The Ship of Stars Part 37

Taffy flung himself full length on the rock and peered over.

A tangle of ore-weed awash rose and fell about its base; and from under this, as the frothy waves drew back, he saw a man's ankle protruding, and a foot still wearing a shoe.

"It's my brother!" wailed the sailor again. "I can swear to the shoe of en!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

SALVAGE.

One of the masons lowered himself into the pool, and thrusting an arm beneath the ore-weed, began to grope.

"He's pinned here. The rock's right on top of him."

Taffy examined the rock. It weighed fifteen tons if an ounce; but there were fresh and deep scratches upon it. He pointed these out to the men, who looked and felt them with their hands and stared at the subsiding waves, trying to bring their minds to the measure of the spent gale.

"Here, I must get out of this!" said the man in the pool, as a small wave dashed in and sent its spray over his bowed shoulders.

"You ban't going to leave en?" wailed the sailor. "You ban't going to leave my brother Sam?"

He was a small, fussy man, with red whiskers; and even his sorrow gave him little dignity. The men were tender with him.

"Nothing to be done till the tide goes back."

"But you won't leave en? Say you won't leave en! He've a wife and three children. He was a saved man, sir, a very religious man; not like me, sir. He was highly respected in the neighbourhood of St. Austell. I shouldn't wonder if the newspapers had a word about en . . ." The tears were running down his face.

"We must wait for the tide," said Taffy gently, and tried to lead him away, but he would not go. So they left him to watch and wait while they returned to their work.

Before noon they recovered and fixed the broken wire cable. The iron cradle had disappeared, but to rig up a sling and carry out an endless line was no difficult job, and when this was done Taffy crossed over to the island rock and began to inspect damages.

His working gear had suffered heavily, two of his windla.s.ses were disabled, scaffolding, platforms, hods, and loose planks had vanished; a few small tools only remained, mixed together in a mash of puddled lime. But the masonry stood unhurt, all except a few feet of the upper course on the seaward side, where the gale, giving the cement no time to set, had shaken the dove-tailed stones in their sockets--a matter easily repaired.

Shortly before three a shout recalled them to the mainland. The tide was drawing towards low water, and three of the men set to work at once to open a channel and drain off the pool about the base of the big rock. While this was doing, half a dozen splashed in with iron bars and pickaxes; the rest rigged two stout ropes with tackles, and hauled. The stone did not budge. For more than an hour they prised and levered and strained. And all the while the sailor ran to and fro, s.n.a.t.c.hing up now a pick and now a crowbar, now lending a hand to haul, and again breaking off to lament aloud.

The tide turned, the winter dark came down, and at half-past four Taffy gave the word to desist. They had to hold back the sailor, or he would have jumped in and drowned beside his brother.

Taffy slept little that night, though he needed sleep. The salving of this body had become almost a personal dispute between the sea and him. The gale had shattered two of his windla.s.ses; but two remained, and by one o'clock next day he had both slung over to the mainland and fixed beside the rock. The news spreading inland fetched two or three score onlookers before ebb of tide--miners for the most part, whose help could be counted on. The men of the coast-guard had left the wreck, to bear a hand if needed. George had come too.

And happening to glance upwards while he directed his men, Taffy saw a carriage with two horses drawn up on the gra.s.sy edge of the cliff: a groom at the horses' heads and in the carriage a figure seated, silhouetted there high against the clear blue heaven. Well he recognised, even at that distance, the poise of her head, though for almost four years he had never set eyes on her,--nor had wished to.

He knew that her eyes were on him now. He felt like a general on the eve of an engagement. By the almanac the tide would not turn until 4.35. At four, perhaps, they could begin; but even at four the winter twilight would be on them, and he had taken care to provide torches and distribute them among the crowd. His own men were making the most of the daylight left, drilling holes for dear life in the upper surface of the boulder, and fixing the Lewis-wedges and rings.

They looked to him for every order, and he gave it in a clear, ringing voice which he knew must carry to the cliff top. He did not look at George.

He felt sure in his own mind that the wedges and rings would hold; but to make doubly sure he gave orders to loop an extra chain under the jutting base of the boulder. The mason who fixed it, standing waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched it round the ankle of the dead man. The dead man's brother jumped down beside him and grasped the slack of it.

At a signal from Taffy the crowd began to light their torches.

He looked at his watch, at the tide, and gave the word to man the windla.s.ses. Then with a glance towards the cliff he started the working chant--"_Ayee-ho, Ayee-ho!_" The two gangs--twenty men to each windla.s.s--took it up with one voice, and to the deep intoned chant the chains tautened, shuddered for a moment, and began to lift.

"_Ayee-ho!_"

Silently, irresistibly, the chain drew the rock from its bed.

To Taffy it seemed an endless time, to the crowd but a few moments before the brute ma.s.s swung clear. A few thrust their torches down towards the pit where the sailor knelt. Taffy did not look, but gave the word to pa.s.s down the coffin which had been brought in readiness.

A clergyman--his father's successor, but a stranger to him--climbed down after it: and he stood in the quiet crowd watching the light-house above and the lamps which the groom had lit in Honoria's carriage, and listening to the bated voices of the few at their dreadful task below.

It was five o'clock and past before the word came up to lower the tackle and draw the coffin up. The Vicar clambered out to wait it, and when it came, borrowed a lantern and headed the bearers.

The crowd fell in behind.

"I am the resurrection and the life. . . ."

They began to shuffle forwards and up the difficult track; but presently came to a halt with one accord, the Vicar ceasing in the middle of a sentence.

Out of the night, over the hidden sea, came the sound of men's voices lifted, thrilling the darkness thrice: the sound of three British cheers.

Whose were the voices? They never knew. A few had noticed as twilight fell a brig in the offing, standing insh.o.r.e as she tacked down channel. She, no doubt, as they worked in their circle of torchlight, had sailed in close before going about, her crews gathered forward, her master perhaps watching through his night-gla.s.s had guessed the act, saluted it, and pa.s.sed on her way unknown to her own destiny.

They strained their eyes. A man beside Taffy declared he could see something--the faint glow of a binnacle lamp as she stood away.

Taffy could see nothing. The voice ahead began to speak again.

The Vicar, pausing now and again to make sure of his path, was reading from a page which he held close to his lantern.

"Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.

"Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue that thou canst not understand.

"But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant s.h.i.+p pa.s.s thereby.

"For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us.

"Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail; then is the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame take the prey."

Here the Vicar turned back a page, and his voice rang higher:

"Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.

"And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

"And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken."

Now Taffy walked behind, thinking his own thoughts; for the cheers of those invisible sailors had done more than thrill his heart.

A finger, as it were, had come out of the night and touched his brain, unsealing the wells and letting in light upon things undreamt of. Through the bright confusion of this sudden vision the Vicar's sentences sounded and fell on his ears unheeded. And yet while they faded that happened which froze and bit each separate word into his memory, to lose distinctness only when death should interfere, stop the active brain, and wipe the slate.

For while the procession halted and broke up its formation for a moment on the brow of the cliff, a woman came running into the torchlight.

"Is my Joey there? Where's he _to_, anybody? Hev anyone seen my Joey?"

It was Lizzie Pezzack, panting and bareheaded, with a scared face.

"He's lame--you'd know en. Have 'ee got en there? He's wandered off!"

"Hush up, woman," said a bearer. "Don't keep such a pore!"