The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Wesley was glad to accept a seat in the stern sheets of the small boat which was run down to the water, not twenty yards from the building shed; and when he returned with the three boatmen to that part of the coast from which he had walked, he found the man to whose aid he had come sitting up and able to say a word or two to the revenue man, who was kneeling beside him, having just taken his empty rum bottle from his mouth.

Old Garvice looked as if he felt that he had been brought from his work under false pretences. He plodded slowly across the intervening piece of beach a long way behind Mr. Wesley, and the Preventive man had reported the progress to recovery made by the other before the Garvice family had come up. The Garvices had had more than a nodding acquaintance with the revenue authorities before this morning.

“John Bennet is a bigger rascal than I thought, and that's going far,” said the Preventive man when Wesley told him that no message had been given at the Port. “If I come face to face with him, them that's nigh will see some blood-letting. Why, e'en Ned Garvice, that I've been trying to lay a trap for this twelve year, lets bygones be bygones when there's a foundered man to succour.”

“Where is 'un?” enquired the old man with pointed satire, looking round with a blank face.

The bedraggled man sitting on the beach was able to smile.

“Wish I'd had the head to bid you ask Neddy Garvice to carry hither a bottle of his French brandy—ay, the lot that you run ashore when the cutter fouled on the bank,” said the Preventive man.

“Oh, that lot? Had I got a billet from you, Freddy Wise, I'd ha' put a stoup from the kegs o' the Gorgon into my pocket,” said the old man wickedly. Mr. Wesley did not know that the Gorgon was a large ship that had come ashore the previous year, and had been stripped bare by the wreckers. “Oh, ay; the Gorgon for brandy and the Burglarmaster for schnapps, says I, and I sticks to that object o' creed, Freddy, whatsoe'er you says.” The Bourghermeister was the name of another wreck whose stores the revenue men had been too slow to save some years before.

But while these pleasantries were being exchanged between the men Wesley was looking at the one in whose interests he was most concerned. He was lying with his head supported by a crag on which Fred Wise had spread his boat cloak. His face was frightfully pallid, and his forehead was like wax, only across his temple there was a long ugly gash, around which the blood had coagulated. His eyes were closed except at intervals when he started, and they opened suddenly and began to stare rather wildly. His arms hung down and his hands were lying limp on the beach palms up, suggesting the helplessness of a dead man. He was clearly a large and strongly built fellow, who could sail a ship and manage a crew, using his head as well as his hands.

The others were looking at him critically; he was so far recovered that they did not seem to think there was any imperative need for haste in the matter of carrying him to a bed; although they criticised him as if he were dead.

“Worser lads ha' gone down and heard of for nevermore,” said the old fisherman. “Did he know that Squire Trevelyan buries free of all duty all such as the sea washes up 'tween tides? That's the Vantage to be drowned on these shores; but the Squire keeps that knowledge like a solemn secret; fears there'd be a rush—they'd be jammin' one t'other amongst crags as for who'd come foremost to his own funeral.”