"Lord-a-massy, it's the Carick," screamed Davy.
"Let go the anchor," roared the skipper.
But it was too late even for that last refuge. At the next moment the schooner struck heavily; she was on the reef in Ramsey Bay, and pitching miserably with every heave of the sea.
The two bright lights that led the vessel to her ruin came from the two little bays that lie under Maughold Head. The light in Port-y-Vullin was in the hut of Stephen Orry, who had lit his lamp and placed it in the window when he went out to bid farewell to Michael Sunlocks, thinking no evil thereby to any man but only that it would guide him home again when he should return in the boat. The light in Port Lague was from the cottage of three old net weavers, who had lived there without woman or girl, or chick or child, through more than forty years. Two or three were brothers, Danny and Jemmy Kewley, both over seventy years old, and their housemate, who was ninety, and had been a companion of their father, was known as Juan McLady. Danny and Jemmy still worked at the looms year in and year out, every working hour of the day and night, and Juan, long past other labor, cooked and sewed and cleaned for them. All three had grown dim of sight, and now groped about like three old earthworms. Every year for five years past they had needed an extra candle to work by, so that eight tallow dips, made in their own iron mould, swung from the open roof rafters over the meshes on that night when the Peveril struck on the Carick.
It was supper-time, though old Danny and old Jemmy were still at the looms. Old Juan had washed out a bowl of potatoes, filled the pot with them, hung them on the chimney hook and stirred the peats. Then to make them boil the quicker he had gone out with the tongs to the side of the house for some dry gorse from the gorse heap. While there he had peered through the darkness of the bay for the light on the Point of Ayre, and had missed it, and on going back he had said:
"It's out again. That's the third time inside a month. I'll go bail something will happen yet."
He had got no answer, and so sat down on the three-legged stool to feed the fire with gorse lifted on the tongs. When the potatoes had boiled he had carried them to the door to drain them, and then, with the click-clack of the levers behind him, he had thought he heard, over the deep boom and plash of the sea in front, a voice like a cry. Going indoors he had said, "Plague on the water-bailiff and commissioners and kays and councils. I'll go bail there's smuggling going on under their very noses. I'd have the law on the lot of them, so I would."
Old Danny and old Jemmy knew the temper of their housemate—that he was never happy save when he had somebody to higgle with—so they paid no heed to his mutterings. But when Juan, having set the potatoes to steam with a rag spread over them, went out for the salt herrings, to where they hung to dry on a stick against the sunny side of the porch, he was sure that above the click of the levers, the boom and plash of the sea and the whistle of the wind, he could hear a clamorous shout of many voices, like a wild cry of distress. Then he hobbled back with a wizzened face of deadly pallor and told what he had heard, and the shuttles were stopped, and there was silence in the little house.
"It went by me same as the wind," said old Juan.
"Maybe it was the nightman," said old Danny.