“Well, you would not have been to blame, Zaimes, as you knew nothing about it until after we had started.”
“No, you had been gone half an hour before someone from the village came up and told them in the kitchen. Then one of the servants brought me the news, and I ran down like a madman, without even stopping to get a hat. Then I found that most of the men had gone up to the cliff to keep you in sight, and I went up there and waited with them until you were nearly back again. Once or twice, as you were running in to the pier, I thought the yacht was gone.”
“That was the worst bit, Zaimes. The sea came tumbling over her stern, and I was washed off my feet two or three times. I almost thought that she was going down head-foremost. Well, I am glad I was at home this morning. I would not have missed it for anything.”
“No, it is a good thing, now it is done, and something to be proud of. I am told very few of the fishermen thought that you would ever come back again.”
“They didn’t know the boat as we did, Zaimes. I felt sure she would go through anything; and, besides, Tom kicked out the lower plank of the bulwarks on each side, so as to help her to free herself from water as it came on board, and flush-decked as she is, there was nothing to carry away; but she hasn’t taken a cupful of water down below.”
In the evening the captain of the barque came up, and Horace learned from him that she was on her way from New Orleans laden with cotton.
“The ship and cargo are insured,” the captain said; “and, as far as that goes, it is a good thing she is knocked into match-wood. She was a dull sailer at the best of times, and when laden you could not get her to lay anywhere near the wind. She would have done better than she did, though, hadn’t her rudder got damaged somehow in the night. She ought to have clawed off the shore easy enough; but, as you saw, she sagged to leeward a foot for every foot she went for’ard. I was part-owner in her, and I am not sorry she has gone. We tried to sell her last year, but they have been selling so many ships out of the navy that we could not get anything of a price for her; but as she was well insured, I shall get a handier craft next time. I was well off shore when the storm began to get heavy last night, and felt no anxiety about our position till the rudder went wrong. But when I saw the coast this morning, I felt sure that unless there was a change in the weather nothing could save her. Well, if it hadn’t been for the loss of those seven hands, I should, thanks to you, have nothing to complain of.”
Fires had been lit on the shore as night came on; but except fragments of the wreck and a number of bales of cotton nothing was recovered. In the morning the captain and crew left Seaport, two hands remaining behind to look after the cotton and recover as much as they could. Two days later Mr. Beveridge returned home.
“I saw in the paper before I left town, Horace, an account of your going out to the wreck and saving the lives of those, on board. I am very glad I was not here, my lad. I don’t think I should have let you go; but as I knew nothing about it until it was all over, I had no anxiety about it, and felt quite proud of you when I read the account. The money was well laid out on that yacht, my boy. I don’t say that I didn’t think so before, but I certainly think so now. However, directly I read it I wrote to the Lifeboat Society and told them that I would pay for a boat to be placed here. Then there will be no occasion to tempt Providence the next time a vessel comes ashore on this part of the coast. You succeeded once, Horace, but you might not succeed another time; and knowing what a sea sets in here in a south-westerly gale, I quite tremble now at the thought of your being out in it in that little craft.”
The news that Mr. Beveridge had ordered a lifeboat for the port gave great satisfaction among the fishermen, not so much perhaps because it would enable them to go out to wrecks, as because any of their own craft approaching the harbour in bad weather, and needing assistance, could then receive it.