-down!
The crew, then, launched the boat—half filling her in the process—and, tumbling in, pulled for the lee of the high land between Berry Head and Brixham. The master took the helm. He was steering without one backward look at the abandoned ship, when the oarsmen ceased pulling, all together, with a cry of dismay.
On the schooner's deck stood a child, waving his arms despairingly.
How he came there they could not tell, nor who he was. The master, not understanding their outcry, cursed and shouted to them to pull on. But already the starboard oars were holding water and the bowman bringing her around head-to-sea.
"Good Lord deliver us!"
The master carried a pair of binoculars, slung in a leathern case about his shoulders inside his oilskin coat.
They had been given to him by public subscription many years before, with a purse of gold, as a reward for saving life at sea. Since then he had forgotten in whisky-drinking and money-getting all the generous courage of his youth. His business for many years had been to play with human life for his own and his owner's profit, with no care but to keep on the right side of the law. The noble impulse which had earned him this testimonial was dead within him; to recover it he must have been born again. He might even, by keeping his pumps going and facing out the peril for another couple of hours, have run the One-and-All into Torbay and saved her; but he had not wanted to save her. Nevertheless, when he had run down to collect his few treasures from the cabin, these binoculars were his first and chiefest thought, for they attached him to something in his base career which had been noble. So careful was he, so fearful of facing eternity and judgment—if drown he must—without them, that, although the time was short and the danger instant, and the man by this time a coward, he had stripped off oilskin coat and pea-jacket to indue them again and button them over his treasure.
Yet either his hands were numb or the sea-water had penetrated these wraps and damped the tag of the leathern case, making it difficult to open. When at length he tugged the binoculars free and sighted them, it was to catch one glimpse, and the last, of the child waving from the bulwarks.
"Good Lord deliver us!"