Elsley Vavasour—through whose spectacles, rather than with my own eyes, I have been looking at the wreck, and to whose account, not to mine, the metaphors and similes of the last two pages must be laid—took the latter course; not that he was not awed, calmed, and even humbled, as he felt how poor and petty his own troubles were, compared with that great tragedy: but in his fatal habit of considering all matters in heaven and earth as bricks and mortar for the poet to build with, he considered that he had "seen enough;" as if men were sent into the world to see and not to act; and going home too excited to sleep, much more to go and kiss forgiveness to his sleeping wife, sat up all night, writing "The Wreck," which may be (as the reviewer in "The Parthenon" asserts) an exquisite poem; but I cannot say that it is of much importance.
So the delicate genius sate that night, scribbling verses by a warm fire, and the rough Lieutenant settled himself down in his Mackintoshes, to sit out those weary hours on the bare rock, having done all that he could do, and yet knowing that his duty was, not to leave the place as long as there was a chance of saving—not a life, for that was past all hope—but a chest of clothes, or a stick of timber. There he settled himself, grumbling, yet faithful; and filled up the time with sleepy maledictions against some old admiral, who had—or had not—taken a spite to him in the West Indies thirty years before, else he would have been a post captain by now, comfortably in bed on board a crack frigate, instead of sitting all night out on a rock, like an old cormorant, etc. etc. Who knows not the woes of ancient coast-guard lieutenants?
But as it befell, Elsley Vavasour was justly punished for going home, by losing the most "poetical" incident of the whole night.
For with the coast-guardsmen many sailors stayed. There was nothing to be earned by staying: but still, who knew but they might be wanted? And they hung on with the same feeling which tempts one to linger round a grave ere the earth is filled in, loth to give up the last sight, and with it the last hope. The ship herself, over and above her lost crew, was in their eyes a person to be loved and regretted. And Gentleman Jan spoke, like a true sailor—
"Ah, poor dear! And she such a beauty, Mr. Brown; as any one might see by her lines, even that way off. Ah, poor dear!"
"And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not ready, Mr. Beer," says the serious elderly chief boatman. "Eh, Captain Willis?"
"The Lord has had mercy on them, I don't doubt." answers the old man, in his quiet sweet voice. "One can't but hope that he would give them time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead—that is, once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,—why, I know well how quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning, and the light of conscience, too, all one's life in one minute, like—"
"It arn't the men I care for," says Gentleman Jan; "they're gone to heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle: but the poor dear ship, d'ye see, Captain Willis, she ha'n't no heaven to go to, and that's why I feel for her so."
Both the old men shake their heads at Jan's doctrine, and turn the subject off.
"You'd better go home, Captain, 'fear of the rheumatics. It's a rough night for your years; and you've no call, like me."