There came no answer, and he knocked again and called yet louder:
"Stephen, let us in. There's a man here dying."
But no one stirred within the house. "He's asleep," said one.
"Stephen—Stephen Orry—Stephen Orry—wake up, man—can't you hear us? Have you no bowels, that you'd keep the man out?"
"He's not at home—force the door," Kane Wade shouted.
One blow was enough. The door was fastened only by a hemp rope wound around a hasp on the outside, and it fell open with a crash. Then the men with the burden staggered into the house. They laid the insensible man on the floor, and there the light of the lamp that burned in the window fell upon his face.
"Lord-a-massy!" they cried, "it's Stephen Orry hisself."
CHAPTER X.
The End of Orry.
When the tumult was over, and all lives appeared to be saved, and nothing seemed lost save the two vessels—the schooner and the yawl, which still rose and fell on the Carick and the forked reef of the head—and the people separated, and the three old net weavers straggled back to their home, the crew of the Peveril went off with the Fairbrothers to Lague. Great preparations were already afoot there, for Asher had sent on a message ahead of them, and the maids were bustling about, the fire was rekindled in the kitchen, and the kettle was singing merrily. And first there was a mouthful of grog, steaming hot, for every drenched and dripping seaman, with a taste of toast to sweeten it. Then there was getting all the men into a change of dry clothes in order that they might wait for a bite of supper, and until beds were shuffled about and shakedowns fetched out. And high was the sport and great the laughter at the queer shifts the house was put to that it might find clean rigging for so many, on even so short a cruise. When the six Fairbrothers had lent all the change they had of breeches and shirts, the maids had to fish out from their trunks a few petticoats and some gowns, for the sailors still unfurnished. But the full kit was furnished out at length, and when the ship's company mustered down in the kitchen from the rooms above, all in their motley colors and queer mixture of garments, with their grizzled faces wiped dry, but their hair still wet and lank and glistening, no one could have guessed, from the loud laughter wherewith they looked each other over, that only an hour before Death itself had so nearly tricked them. Like noisy children let out of school they all were, now that they were snugly housed; for a seagoing man, however he may be kicked about on the sea, is not used to be downhearted on the land. And if two or three of the company continued to complain of their misfortunes, their growlings but lent zest to the merriment of the rest. So that they laughed loud when old Davy, cutting a most ridiculous figure in a linsey-wolsey petticoat and a linen bodice that would not meet over his hairy chest, began to grumble that he had followed the sea forty years and never been wrecked before, as if that were the best of all reasons why he should not come by such rough harm now, and a base advantage taken of him by Providence in his old age.