“If it’s this you want--and this--and this,”
cried a young female whom Melmoth had not noticed before, “take them;”
and she eagerly tore the papers out of her hair, and flung them into the
fire. Then Melmoth recollected a ridiculous story told him the day
before of this girl, who had had the “bad luck,” as she called it, to
curl her hair with some of the old and useless law-papers of the family,
and who now imagined that they “who kept this dreadful pudder o’er her
head,” were particularly provoked by her still retaining about her
whatever belonged to the deceased; and as she flung the fragments of
paper into the fire, she cried aloud, “There stop for the holy J----s’
sake, and let us have no more about it!--You have what you wanted, and
will you have done?” The laugh that Melmoth could hardly resist, was
checked by a sound which he heard distinctly amid the storm. “Hush--silence! that was a signal gun!--there is a vessel in distress.”
They all paused and listened. We have already mentioned the closeness of
Melmoth’s abode to the sea-shore. This had well accustomed its inmates
to all the terrors of shipwrecked vessels and drowning passengers. To
their honour be it spoken, they never heard those sounds but as a claim,
a piteous, irresistible claim on their humanity. They knew nothing of
the barbarous practice on the English coast, of fastening a lanthorn to
the limbs of a spanselled horse, whose plungings were to misdirect the
wrecked and sinking wretches, in the vain hope that the light they saw
was a beacon, and thus to double the horrors of death by the baffled
expectation of relief. The party in the kitchen all watched Melmoth’s countenance intently, as
if its expression could have told them “the secrets of the hoary deep.”
The storm ceased for a moment, and there was a deep and dreary silence
of fearful expectation. The sound was heard again,--it could not be
mistaken. “It is a gun,” cried Melmoth; “there is a vessel in distress!”
and he hurried out of the kitchen, calling on the men to follow him. The men partook eagerly of the excitement of enterprise and danger. A
storm without doors is, after all, better than a storm within; without
we have something to struggle with, within we have only to suffer; and
the severest storm, by exciting the energy of its victim, gives at once
a stimulus to action, and a solace to pride, which those must want who
sit shuddering between rocking walls, and almost driven to wish they had
only to suffer, not to fear. While the men were in search of a hundred coats, boots, and hats of
their old master, to be sought for in every part of the house,--while
one was dragging a great coat from the window, before which it had long
hung as a blind, in total default of glass or shutters,--another was
snatching a wig from the jack, where it had been suspended for a
duster,--and a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens
for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of
her accouchement,--Melmoth had gone up to the highest room in the house. The window was driven in;--had there been light, this window commanded a
view of the sea and the coast. He leaned far out of it, and listened
with fearful and breathless anxiety. The night was dark, but far off,
his sight, sharpened by intense solicitude, descried a light at sea. The
gust drove him from the window for a moment; at returning the next, he
saw a faint flash, and then the report of a gun followed. There needed no more; and in a few moments after, Melmoth was on the
shore. Their way was short, and they walked with their utmost speed; but
the violence of the storm made their progress very slow, and their
anxiety made it seem still slower. From time to time they said to each
other, in choaked and breathless accents, “Call up the people in those
cabbins--there is a light in that house--they are all up--no wonder--who
could sleep in such a night--hold the lanthorn low--it is impossible to
keep footing on the strand.” “Another gun!” they exclaimed, as the flash
faintly broke through the darkness, and the heavy sound rolled round the
shore, as if fired over the grave of the sufferers. “Here’s the rock,
hold fast, and cling together.” They scaled it. “Great God!” cried
Melmoth, who was among the first, “what a night! and what a
spectacle!--Hold up your lanthorns--do you hear cries?--shout to
them--tell them there is help and hope near them.--Stay,” he added, “let
me scramble up that crag--they will hear my voice from that.” He dashed
desperately through the water, while the foam of the breakers from a
distant rock almost choaked him, gained the point, and, elated by his
success, shouted aloud with his utmost strength. But his voice, baffled
and drowned by the tempest, was lost even to his own hearing. Its sound
was faint and querulous, more like the wail of grief, than the
encouraging cry of hope. At this moment, the racking clouds flying
rapidly across the sky, like the scattered fugitives of a routed army,
the moon burst forth with the sudden and appalling effulgence of
lightning. Melmoth caught a full view of the vessel, and of her danger. She lay beating against a rock, over which the breakers dashed their
foam to the height of thirty feet. She was half in the water, a mere
hulk, her rigging torn to shreds, her main mast cut away, and every sea
she shipped, Melmoth could hear distinctly the dying cries of those who
were swept away, or perhaps of those whose mind and body, alike
exhausted, relaxed their benumbed hold of hope and life together,--knew
that the next shriek that was uttered must be their own and their last. There is something so very horrible in the sight of human beings
perishing so near us, that we feel one firm step rightly planted, one
arm steadily held out, might save at least one,--yet feel we know not
where to fix that step, and cannot stretch that arm, that Melmoth’s
senses reeled under the shock, and for a moment he echoed the storm with
yells of actual insanity. By this time the country, having been alarmed
by the news of a vessel going to pieces on the shore, had poured down in
multitudes; and those who, from experience or confidence, or even
ignorance, repeated incessantly, “it is impossible to save her,--every
soul on board must perish,” involuntarily quickened their steps as they
uttered the words, as if they were anxious to behold the fulfilment of
their own prediction, while they appeared hurrying to avert it. Of one man, in particular, it was observed, that during their hurried
rush to the shore, he was, with what breath his haste allowed him,
assuring the rest every moment, “she would be down before they could get
there,” and heard the ejaculations of “Christ save us! don’t say that,”
“No, please God, we’ll do some good,” with a laugh almost of triumph. When they arrived, this man scaled a rock at the risk of his life,
caught a view of the vessel, pointed out her desperate situation to
those below, and shouted, “Didn’t I tell you so?