There was nothing to be seen seaward; the bay, too, was empty. I stood for a little while watching the cloud of foam made by the swell where it struck upon the low, black ledge of what we call in those parts Deadlow Rock, and upon the westernmost of the two fangs of reef, some little distance away from the Rock, and named by the sailors hereabouts the Twins; I say I stood watching this small play of white water and hearkening for another rumble of thunder; but all remained hushed—not a breath of air—no glance of dumb lightning.
On my way to the parlour I looked in upon my mother, now an old lady, whose growing infirmities obliged her to keep her bed till the day was advanced. I kissed and greeted her.
'It seems a very dark melancholy morning, Hugh,' says she.
'Ay, indeed,' I answered. 'I never remember the like of such a sky as is hanging over the water. Did you hear the thunder just now, mother?'
She answered no, but then, to be sure, she was a little deaf.
'I hope, Hugh,' said she, with a shake of her head and smoothing her snow-white hair with a hand that slightly trembled, 'that it may not end in a lifeboat errand. I had a wretched dream last night. I saw you enter the boat and sail into the bay. The sun was high and all was bright and clear; but on a sudden the weather grew black—dark as it now is. The wind swept the water, which leaped high and boiled. You and the men strove hard to regain the land, and then gave up in despair, and you put right before the wind, and the boat sped like an arrow into the gloom and haze; and just before she vanished a figure rose by your side where you sat steering, and gazed at me thus'—she placed her forefinger upon her lip in the posture of one commanding silence. 'It was your father, Hugh: his face was full of entreaty and despair.' She sighed deeply. 'How clearly does one sometimes see in dreams!' she added. 'Never was your father's face in his dear life more distinct to my eyes than in this vision.'
'A Friday night's dream told on a Saturday!' said I, laughing; 'no chance of its coming true, though. No fear of the Janet'—for that was the name of our lifeboat—'blowing out to sea. Besides, the bay is empty. There can be no call. And supposing one should come and this weather should burst into a hurricane, I'd rather be afloat in the Janet than in the biggest ship out of London or Liverpool docks;' and so saying I left her, never giving her dream or her manner another thought.
After I had breakfasted I walked down to the esplanade to view the Janet as she lay snug in her house. I was her coxswain, and how it happened that I filled that post I will here explain.
My father, who had been a captain in the merchant service, had saved money, and invested his little fortune in a couple of ships, in one of which, fifteen years before the date of this story, he had embarked to take a run in her from the river Thames to Swansea, where she was to fill up with cargo for a South American port. She was a brand-new ship, and he wished to judge of her sea-going qualities. When she had rounded the North Foreland the weather thickened; it came on to blow a gale of wind; the vessel took the ground somewhere near the North Sand Head, and of twenty-three people aboard of her fifteen perished, my father being among those who were drowned.
His brother—my uncle, George Tregarthen—was a well-to-do merchant in the City of London, and in memory of my father's death, which grieved him to the soul, and which, with the loss of the others, had come about through delay in sending help from the land—for they fired guns and burnt flares, and the adjacent light-ship signalled with rockets that a vessel was ashore; but all to no purpose, for when the rescue was attempted the ship was breaking up, and most of her people were corpses, as I have said—my uncle, by way of memorializing his brother's death, at his own cost presented the little town in which my father had lived with a lifeboat, which he called the Janet, after my mother. I was then too young to take a part in any services she rendered; but by the time I had reached the age of twenty I was as expert as the smartest boatman on our part of the coast, and as I claimed a sort of captaincy of the lifeboat by virtue of her as a family gift, I replaced the man who had been her coxswain, and for the last two years had taken her helm during the six times she had been called upon; and not a little proud was I to be able to boast that, under my charge, the Janet in those two years had rescued twenty-three men, five women, and two children from certain death.