“Yes, yes—the coast-guard is down by the light-house. The men there saw her before she struck. They kept signalling till it fell dark. They had sent off before that.”
She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on the stranger. Taffy turned and stared too. The man’s face was running with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that they also were scarlet.
He helped the poor wretch to a chair.
“Bandages: can you manage?” She nodded, and stepped to a cupboard. The sailor began to wail again like an infant.
“See—above the temple here: the cut isn’t serious.” Taffy took down a lantern and lit it. The candle shone red through the smears his fingers left on the horn panes. “I must go and help, if you can manage.”
“I can manage,” she answered quietly.
He strode out, and closing the door behind him with an effort, faced the gale again. Down in the lee of the light-house the lamps of the coast-guard carriage gleamed foggily through the rain. The men were there discussing, George among them. He had just galloped up.
The Chief Officer went off to question the survivor, while the rest began their search. They searched all that night; they burned flares and shouted; their torches dotted the cliffs. After an hour the Chief Officer returned. He could make nothing of the sailor, who had fallen silly from exhaustion or the blow on his head; but he divided his men into three parties, and they began to hunt more systematically. Taffy was told off to help the westernmost gang and search the rocks below the light-house. Once or twice he and his comrades paused in their work, hearing, as they thought, a cry for help. But when they listened, it was only one of the other parties hailing.
The gale began to abate soon after midnight, and before dawn had blown itself out. Day came, filtered slowly through the wrack of it to the south-east; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on the cliff above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat, with an arm thrown out and pointing eastward. He turned and galloped off in that direction.
They scrambled up and followed. To their astonishment, after following the cliffs for a few hundred yards, he headed inland, down and across the very slope up which Taffy had crawled with the sailor.