“There is a wreck!” exclaimed Scantlebray. “I thought so—and you, Mistress Orphing, you’re guilty.” He turned to the men. “We can make nothing of this affair with the lantern. Let us catch the sea-wolves falling on their prey.”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE SEA-WOLVES.
On the Doom Bar.
That very merchantman was wrecked, over which so many Cornish mouths had watered, ay, and Devonian mouths also, from the moment she had been sighted at St. Ives.
She had been entangled in the fog, not knowing where she was, all her bearings lost. The wind had risen, and when the day darkened into night the mist had lifted in cruel kindness to show a false glimmer, that was at once taken as the light of a ship beating up the Channel. The head of the merchantman was put about, a half-reefed topsail spread, and she ran on her destruction. With a crash she was on the bar. The great bowlers that roll without a break from Labrador rushed on behind, beat her, hammered her farther and farther into the sand, surged up at each stroke, swept the decks with mingled foam and water and spray.
The main-mast went down with a snap. Bent with the sail, at the jerk, as the vessel ran aground, it broke and came down—top-mast, rigging, and sail, in an enveloping, draggled mass. From that moment the captain’s voice was no more heard. Had he been struck by the falling mast and stunned or beaten overboard? or did he lie on deck enveloped and smothered in wet sail, or had he been caught and strangled by the cordage? None knew, none inquired. A wild panic seized crew and passengers alike. The chief mate had the presence of mind to order the discharge of signals of distress—but the order was imperfectly carried out. A flash, illuminating for a second the glittering froth and heaving sea, then a boom—almost stunned by the roar of the sea, and the screams of women and oaths of sailors, and then panic laid hold of the gunner also and he deserted his post.
The word had gone round, none knew from whom, that the vessel had been lured to her destruction by wreckers, and that in a few minutes she would be boarded by these wolves of the sea. The captain, who should have kept order, had disappeared, the mate was disregarded, there was a general sauve qui peut. A few women were on board. At the shock they had come on deck, some with children, and the latter were wailing and shrieking with terror. The women implored that they might be saved. Men passengers ran about asking what was to be done, and were beaten aside and cursed by the frantic sailors. A Portuguese nun was ill with sea-sickness, and sank on the deck like a log, crying to St. Joseph between her paroxysms. One man alone seemed to maintain his self-possession, a young man, and he did his utmost to soothe the excited women and abate their terrors. He raised the prostrate nun and insisted on her laying hold of a rope, lest in the swash of the water she should be carried overboard. He entreated the mate to exert his authority and bring the sailors to a sense of their duty, to save the women instead of escaping in the boat, regardful of themselves only.
Suddenly a steady star, red in color, glared out of the darkness, and between it and the wreck heaved and tossed a welter of waves and foam.
“There is land,” shouted the mate.