School Reading by Grades: Sixth Year Part 12

The learned Doctor remained thoughtful; then he screwed up one side of his face into the most frightful wrinkles, while with the eye of the other he resumed his examination of the Vorticella.

--_George Henry Lewes._

[Ill.u.s.tration:

From the Painting by Rosa Bonheur. Engraved by Horace Baker.

The Lions.

THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court; The n.o.bles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride, And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed: And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,-- Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Leigh Hunt.]

Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another, Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother; The b.l.o.o.d.y foam above the bars came whisking through the air: Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."

De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous, lively dame, With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the same; She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be, He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me; King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropped her glove, to prove his love; then looked at him, and smiled; He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild: The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained the place, Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.

"In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he sat; "No love," quoth he, "but vanity sets love a task like that."

--_Leigh Hunt._

TRUE GROWTH.

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing like an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere; A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night-- It was the plant and flower of Light.

In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.

--_Ben Jonson._

THE s.h.i.+PWRECK.

I.

Having made up my mind to go down to Yarmouth, I went round to the coach office and took the box seat on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road.

"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London. "I don't remember to have seen one like it."

"Nor I--not equal to it," he replied. "That's wind, sir; there'll be mischief done at sea, I expect before long."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles d.i.c.kens.]

It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew harder.

But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in apprehension that the coach would be blown over.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cl.u.s.ter of people in the market place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys.

Some of these, congregating about the innyard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church tower and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighboring villages, who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which the mighty wind was blowing dead on sh.o.r.e, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another sh.o.r.e with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea, staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and holding by people I met at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.

Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; s.h.i.+powners excited and uneasy; children huddling together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners disturbed and anxious, leveling their gla.s.ses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoa.r.s.e roar, it seemed to scoop out caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rus.h.i.+ng to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a storm bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; ma.s.ses of water s.h.i.+vered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal sh.o.r.e on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds flew fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.

Not finding my old friend, Ham, among the people whom this memorable wind--for it is still remembered down there as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went by back ways and by-lanes to the yard where he worked. I learned there that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of s.h.i.+p repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back to-morrow morning in good time.

I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir it as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other s.h.i.+ps had been seen laboring hard in the Roads, and trying in great distress to keep off sh.o.r.e. "Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors," said he, "if we had another night like the last!"

I was very much depressed in spirits, very solitary, and felt an uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the occasion.

I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events, and my exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter some one who I knew must be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened, and they were particularly distinct and vivid.

In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the s.h.i.+ps immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that possibly he would attempt to return from Lowestoft by sea, and be lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely. If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.

I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too soon; for the boat builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.

I went back to the inn. The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.

I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast in anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them.

Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with thundering sea, the storm and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the foreground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with a gla.s.s or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire, without losing my consciousness either of the uproar out of doors or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new undefinable horror; and when I awoke--or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the awful noises; looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At length the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

It was rea.s.suring, on such a night, to be told that some of the inn servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but on my lying down all such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense refined.

For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining now that I heard shrieks out at sea, now that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns, and now the fall of houses in the town. I got up several times and looked out, but could see nothing except the reflection in the window panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.

At length my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were cl.u.s.tered together, in various att.i.tudes, about a table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl who had her ears stopped with her ap.r.o.n, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier crews who had gone down were out in the storm?

I remained there, I dare say two hours. There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell off a tower and down a precipice into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.