A Dream of the North Sea

JANUARY IN THE NORTH SEA!

A bitter morning, with light, powdery snow spotting here and there a livid background; grey seas travelling fast, and a looming snow-cloud gradually drooping down. The gulls are mad with hunger, and a cloud of them skirl harshly over the taffrail of a stout smack that forges fast through the bleak sea. The smack is coated with ice from the mast-head to the water's edge; there is not much of a sea, but when a wave does throw a jet of water over the craft it freezes like magic, and adds yet another layer to a heap which is making the deck resemble a miniature glacier.

The smack has a flag hoisted, but alas! the signal that should float bravely is twisted into a shabby icicle, and it would be lowered but for the fact that the halliards will not run through the lump of ice that gathers from the truck to the mast-head. All round to the near horizon a scattered fleet of snow-white smacks are lingering, and they look like a weird squadron from a land of chilly death. On the deck of the smack that has the flag a powerful young man is standing, and by his side—by all that is astounding—is an enormous man with an enormous beard and a voice that booms through the Arctic stillness. That is our new scene.

I am not going to play at mystery, for you know as well as I do that the young man named in that gloomy overture was Lewis Ferrier, and that his companion was good Tom Lennard;—though what brought the giant out into the frozen desolation I shall not say just yet.

Yes, Lewis kept his word, and at the time of which we are speaking he had been three weeks at work on the Bank. He had now three cloth coats on over his under-wear, and, over all, a leather coat made at Cronstadt, and redolent of Russia even after weeks of hard wear. With all this he could not do much more than keep warm. Tom was equipped in similar fashion, and both men wore that air of stoical cheerfulness which marks our maligned race, and which tells of the spirit that has sent our people as masters over all the earth.

"Let's come down and have coffee with the men, Tom. I'm going to have a try at that Lowestoft smack if the snow only keeps away."

"Right, my adventurer; I'm with you. But I'm not going to let you run any more risks of that life of yours, my bold mariner. Hah! I'm here to take care of you, and you've got to be very meek, or I'll set up an opposition shop. Don't you think I can? Didn't I do up that skipper's arm in his sling after you took off his finger? Eh! Beware of a rival. Ah-h!"

"Yes, Thomas, but if you administer turpentine for pleurisy, as you did to the big Yarmouth fellow, we shall have to turn on a special coroner to attend on you."

"My good what's-his-name?—Admirable Hitchin—ah-h Admirable Crichton! that child of Nature took the turpentine of his own accord. I left it with orders that the application should be external, and it was to be rubbed in until we got back with the emulsion and the proper liniment; he tastes it, and finds it hot; he swallows the lot by degrees, and he doesn't die—he gets well. How am I to blame! I take credit for a magnificent cure, sir. If you say two words, I'll advertise Lennard's miraculous emulsion in every journal in town when we get back."

"Coffee, skipper, coffee. The shipwrecked mariners demand refreshment," boomed Thomas.

Ah! that coffee! Thick, bitter-sweet, greasy with long stewing! What a fluid it is—or rather what a solid! Its insolent stodginess has only a surface resemblance to a fluid; yet it is a comfort on snowy mornings, and our wanderers took to it kindly.

Lewis had laid himself out to be merry, and several grinning faces peered from the bunks with kindly welcome as he took his seat on a rickety fish-box. The skipper asked, "Shall the steward fetch your bread in here, sir? You can't manage ours."

"All right. How are the men aft?"

"The young fellow from the Achilles was jabbering a bit again. By the way, you knew Tom Betts had come away in the old Achilles, didn't you, sir?"

"What Tom Betts? Oh yes. Man with concussion of the brain, wasn't it?"

"So I heerd, sir. He told everybody at home how you saved him, and when he said how he thought he'd gone to heaven he set all the women in the Mission Hall a-pipin' of their eye. He's on the Lord's side now, sir. You done that." "Well, I'm a queer customer to do anything of the kind, skipper. I'm only glad I got him sewed up soon enough, but my business ends there."

"You're jest as good as some as makes a frap about bein' good. I think, sir, you put's on some of that light-come-go-away kind of a game."

"Never mind; we'll only hope we'll have no more cases like that exactly. I don't know how we should have managed if there had been such another last week."

"That was a strongish sea, and we're sure of more."

You never can get a North Sea man to own that any weather is very bad. Years after a really bad gale he may give the wind credit for being in earnest, but usually he talks in a patronizing way of the elements, using diminutives, and trying to make light of the trouble so long as it lasts. There had been hard weather since Lewis came out, and, though he had ample stores and appliances now, he found that he was hampered by the limitations of space as he was on board the schooner. Life had been very rough for the young fellow and his burly worshipper since they came out, and they only kept each other up by a mutual sham of the most elaborate character. After breakfast, Lewis gave orders to run as close as might be safe to the thick of the fleet; the smack was practically under his command, and he took her where he thought he might be most needed. One of his patients in the after-cabin was muttering uneasily, for there was some feverishness; the other man had come down with a crash on the icy deck, and the shock had apparently caused concussion of the spine, for he could not move, and he was fed as if he were a child. Lewis bent over the helpless seaman, and spoke kindly. The man sighed, "Thank God I am where I am, sir. That long plaister begins to burn a bit, but I a'most like it. There's little funny feelings runs down my arms and legs."

"All right! You'll soon be better. Did you work all through the gale?"

"We was about for two nights and a day, sir, and every one of us with the ulcers right up the arms. It was warm business, I can tell you, sir. My ulcers are all going away now, with this warm cabin, but they were throbbing all night before. When I come down such a crack I was makin' a run for the taickle, for fear we might let the gear drop, and I saw a flash in my eyes, and nothing more till I was aboard here."

"You were trawling when that breeze started?"

"Yes. We mustn't mind weather when the market's to be considered. Tell me now, sir—you've got time, haven't you, sir? Talkin' of the market, and I've been nearly dead, and not out o' the muck yet—does the people know what us chaps gets for fish?"

"They never think. The fish comes, and the milk comes, and they pay the fishmonger's bill and the milkman's, and they think one's the same as the other, my man."

"Eh! I was thinkin' about a gentleman as came from this Mission vessel aboard of us. He saw our twelve o'clock haul, and he says, 'Bad breeze last night, my man. Did you work through it?' Well, there was nothing much of a wind—just enough to make us reef her; so I answers, and he says, 'I suppose this is your night's work. Now, what is your share?' So I said my share would likely be tenpence. Well, he gives a reg'lar screech; and then I reckoned up the price of all the lot as well as I could guess, and he screeched again. 'Why,' says he, 'old Mother Baubo, that keeps the shop in my district at home, would charge me eight shillings for that turbot, four-and-six for that, eightpence for each of those sixty haddocks, and nobody knows what for the rest.' Now, I've thought of that gentleman and his screech many a time since, and when I felt the light a-comin' to my eyes here, I thought again. Do you think I shall die, sir? Excuse me."

"Die! No. Fact is, I'm too good-natured a doctor. I shall have to stop you from talking. Die! We'll make a man of you, and send you on board soon. Go on, I can stay another five minutes." "Well, sir, when I thought of death, I thought what people would say if they knew how much I got for risking this smash. That night I was over the rail on to the trawl-beam twice; I was at the pumps an hour; I pulled and hauled with both arms raw, and the snow freezing with the salt as soon as it came on my ulcers, and then I got the smash. And all for about eightpence. And that screeching gentleman told me as how his Mother Baubo, as he calls her, drives a broom and two horses, or a horse and two brooms—I'm mixed. No, 'twas a land-oh and two horses, and a broom and one horse. And I gets eightpence for a-many hours and a smash. I never mind the fellows that tells us on Sundays when we're ashore to rise and assirk our rights or something, but there's a bit wrong somewhere, sir. It don't seem the thing."

"Well, you see people would say you needn't be a fisherman; you weren't forced to come."

"But I was, sir. I knew no more what I was coming to than a babe, and once you're here, you stays here." "Well, never mind for the present, my man. Why, you're a regular lawyer, you rascal; I shall have to mind my p's and q's with you. Now don't talk any more, or you'll fidget, and that won't do your back any good. Will you have bread and milk, or beef-tea and toast, you luxurious person? And I must be your valet."

"I don't know about vally, sir. It's vally enough for me. To think as I should have a gentleman waitin' on me as if he was a cabin-boy! Anything you like, sir. The sight of you makes me better."

The man's tears were flowing; he was weak, poor fellow, and wanting in the item of well-bred reticence. Lewis fed one patient, trimmed the other's bed, put on a woollen helmet, sou'-wester, two pairs of gloves, and the trusty Russian coat; then he was slung into the boat like a bundle of clothes; landed springily on a thole, and departed over seas not much bigger than an ordinary two-storey house. It was quite moderate weather, and the sprightly young savant had lost that feeling which makes you try to double yourself into knots when you watch a wave gradually shutting away the outer world and preparing to fold its livid gloom about you. "What would the Cowes fellows say to this, I wonder?" thought the irreverent young pioneer. Then he chuckled over the thought of the reckless Seadogs who march in nautical raiment on the pier. Those wild, rollicking Seadogs! How the North Sea men would envy them and their dower of dauntlessness! The Seadog takes his frugal lunch at the club; he begins with a sole, and no doubt he casts a patronizing thought towards the other Seadogs who trawled for the delicate fish. They are not so like seamen in appearance as is the Cowes Seadog; they do not wear shiny buttons; the polish on their boots is scarcely brilliant; they wear unclean jumpers, and flannel trousers fit to make an aesthetic Seadog faint with emotion of various sorts. No! they are not pattern Seadogs at all—those North Sea workers. Would that they could learn a lesson from the hardy Cowes Rover. Well, the Rover tries a cutlet after his fish, then he has cheese and a grape or two, and he tops up his frugal meal with a pint of British Imperial. A shilling cigar brings his lunch up to just sixteen shillings—as much as a North Sea amateur could earn in a week of luck—and then he prepares to face the terrors of the Deep. Does he tremble? Do the thoughts of the Past arise in his soul? Nay, the Seadog of Cowes is no man to be the prey of womanish tremors; he goes gaily like a true Mariner to confront the elements. The boat is ready, and four gallant salts are resting on their oars; the Seadog steps recklessly on board and looks at the weather. Ha! there is a sea of at least two inches high running, and that frail boat must traverse that wild space. No matter! The man who would blench at even two hundred yards of water, with waves even three inches high is totally, unworthy of the name of a British Seadog! One thought of friends and mother dear; one last look at the Club where that sole was served, and then, with all the ferocious determination of his conquering race, the Seadog bids the men give way. It is an awful sight! Four strokes, and the bow man receives as nearly as possible half a pint of water on his jersey! Steady! No shirking, my sons of the sea-kings. Twenty strokes more—the peril is past; and the Seadog bounds on to the deck of his stout vessel. He is saved. A basket with a turbot is in the stern-sheets; that turbot will form part of the Seadog's humble evening meal. It cost a guinea, and the North Sea amateurs, who received two shillings of that amount, would doubtless rejoice could they know that they risked their lives in a tearing August gale to provide for the wants of a brother Seadog.

By the time Lewis had finished his heroic reverie, he was nicely sheeted with ice, for the spray froze as it fell, and he was alongside of the smack that he wanted—which was more to the purpose. In a few minutes he was engaged in dealing with a prosaic, crushed foot. A heavy boat had jammed his patient against the iron side of the steam-carrier. The man was stoical, like the rest of his mates, but he was in torture, for the bones were all huddled into a twisted mass—a gruesome thing, ladies, and a common thing, too, if you would but think it. Ferrier had to use the knife first, for the accident was not so recent as he could have wished; then for near half an hour he was working like some clever conjurer, while the vessel heaved slowly, and the reek of the cabin coiled rankly round him. What a picture! That man, the pride of his university, the rising hope of the Royal Society, the professor whom students would have idolized, was bending his superb head over a poor, groaning sailorman, and performing a hard operation amid air that was merely volatile sewage! A few men looked on; they are kind, but they all suffer so much that the suffering of others is watched with passive callousness.

"Brandy now, my man. This is your first and last drink, and you may make it a good one. Don't give him any more, skipper, even if you have it on board. You know why? Ah! the colour's coming back again. Now, my lad, we're going to make your bed up on the cabin floor. Hand me a flannel; and you, my man, some water out of the kettle. Now for a clean place. I'll set up as a housemaid when I go ashore."

"Excuse me, sir, but if you thinks you're goin' to be let to scrub that ar plank, sir, you're mistaken. I'm skipper here, and I'll do that jest to show you how we thinks of your politeness, mister. Hand over that scrubber."

"All right, you obstinate mule; of course you'll have your own way. Let me see his mattress, then. Won't do! Which of you durst come with the boat, and I'll send a cocoanut-fibre one for him?"

"We never talks about durst here, sir. Not many on us doesn't. We'll go, when you goes."

So Lewis cheerily ended his task, and when his man was laid out, with a dry bundle of netting under his head, the doctor bent over him only to smile in his face quietly. He never looked at himself in a glass excepting to part his hair; but he had learned that something in his look tended to hearten his patients, so he gazed merrily at the cripple and said, "Now, when you're better, tell your friends Professor Ferrier said you were the pluckiest fellow he ever saw. I couldn't have borne what you did. You are a real good, game bit of stuff! and don't let any one tell me otherwise."

This unconscionable young doctor was picking up the proper tone for the North Sea; he had no airs, and, when his boat was reeling away to his own vessel again over the powdery crests of the sea, an Aldeburgh fisherman said, "Well, Joe, be sewer, he's a wunnerful fine gent, that is! He's the wunnerfullest, finest gent ever I fared for to see. And that he is—solid."

"Yes, Jimmy," said the skipper. "It's my belief, in a way o' speakin', that if that theer mizen-boom catched you and knocked your head off, that theer wunnerful young gent 'ud come, and he'd have his laugh, and he'd up and he'd mend you, same as if you'd never come adrift, not one little bit. What a thing is larnin', to be sewer. Yes, sir, he'd mend you. Nobody knows what he can dew, and nobody knows what he can't dew. If we puts to this night—and I don't know why not, for we're sailin'—if we gets a turbot I'll pay for it, and he'll have that theer fish if I swims for it."

"You've always got a good way o' puttin' things, skipper, and I says I holds 'long o' you."

The patient slumbered blissfully in the dreary cabin, which could only be likened to a bewitched laundry in which things were always being washed and never cleaned; the men awaited the Admiral's signal; the snow thickened into ponderous falling masses;—and the professor jumped on deck, to be met with a loud boom of gratification by Tom, who had begun to dread the snow.

I like to think of that young gentleman faring over the treacherous lulls of sad water amid the sinister eddies of the snowstorm. I wonder if any other country could produce a gently-nurtured young scholar who would make a similar journey. It seems doubtful, and more than doubtful.

Tom had been reading to the paralyzed fisherman, and, although his ordinary tones had too much of the minute-gun about them to suit small apartments, he could lower his voice to a quiet deep bass which was anything but unpleasant, and he had completely charmed the poor helpless one by reading—or rather intoning—"Evangeline." Seafaring folk will have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most obvious sort to suit them—in fact they usually care only for the horseplay of literature—but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the fate of various fishermen's wives who had got behind with their rents. The evening closed in a troublous horror of great darkness, and the anxious night began. Ferrier always made up his mind to stay below at night, and he amused himself either by snatching a chat with the skipper, or by reading one or two good novels which he had brought. But imagine the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run every hour—every second—and you will understand that those two English gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once that evening he went on deck and tried to peer through the wall of trembling darkness that surrounded him; the view made him feel like the victim in Poe's awful Inquisition story—the walls seemed to be closing in. Faintly the starboard light shone, so that the snowflakes crossed its path like dropping emeralds that shone a little in glory and then fell dark; on the other side a fitful stream of rubies seemed to be pouring; the lurid gleam from the cabin shone up the hatchway;—and, for the rest, there was cold, darkness, the shadow of dread, and yet the lookout-men were singing a duet as if death were not. The freezing drift was enough to stop one's breath, but the lads were quite at ease, and, to the air of a wicked old shanty, they sang about weathering the storm and anchoring by and by. Ferrier was not a conscious poet;—alas! had he the fearful facility which this sinful writer once possessed, I shudder to think of the sufferings of his friends when he described the brooding weariness of this night in verse. He bottled up his verses and turned them all into central fire; but he had poetry in every fibre all the same.

Tom remarked, "This is very much like being iced for market. I wonder what we could possibly do, if anything came into us as that barque did? Let's talk about home."

"Pleasant indoors now; I can see the fire on the edges of the furniture. The very thought of a hearthrug seems like a heathen luxury. What will you do first when you get home, Tom?"

"Turkish bath."

"And then?"

"Oysters."

"Then?"

"Dinner."

"And after?"

"I'll spend the whole evening in pretending to myself I'm on the North Sea again, and waking up to find that I've got my armchair under me."

"Can you see anything, Jim, just a point or so abaft the beam."

This was an ugly interruption to the Barmecides, who had begun to set forth shadowy feasts. That is the way in thick weather; you are no sooner out of one scrape than you blunder into another.

"Yes, sir, she'll go clear," sang out the man.

"She won't, I'm afraid," said Lewis, under his breath. It was most puzzling; there was no guide; the snow made distances ridiculous, and the black shadow came nearer.

"Up, all of you, and set your fenders. Doctor, show him a flare."

It was a smack, and her lights had gone wrong somehow; she was moving but slowly, and she let the Mission vessel off with a hole in the mizen. The scrimmage would have meant death had any breeze been blowing; but the men took it coolly after the one dread minute of anxiety was over. If we were all able to imagine our own deaths as possible—to really imagine it, I mean—then one snowy night on the banks would drive any man mad; no brain could stand it. We all know we shall die, but none of us seem to believe it, or else no one would ever go to sea a second time in winter. A steady opiate is at work in each man's being—blurring his vision of extinction, and thus our seamen go through a certain performance a dozen times over in a winter, and this performance is much like that of a blindfold man driving a Hansom cab from Cornhill to Marble Arch on a Saturday evening during a November fog.

The man who shoved the cork fender over the side had received a graze which sent a big flap of skin over his eye and blinded him with blood. He laughed when Lewis dressed him, and said, "That was near enough for most people, sir. I've seen two or three like that in a night."

"Well, I like to see you laugh, but I thought all was over when I saw he was going to give us the stem."

"So did I, sir; but fishermen has to git used to being drowned."

As Lennard and the doctor sat filling the crew's cabin with billows of smoke, the former said—"There's a kind of frolicsome humour about these men that truly pleases me. Frolicsome! isn't it?"

"Well, we've stood another dreary day out; but think of those poor beggars aft, lying in pain and loneliness. Tom, let's say our prayers; I don't know that there's much good in it, but when I think of twelve thousand men bearing such a life as we've had, I think there must—there must be some Power that won't let it last for ever. Mind, when we've done praying, no more sentiment; we'll smoke and laugh after we've put in a word for the fishermen—and ourselves."

"And somebody else."

"Who?"

"I'll write and ask Mr. Cassall. That's Miss Dearsley's uncle."

I have seen our Englishmen fool on in that aimless way during all sorts of peril and trouble. I want you to understand that the evangelist and the sceptic both were prepared to hear the scraunch of the collision on that deadly night; they had seen two entire ships' companies lost since they came out, yet they would not give in or look serious altogether. They had come to found a hospital for the mangled hundreds of fishermen, and they were going through with their task in the steady, dogged, light-hearted British way. Foreigners and foreigneering Englishmen say it is blockheaded denseness. Is it?

A CRUCIAL TEST.

Suffering—monotonous, ceaseless suffering; gallant endurance; sordid filth; unnamed agonies; gnawing, petty pains; cold—and the chance of death. That was the round of life that Lewis Ferrier gazed upon until a day came that will be remembered, as Flodden Field was in Scotland, as Gettysburg is in America, as January 19th, 1881, is in Yarmouth. Ferrier had stuck to his terrible routine work, and, as Sir Everard Romfrey observes: "To stick to work after the great effort's over—that's what shows the man." The man never flinched, though he had tasks that might have wearied brain and heart by their sheer nastiness; the healer must have no nerves.

A little break in the monotony came at last, and Mr. Ferrier and Mr. T. Lennard had an experience which neither will forget on this side of the grave. Contrary to the fashion of mere novelists, who are not dreamers and who consequently cannot see the end of things, I tell you that both men were kept alive, but they had something to endure.

The day had been fairly pleasant considering the time of year, and our friends were kept busy in running from vessel to vessel, looking after men with slight ailments. There was no snow, but some heavy banks hung in the sky away to the eastward. When the sun sank, the west was almost clear, and Tom and Lewis were electrified by the most extraordinary sunset that either had ever seen. The variety of colour was not great; all the open spaces of the sky were pallid green, and all the wisps of cloud were leprous blue: it was the intensity of the hues that made the sight so overpowering, for the spaces of green shone with a clear glitter exactly like the quality of colours which you see on Crookes's tubes when a powerful electric current is passed through.

"That's very artistic, and everything else of the sort; it's ah-h better than any painting I ever saw, but there's something about it that reminds me of snakes and things of that kind. Snakes! If you saw a forked tongue come out of that blue you wouldn't be surprised."

"You're getting to be quite an impressionist, Tom. The sky is horrible. I see all our vessels are getting their boats in; we'd better follow suit. How's the glass, skipper?" "Never saw anything like it, sir. This night isn't over yet, and I reckon what's coming is coming from the nor'-east. We're going to reef down. I haven't seen anything like this since 1866, and I remember we had just such another evening."

As usual, the gulls were troubled in their minds, and wailed piercingly, for they seem to be mercurial in temperament, and no better weather prophets can be seen.

The two ambulance-service men went below, declining to show any misgivings, and they had a good, desultory chat before anything happened to call them on deck. They talked of the poor bruised fellows whom they had seen; then of home; then of the splendid future when men would be kinder, and no fisherman with festering wounds would ever be permitted to die like a dog in a stinking kennel. Pleasant, honest talk it was, for the talkers were pleasant and honest. No bad man can talk well. Our two gentlemen had learned a long lesson of unselfishness, and each of them seemed to become gentler and more worthy in proportion as he gave up more and more of his comfort and his labour to serve others.

At last Ferrier said, "Well, Tom, we had a heavy turn in the autumn. If we go this time we'll go together, and I've often wondered what that could be like. What do men say when they meet the last together? Whew-w! How I hate death. The monster! The beastly cold privation. To leave even a North Sea smack must be bitter."

The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured, and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring. The vessel came up to the wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck. Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.

Ebenezer whispered, "I heern you talkin' about the gale, sir, and you're right; we've got somethin' to come. I have a left arm that can beat any glass ever was seen. I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we was snuggin' her before the gale in '66, and my arm went in four places. Ever since then that there arm tells every change as plain as plain can be. Yes, sir, it's hard to die, even out off a North Sea smack, as you say. Just before the '66 breeze I used often to think, 'Shall I go overboard?' but when we was disabled, and skipper told us 'twas every man for hisself, I looked queer. My arm says there's bad a-comin', and I know you don't skeer easy, or a wouldn't tell you."

A hollow sound filled the whole arch of the sky; it was a great, bewildering sound like a cry—an immense imprecation of some stricken Titan.

"What can that be?" murmured Lennard, with his bold face blanched. "That caps everything."

The masterful sound held on for a little, and then sank into a tired sort of moan.

"Callin' them together, sir,—that's what some o' the West Country chaps calls the King o' the Winds speakin'. It's only snow gettin' locked in the sky, and you'll see it come away in a little."

"I don't know what it is, Ebenezer, but I don't like it."

On deck the night was black, the splendid green of the west had burnt out, and a breeze was making little efforts from time to time, with little hollow moans.

"Bad, bad, bad, bad, sir," barked the skipper, angrily.

The vanward flights of twirling flakes came on then, as if suddenly unleashed, the wind sprang up, and the great fight began. If you, whoever you may be, and two more strong men had tried to shut an ordinary door in the teeth of that first shock, you would have failed, for the momentum was like that of iron.

"Steady, and look out," the skipper yelled.

The third hand was lifted off his feet and dashed into the lee channels. Ferrier fought hard, but he was clutched by the hand of the wind, and held against the mizen-mast; he could just clutch the rest in which a lifebuoy was hanging, and that alone saved him from being felled.

The Lord is a Man of War! Surely His hosts were abroad now. No work of man's hands could endure the onset of the forces let loose on that bad night. The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the wind. Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck. No one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled assault of the hurricane had touched the nerve of the coolest.

I am told by one who was on a wide heath at the beginning of that hurricane, that he was coated with solid ice from head to foot on the windward side; his hair and beard were icicles; his spaniel cowered and refused to move; and a splendid, strong horse, which was being driven right in the teeth of the wind, suddenly put its nose to the ground, set its forelegs wide apart, and refused to go on. Not far from the horse was a great poplar, and this tree suddenly snapped like a stick of macaroni; the horse started, whirled round, and galloped off with the wind behind.

What must it have been at sea? Men durst not look to windward, for a hard mass seemed to be thrust into nostrils and eyes, so that one was forced to gasp and choke. As for the turmoil!—all Gravelotte, with half a million men engaged, could not have made such a soul-quelling, overmastering sound. Every capacity of sound, every possible discordant vibration of the atmosphere was at work; and so, with bellow on bellow, crash on crash, vast multitudinous shriek on shriek, that fateful tempest went on.

Ferrier found that unless he could get under the lee of something or other, he must soon be sheathed in a coat of ice that would prevent him from stirring at all. Oddly enough, he found afterwards that the very fate he dreaded had befallen several forlorn seamen: the icy missiles of the storm froze them in; the wind did not chill them, it throttled them, and they were found frozen rigid in various positions.

The mate came and whispered in Ferrier's ear (for shouting was useless), "The skipper would like a word with you. We'll keep some sort of a look-out, but it isn't much good at present. Come into our cabin."

Lewis was not sorry, for the waves began to take the vessel without "noticing" her, as it were, just as a good hunter takes an easy ditch in his stride. If one came perpendicularly upon her, it was easy to see what must happen.

The skipper said, "I want you gentlemen to assist me. I'm ordered to obey you, but I know this sea, and I tell you that I'm doubtful whether I shall save the vessel. I can't keep her hove-to much longer, for this simple reason as she'll bury herself and us. I've got two hundred and forty-four miles to run home. Will you let me run her? If so, I'll take her in under storm canvas. She's splendid before wind and sea, and I can save her that way; if we stop as we are, I fear we drown. I've seen so many years of it that I don't so much mind, but having you is a terrible thing. Hishht, a sea's coming!—I can tell by the lull."

Then the two landsmen cowered involuntarily, and looked in each other's eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering teeth. It was not like an ordinary blow of the sea. The skipper rushed aft, hoping to get on deck through Ferrier's cabin, but he met a cataract of water which blinded him, and he came back saying, "I doubt her deck won't stand another like that. Now, gentlemen, it's for you to decide."

"Skipper, send Bill up to help me with the boat. That last's drove her abreast the skylight."

The one look-out man had saved himself. How, only a smacksman can tell. The skipper came down again.

"Now, gentlemen, shall I run or not?" "Well, skipper, if we get through this we shall be more needed than ever."

"Yes, sir; but if that last sea hadn't glanced a bit on our starboard bow, we shouldn't have got through. We've saved the boat, but she was snapped from the grips like a rotten tooth."

"But, skipper, we may be pooped in running, or we may do some damage to the rudder and broach-to. Then we should be worse off than here."

"Very well, gentlemen. I'm not concerned for myself. My duty's done now, and I'll do my best. I advise you to take some coffee, and try to get a few hours' rest before the pinch comes. You'll not get much rest then."

Another sea came, and another; the sound of the wind paralyzed thought and made speech impossible. Had any one said, "The end of the world has come," you would have felt only a mild surprise, for even the capacity for fear or apprehension was stunned as the brain is stunned by a blow. "I can't stand this any longer, Tom. Even brandy wouldn't do much good for more than an hour. Do you hear me?"

Tom nodded in a dazed way.

"Well, then, let's go into the open somehow. Perhaps the skipper's strong, hot coffee will wake us. Anyhow, let us try a cup."

Oh! that indescribable night! To know that death was feasting in that blackness; to feel that vigilance was of no avail; to turn away convulsed from the iron push of the demoniac force which for the time seemed to have taken the place of an atmosphere. Smash! Rattle. Then a wild whistling; a many lashes, that flapped and cracked; then the fall of the spar, and the deep, quick sigh from Lennard as it whizzed close by him. The gaff of the mizen had broken away, halliards and all, as if a supernatural knife had been drawn across by a strong hand. The men were hanging on, while a bellying, uncontrollable canvas buffeted them as if it had volition and sense, and strove to knock their senses out of them. A canvas adrift is like an unruly beast. All hands came through the after-cabin, and attacked the thundering sail.

"For your lives now, chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut them away."

The gaff had fallen, but it was not clear yet. In some mysterious fashion the mizen halliards had yielded and slipped for some distance after a sudden shock had cut the gaff halliards and let the jaws of the gaff free; so now the sail would neither haul up nor come down. Like a cat Bob sprang up the remaining rings, and hacked at the gear; the sail fell—and so did Bob, with a dull thud.

"Oh! skipper, that's a bad 'un."

"Cast a line round him till we've stowed. Jim, take hold of her; she's falling off! Shove her to the wind again till we're done! Now, lads, all of you on to the sheet! Haul! oh, haul! Slack away them toppin' lifts. So; now we've got her! Where's Bob?"

"Doctor's got him below, skipper." Poor Bob had tried to save himself with his right arm, and his hand had been bent backwards over, and doubled back on his forearm. Bob was settled for the rest of the gale. Lewis soon had the broken limb put up, and Bob stolidly smoked and pondered on the inequalities of life. Why was he, and not another, told off to spring up that reeling mizen into a high breeze that ended by mastering him, and flinging him as if he had been a poor wrestler matched with a champion? Here he was—crippled.

"Well, Bob, if this is a specimen, we shall see something when it clears."

"Yes, doctor; you may say that, you may. I never see nothing like it. If you give a man ten hundred thousand goulden sovereigns, and you says, 'Tell me directly you see anything comin',' he couldn't. When I was on the look-out, I held this 'ere hand, as is broken, up before my eyes, and I couldn't see it, sir—and that's the gospel, as I'm here!"

"Do you think we're out of the track of ships?" "I know no more than Adam, sir. Hello! what's that?"

"Up here, sir—up, quick!"

Ferrier's heart jumped as he thought—"Tom."

"Haul on here, sir, with us. God be praised, he took his rope over with him. Haul, for the Lord's sake! Now! now!"

Ferrier lashed at his work in a fury of effort: a sea sent him on his knees, and yet he lay hack against the inrush of water, and hauled with all the weight of body and arms.

"Haul, my men! A good life is at the end of that line. Haul! the ice may congeal his pulses before you get at him! Haul! oh, haul!"

The skipper sprang to the grating abaft the wheel.

"Here he is. Glory be to God! Are you right, sir?"

No answer.

"My God! are you sure, skipper?"

"Sure. Look!"

Ferrier saw an object like a mass of seaweed, but the night was so pitchy that no outline could be made out.

"Who durst try to pass a line under his arms?"

"Hand here, skipper; I will."

"Oh, Lewis! Keep nerve and eye steady. The graves are twenty fathoms below."

Lennard was inert, and no one could tell how he held on until he was flung on the deck.

"Lend us that binnacle lamp, Jim. Turn it on him."

Then it was seen that Tom might have been hauled up without putting Ferrier in peril, for the rope was twice coiled under his arms and loosely knotted in front; he had taken that precaution after seeing Bob fall. Moreover, strange to say, his teeth were locked in the rope, for he had laid hold with the last effort of despair.

The wind volleyed; the darkness remained impenetrable, and every sea that came was a Niagara; yet the gallant smack stood to it, and Tom Lennard slumbered after the breath came back to him. His ribs had stood the strain of that rope, but he had really been semi-strangled, and he was marked with two lurid, extravasated bands round his chest. He never spoke before falling asleep; he only pressed Ferrier's hand and pointed, with a smile, upward.

"If it goes on like this, sir, there won't be many of us left by the morning."

"No, skipper. I hope the men will secure themselves like us. Mr. Lennard had a near thing. He has a jaw like a walrus, or his teeth must have gone."

So, in fitful whispers, the grim scraps of talk went on while the blare of the trumpets of the Night was loosened over the sea.

"Look—over the port-side, there. It's beginning."

Ferrier could make out nothing until the skipper gave him the exact line to look on. Then he saw a Something that seemed to wallow darkly on a dark tumble of criss-cross seas.

"He's bottom up, sir. If we'd been running and gone into him, we should have been at rest soon."

"How beautifully we are behaving, skipper. I suppose there's no chance of our going like that?"

"Not without something hits our rudder. We seem to have got away from the track now. While you were below, you see, I got her mainsail in, and that strip of sail has no more pull than a three-cloth jib. Please God, we may get through. If anything happens to my mainmast I shall give in—but it's a good spar."

Ferrier's mind went wandering with a sort of boding fierceness; he framed dramatic pictures of all that was passing in the chaotic ruin of shattered seas that rushed and seethed around. He had often spoken of the gigantic forces of Nature, but the words had been like algebraic formulae; now he saw the reality, and his rebellious mind was humbled.

"To-morrow, or next day, I shall have to see the misery that this causes. But why should I talk of misery? The word implies a complaint. A hundred smacksmen die to-night. Pitiful! But if this hurricane and all the lesser breezes did not blow, then millions would die who live now in healthy air. If the sea were not lashed up and oxygenated, we should have a stagnant pest-hole like an old rotten fishpond all round the world. England would be like Sierra Leone, and there would soon be no human race. Who talks of kindness and goodness in face of a scene like this? We know nothing. The hundred fishermen die, and the unpoisoned millions live. We are shadows; we have not a single right. If I die to-night, I shall have been spent by an Almighty Power that has used me. Will He cast me to nothingness after I have fulfilled my purpose? Never. There is not a gust of this wind that does not move truly according to eternal law; there can be no injustice, for no one can judge the Judge. If I suffer the petty pang of Death while a great purpose is being wrought out, I have no more reason to complain than if I were a child sharply pushed out of the way to let a fireengine pass. The great Purpose is everything, and I am but an instrument—just as this hurricane is an instrument. I shall be humble and do the work next my hand, and I will never question God any more. If a man can reckon his own individuality as anything after seeing this sight, he is a human failure; he is an abortion that should be wiped out. And now I'll try to pray."

So in sharp, short steps the scholar's thought strode on, and the sombre storming of the gale made an awful accompaniment to the pigmy's strenuous musings. Ferrier's destiny was being settled in that cataclysm, had he only known it; his pride was smitten, and he was ready to "receive the kingdom of God as a little child," to begin to learn on a level with the darkened fishermen whom he had gently patronized. As soon as he had resolved that night on Self-abnegation, as soon as the lightning conviction of his own insignificance had flashed through him, he humbly but "boldly" came "to the Throne of Grace." Like every one else who thus draws near to God through the Saviour's merit, he learned what it is to "obtain mercy"; a brooding calm took possession of his purified soul, and he was born again into a world where pride, egotism, angry revolt, and despair are unknown.

There would be no good in prolonging the story of this wrestle; there was a certain sameness in every phase, though the dangers seemed to change with such protean swiftness. For three days it lasted, and on the third day Tom Lennard, Ferrier, the patients, and the crew, were far more interested in the steward's efforts to boil coffee than they were in the arrowy flight of the snow-masses or the menace of towering seas. Ferrier attended his men, and varied that employment by chatting with Lennard, who was now able to sit up. Tom was much shaken and very solemn; he did not like talking of his late ordeal.

"Lewis, my dear friend, I have looked on the Eternal Majesty, and now death has no more terror for me. He will hide me in the shadow of His wings. I have seen what was known to them of old time; I knew when the gun seemed to go off inside my head, and I could feel nothing more, I knew that I should live: and that was the last light I saw in this world until you saved me—God bless you! We won't ever speak of it again."

Thus spoke Tom, with a fluency and correctness of diction which surprised himself. And he has never dilated on his mishap throughout his life so far.

It is not uncommon—that same awe-stricken reticence. This writer knows a man, a great scholar, a specimen of the best aristocratic class, a man fitted to charm both men and women. Long ago, he and two others slid two thousand feet down an Alpine slope. For two days and two nights the living man rested on a glacier—tied to the dead. "Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" My subject knows all about this; he has gazed on the Unutterable, and he has never mentioned his soul-piercing experience to any creature. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The worst of the ordeal was over; the snow ceased, the hurricane fined off, and only the turbulent water rushing in discoloured mountains under the last impetus of the wind—only that cruel water persisted in violence. It seemed as if for days the sea were sentient, and could not forget its long torture. Then came a griping frost and a hard sky, with slight breeze and a quiet sea.

Oh, the marks of ruin and annihilation! The sea was strewn with wreckage; masses of timber swung around in loose rafts; vessels, bottom up, passed the smack from day to day; the fleet was dispersed, and only a few battered and ragged vessels could be seen rolling here and there in disorganized isolation. "Goodness knows when we shall ever see our people again, sir. We can't do nothin'; I'll keep a sharp look-out all through daylight, and we'll pick them up if we can, but I fancy most of them have run for home or the Humber. Before we settle to work again I was thinking of a little thanksgiving service. We're saved for some good purpose, sir, and it's only fit we should say a word humbly to our blessed Father in heaven."

And all on board met in the simple North Sea fashion, and even the patients had their say. Only Tom Lennard remained impenetrably silent; he knew too much; he was a past-master in the mystery of mysteries. The people used to say in Ravenna, "Behold, there is the man who has been in hell," when they saw the awful face of Dante; poor, loose-brained Tom Lennard had also seen that which may not be made known.

"There's some on 'em right ahead, skipper, I think. Joe Questor's there, I know. He hasn't lost his new mainsail. See 'em, skipper?"

A few dark grey shadows like slim poles were all that Ferrier could see; but the man was right, and when the deft fingers—those miraculous fingers—of the seaman had set the mizen right, the smack was sailed with every stitch on, until she buried herself in the sulky, slow bulges of the ground swell. Ferrier said, "You see, skipper, it's better to risk carrying away something, than to have some poor smashed customer waiting helpless." And the skipper cracked on with every rag he could show until, on a sealing frosty morning, he shot in among the dismal remains of the gallant fleet.