St. Winifred's; or, The World of School

by F. W. Farrar

Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone—restless, aimless, and miserable—“mooning,” as the boys would have called it—unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that it was folly in him to nurse this long-continued and hopeless melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he did manage to reach it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.

This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his way, as best he could, over rocks and shingle round the bluff which shut in one side of the little bay on which he stood, and along the narrow line of beach, to Saint Winifred’s head. This was possible sometimes, and he fancied that the tide was sufficiently far out to enable him to do it now. At any rate herein lay, so far as he saw, his only chance of safety.

Down the cliff then he climbed once more, and though it was some ninety feet high he found no difficulty in doing this, with care, till he came to a place where its surface was precipitous for a height of some ten feet, worn smooth by the beating of the waves. Holding with his hands to the edge, he let himself fall down this height, and found himself standing, a little shaken though unhurt, in a small pebbly bay or indentation of the shore formed by a curve in the line of cliffs, with a series of headlands and precipices trending away on one side far to his right, and with the Ness of Saint Winifred’s reaching out to his left. Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and get home.

There was no time to be lost, and he ran with all his speed over the loose stones towards the bluff, letting the unlucky straw hat drop on the shore, as it had no string, and it impeded him to be obliged to hold it on with one hand. Reaching the end of the shingle, he stumbled with difficulty over some scattered rocks slimy with ooze and seagrass, hoping with intense hope that when he rounded the projection of cliff, he would see a line of beach, narrow indeed, but still wide enough to allow of his running along it before the tide had come in, and reaching some part of Saint Winifred’s Head which he might be able to scale by means of a sheep-path, or with the help of hands and knees. Very quickly he reached the corner, and hardly dared to look; but when he did look, a glance showed him that but slender hope was left. At one spot the tide had already reached the foot of the cliffs; but if he could get to that spot while the water was yet sufficiently shallow to allow him to run through it, he trusted that he might yet be saved. The place was far-off, but he ran and ran; and ever as he ran the place seemed to get farther and farther, and his knees failed him for fatigue, as he sank at every step in the noisy and yielding mixture of sand and pebbles.

Reader, have you ever run a race with the sea? If not, accept the testimony of one who has had to do it more than once, that it is a very painful and exciting race. I ran it once successfully with one who, though we then escaped, has since been overtaken and swallowed up by the great dark waves of that other sea, whose tides are ever advancing upon us, and must sooner or later absorb us all—the great dark waves of Death. But to take your life in your hand, and run and to know that the sea is gaining upon you, and that, however great the speed with which fear wings your feet, your subtle hundred-handed enemy is intercepting you with its many deep inlets, and does not bate an instant’s speed, or withhold itself a hair’s-breadth for all your danger—is an awful thing to feel. And then to see that it has intercepted you is worst of all; it is a moment not to be forgotten. And all this was what Kenrick had to undergo. He ran until he panted for breath, and stumbled for very weariness—but he was too late. A broad sheet of water now bathed the bases of the cliff, and the waves, as though angry with the opposing breeze, were leaping up with a frantic hiss, and deluging the rocks with sheets of spray and foam.

Experience had taught him with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which he strode.

His face wetted with the salt dew, his brown hair scattered on the rising wind, he flew rather than ran once more to the place where he had descended, to renew the wild attempt to scale the cliff which seemed to afford him the only shadow of a hope. Yet a mere glance might have been enough to show him that this hope was vain. Both at that spot, and as far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him another appalling fact—namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed, and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far above his head.

It was too late to curse his rashness and folly, nor would he even try to face his frightful situation till he had thought of every conceivable means by which to escape. A friend of mine had, and I suppose still has, a pen-and-ink sketch which made one shudder to look at it. All that you see is a long sea-wall, apparently the side of some stone pier, so drawn as to give the impression of great height, and the top of it not visible in the picture; by the side of this ripples and plashes a long dark reach of sea water, lazily waving the weeds which it has planted in the crevices of stone, and extending, like the wall itself, farther than you can guess. The only living thing in the picture is a single spent, shaggy dog, its paws rested for a moment on a sort of hollow in the wall, and half its dripping body emergent from the dark water. It is staring up with a look of despondent exhaustion, yet mute appeal. The sketch powerfully recalls and typifies the exact position in which poor Kenrick: now found himself placed—before him the hungry, angry darkening sea, behind him the inaccessible bastions of forbidding cliff. It is a horrible predicament, and those can most thrillingly appreciate it who, like the author, have been in it themselves.

There was yet one thing, and one thing only, to be tried, and it was truly the refuge of desperation. Kenrick was an excellent swimmer; many a time in bathing at Saint Winifred’s, even when he was a little boy, he had struck out boldly far into the bay, even as far as the huge tumbling red buoy, that spent its restless life in “ever climbing with the climbing wave.” If he could swim for pleasure, could he not swim for life? It was true that the swim before him was, beyond all comparison, farther and more hazardous than he had ever dreamt of. But swimming is an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay between him and—what he would not think of yet.

So, in the wintry air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer’s triumphant motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and did look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far—and he now felt that he could not—how could he ever land at such a spot? Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks? And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart, the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.