Up and down the Solent channel the tide pours at a furious speed; and the rush of the strong ebb down the narrows, flushed with the cross–tide from St. Helenʼs, combs and pants out into Christchurch Bay, above the floodmark of two hours since. This great eddy, or reflux, is called the “double–tide;” and an awkward power it has for any poor vessel to fall into.
All that night it blew and blew, harder and harder yet; the fishermenʼs boats on the beach were caught up, and flung against the gravel–cliff; the stout men, if they ventured out, were snatched up as a mother snatches a child from the wheels of a carriage; the oaks of the wood, after wailing and howling, as they had done to a thousand tempests, found that outcry go for nothing, and with it went themselves. Seven hundred towers of Natureʼs building showed their roots to the morning. The old moon expired at O·32; and many a gap the new moon found, where its mother threw playful shadows. The sons of Ytene are not swift–witted, nor deeply read in the calendar; yet they are apt to mark and heed the great convulsions of nature. The old men used to date their weddings from the terrible winter of 1787; the landmark of the young menʼs annals is the storm of 1859.
All that night, young Robert Garnet was strung by some strange tension. Of course he could not sleep, amid that fearful uproar, although he was plunged and lost from sight in Octavius Pellʼs great chair. The only luxury Pell possessed—and that somehow by accident—was a deep, and soft, and mighty chair, big enough for three people. After one of the windows came in, which it did, with a crash, about ten oʼclock, scattering Pellʼs tobacco–jars, and after they had made it good with books and boxes and a rug, so that the wind was filtered through it, John Rosedew and his curate sat on a couple of hard old Windsors, watching the castle of Hurst. Thence would come the signal flash, if any hapless bark should be seen driving over the waters. There they sat, John Rosedew talking, as he could talk to a younger man, when his great heart was moved to its depth, and the multitude of his mind in march, and his soul anticipating it: talking so that Octave Pell, following his silver tones, even through that turmoil, utterly forgot the tempest, and the lapse of hours, and let fall on his lap the pipe, which John had made him smoke.
The thunder of the billows waxing, for the wind was now south–west, began to drown the roar of the gale, and a storm of foam was flying, when the faint gleam of a gun at sea was answered by artilleryʼs flash from the walls of old Henry the Eighth. Both men saw the landward light leap up and stream to leeward; but only the younger one descried the weak appeal from the offing.
“Where is she, Pell? Have you any idea?”
“She is away, sir, here to the right: dead in the eye of the wind.”
“Then may our God and Father pity our brothers and our sisters!”
Out ran both those strong good men, leaving poor Bob (as they thought) asleep in the depth of the easy–chair. The little cottage was partly sheltered by an elbow of the cliff; otherwise it would have been flying up the bunney long ago. The moment the men came out of the shelter, they were driven one against the other, and both against the cliff.
“My castle will go at high–water,” said Pell, though none could hear him; “but I shall be back in time enough to get the old woman out.”
Then, as far as Pell could make out in the fierce noise and the darkness, John Rosedew begged him to go back, while himself went on alone. For it was Johnʼs especial business; he had procured the lifeboat, chosen the crew, and kept the accounts; and he thought himself responsible for any wreck that happened. But what good on earth could Pell do, and all his chattels in danger?