“Carracks have got her!”
“Please God a general cargo!”
“Shan’t be long now, my dears, pickin’s for one and all.”
Men tied ropes round their waists, gave the ends to their women-folk and crouched like runners awaiting the signal.
A dark object was tossed high on the crest of a breaker, dropped on the beach, dragged back and rolled up again.
Half a dozen men scampered towards it and dragged it in, a ship’s pinnace smashed to splinters. Part of a carved rail came ashore, a poop-ladder, a litter of spars and a man with no head.
These also were hauled above the surf line; the wreckers wanted a clear beach. Women set to work on the spars, slashing off tackle, quarreling over the possession of valuable ropes and block. A second batch of spars washed in with three more bodies tangled amongst them, battered out of shape. Then a mass of planking, timbers, barrel staves, some bedding and, miraculously, a live dog. Suddenly the surf went black with bobbing objects; the cargo was coming in—barrels.
A sea that will play bowls with half-ton rocks will toss wine casks airily. The breakers flung them on the beach; they trundled back down the slope and were spat up again. The men rushed at them, whooping; rushed right into the surf up to their waists, laid hold of a prize and clung on; were knocked over, sucked under, thrown up and finally dragged out by the women and ancients pulling like horses on the life-lines. A couple of tar barrels came ashore among the others. Teresa, who was much in evidence, immediately claimed them, and with the help of some old ladies piled the loose planking on the wreck of the pinnace, saturated the whole with tar and set it afire to light the good work. In a few minutes the gale had fanned up a royal blaze. That done, she knotted a salvaged halliard about Bohenna, and with Davy, the second farm hand, Teresa and the two boys holding on to the shore end, he went into the scramble with the rest.
Barrels were spewed up by every wave, the majority stove in, but many intact. The fisher-folk fastened on them like bulldogs, careless of risk. One man was stunned, another had his leg broken. An old widow, having nobody to work for her and maddened at the sight of all this treasure-trove going to others, suddenly threw sanity to the winds, dashed into the surf, butted a man aside and flung herself on a cask. The cask rolled out with the back-drag, the good dame with it. A breaker burst over them and they went out of sight in a boil of sand, gravel and foam. Bohenna plunged after them, was twice swept off his feet, turned head over heels and bumped along the bottom, choking, the sand stinging his face like small shot. He groped out blindly, grasped something solid and clung on. Teresa, feeling more than she could handle on her line, yelled for help. A dozen sprang to her assistance, and with a tug they got Bohenna out, Bohenna clinging to the old woman, she still clinging to her barrel. She lay on the sand, her arms about her prize, three parts drowned, spitting salt water at her savior.
He laughed. “All right, mother; shan’t snatch it from ’ee. ’Tis your plunder sure ’nough.” Took breath and plunged back into the surf. The flow of cargo stopped, beams still came in, a top mast, more shattered bodies, some lengths of cable, bedding, splinters of cabin paneling and a broken chest, valueless odds and ends. The wreckers set about disposing of the sound casks; men staggered off carrying them on rough stretchers, women and children rolled others up the beach, the coils of rope disappeared. Davy, it turned out, had brought three farm horses and left them tied up in a pilchard-press. These were led down to the beach now, loaded (two barrels a horse), and taken home by the men.