I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales written by Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch

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"Well, souls, we was a bit tiddlywinky last Michaelmas, when the _Young
Susannah_ came ashore, that I must own. Folks blamed the Pa'son for
preachin' agen it the Sunday after. 'A disreppitable scene,' says he,
''specially seein' you had nowt to be thankful for but a cargo o' sugar
that the sea melted afore you could get it.' (Lift the pore chap aisy,
Sim.) By crum! Sim, I mind your huggin' a staved rum cask, and kissin'
it, an' cryin', 'Aw, Ben--dear Ben!' an' 'After all these years!'
fancyin' 'twas your twin brother come back, that was killed aboard the
_Agamemny_--"

"Well, well--prettily overtook I must ha' been. (Stiddy, there,
Crowder, wi' the legs of en.) But to-day I'll be mild, as 'tis
Chris'mas."

"Iss, iss; be very mild, my sons, as 'tis so holy a day."

They tramped on, bending their heads at queer angles against the
weather, that erased their outlines in a bluish mist, through which they
loomed for a while at intervals, until they passed out of sight.

Ruby, meanwhile, had hurried on, her cloak flapping loudly as it grew
heavier with moisture, and the water in her shoes squishing at every
step. At first she took the road leading down-hill to Ruan Cove, but
turned to the right after a few yards, and ran up the muddy lane that
was the one approach to Sheba, her father's farm.

The house, a square, two-storeyed building of greystone, roofed with
heavy slates, was guarded in front by a small courtlage, the wall of
which blocked all view from the lower rooms. From the narrow mullioned
windows on the upper floor, however, one could look over it upon the
duck-pond across the road, and down across two grass meadows to the
cove. A white gate opened on the courtlage, and the path from this to
the front door was marked out by slabs of blue slate, accurately laid in
line. Ruby, in her present bedraggled state, avoided the front
entrance, and followed the wall round the house to the town-place,
stopping on her way to look in at the kitchen window.

"Mary Jane, if you call that a roast goose, I cull it a burning shame!"

Mary Jane, peeling potatoes with her back to the window, and tossing
them one by one into a bucket of water, gave a jump, and cut her finger,
dropping forthwith a half-peeled magnum bonum, which struck the bucket's
edge and slid away across the slate flooring under the table.

"Awgh--awgh!" she burst out, catching up her apron and clutching it
round the cut. "Look what you've done, Miss Ruby! an' me miles away,
thinkin' o' shipwrecks an' dead swollen men."

"Look at the Chris'mas dinner, you mazed creature!"

In truth, the goose was fast spoiling. The roasting apparatus in this
kitchen was a simple matter, consisting of a nail driven into the centre
of the chimney-piece, a number of worsted threads depending therefrom,
and a steel hook attached to these threads. Fix the joint or fowl
firmly on the hook, give it a spin with the hand, and the worsted
threads wound, unwound, and wound again, turning it before the blaze--an
admirable jack, if only looked after. At present it hung motionless
over the dripping-pan, and the goose wore a suit of motley, exhibiting a
rich Vandyke brown to the fire, an unhealthy yellow to the window.

"There now!" Mary Jane rushed to the jack and gave it a spin, while Ruby
walked round by the back door, and appeared dripping on the threshold.
"I declare 'tis like Troy Town this morning: wrecks and rumours o'
wrecks. Now 'tis 'Ropes! ropes!' an' nex' 'tis 'Where be the stable
key, Mary Jane, my dear?' an' then agen, 'Will'ee be so good as to fetch
master's second-best spy-glass, Mary Jane, an' look slippy?'--an' me wi'
a goose to stuff, singe, an' roast, an' 'tatties to peel, an' greens to
cleanse, an' apples to chop for sauce, an' the hoarders no nearer away
than the granary loft, with a gatherin' 'pon your second toe an' the
half o' 'em rotten when you get there. The pore I be in! Why, Miss
Ruby, you'm streamin'-leakin'!"

"I'm wet through, Mary Jane; an' I don't care if I die." Ruby sank on
the settle, and fairly broke down.

"Hush 'ee now, co!"

"I don't, I don't, an' I don't! I'm tired o' the world, an' my heart's
broke. Mary Jane, you selfish thing, you've never asked about my banns,
no more'n the rest; an' after that cast-off frock, too, that I gave you
last week so good as new!"

"Was it very grand, Miss Ruby? Was it shuddery an' yet joyful--
lily-white an' yet rosy-red--hot an' yet cold--'don't lift me so high,'
an' yet 'praise God, I'm exalted above women'?"

"'Twas all and yet none. 'Twas a voice speakin' my name, sweet an'
terrible, an' I longed for it to go on an' on; and then came the Gauger
stunnin' and shoutin' 'Wreck! wreck!' like a trumpet, an' the church was
full o' wind, an' the folk ran this way an' that, like sheep, an' left
me sittin' there. I'll--I'll die an old maid, I will, if only to
s--spite such ma--ma--manners!"

"Aw, pore dear! But there's better tricks than dyin' unwed. Bind up my
finger, Miss Ruby, an' listen. You shall play Don't Care, an' change
your frock, an' we'll step down to th' cove after dinner an' there be
heartless and fancy-free. Lord! when the dance strikes up, to see you
carryin' off the other maids' danglers an' treating your own man like
dirt!"

Ruby stood up, the water still running off her frock upon the slates,
her moist eyes resting beyond the window on the midden-heap across the
yard, as if she saw there the picture Mary Jane conjured up.

"No. I won't join their low frolic; an' you ought to be above it.
I'll pull my curtains an' sit up-stairs all day, an' you shall read to
me."

The other pulled a wry face. This was not her idea of enjoyment.
She went back to the goose sad at heart, for Miss Ruby had a knack of
enforcing her wishes.

Sure enough, soon after dinner was cleared away (a meal through which
Ruby had sulked and Farmer Tresidder eaten heartily, talking with a full
mouth about the rescue, and coarsely ignoring what he called his
daughter's "faddles"), the two girls retired to the chamber up-stairs;
where the mistress was as good as her word, and pulled the dimity
curtains before settling herself down in an easy-chair to listen to
extracts from a polite novel as rendered aloud, under dire compulsion,
by Mary Jane.

The rain had ceased by this, and the wind abated, though it still howled
around the angle of the house and whipped a spray of the monthly-rose
bush on the quarrels of the window, filling the pauses during which
Mary Jane wrestled with a hard word. Ruby herself had taught the girl
this accomplishment--rare enough at the time--and Mary Jane handled it
gingerly, beginning each sentence in a whisper, as if awed by her own
intrepidity, and ending each in a kind of gratulatory cheer. The work
was of that class of epistolary fiction then in vogue, and the extract
singularly well fitted to Ruby's mood.

"My dearest Wil-hel-mina," began Mary Jane, "racked with a hun-dred
conflicting em-otions, I resume the nar-rative of those fa-tal moments
which rapt me from your affec-tion-ate em-brace. Suffer me to re--to
re-cap--"

"Better spell it, Mary Jane."

"To r.e., re--c.a.p., cap, recap--i.t, it, re--capit--Lor'! what a
twister!--u, recapitu--l.a.t.e, late, re-cap-it-u-late the events
de-tailed in my last letter, full stop--there! if I han't read that full
stop out loud! Lord Bel-field, though an ad-ept in all the arts of
dis-sim-u-la-tion (and how of-ten do we not see these arts al-lied with
un-scru-pu-lous pas-sions?), was un-able to sus-tain the gaze of my
in-fu-ri-a-ted pa-pa, though he com-port-ed himself with suf-fic-ient
p.h.l.e.g.m--Lor'! what a funny word!"

Ruby yawned. It is true she had drawn the dimity curtains--all but a
couple of inches. Through this space she could see the folk busy on the
beach below like a swarm of small black insects, and continually
augmented by those who, having run off to snatch their Christmas dinner,
were returning to the spoil. Some lined the edge of the breakers,
waiting the moment to rush in for a cask or spar that the tide brought
within reach; others (among whom she seemed to descry Young Zeb) were
clambering out with grapnels along the western rocks; a third large
group was gathered in the very centre of the beach, and from the midst
of these a blue wreath of smoke began to curl up. At the same instant
she heard the gate click outside, and pulling the curtain wider, saw her
father trudging away down the lane.

Mary Jane, glancing up, and seeing her mistress crane forward with
curiosity, stole behind and peeped over her shoulder.

"I declare they'm teening a fire!"

"Who gave you leave to bawl in my ear so rudely? Go back to your
reading, this instant." (A pause.) "Mary Jane, I do believe they'm
roastin' chestnuts."

"What a clever game!"

"Father said at dinner the tide was bringin' 'em in by bushels.
Quick! put on your worst bonnet an' clogs, an' run down to look.
I _must_ know. No, I'm not goin'--the idea! I wonder at your low
notions. You shall bring me word o' what's doin'--an' mind you're back
before dark."

Mary Jane fled precipitately, lest the order should be revoked.
Five minutes later, Ruby heard the small gate click again, and with a
sigh saw the girl's rotund figure waddling down the lane. Then she
picked up the book and strove to bury herself in the woes of Wilhelmina,
but still with frequent glances out of window. Twice the book dropped
off her lap; twice she picked it up and laboriously found the page
again. Then she gave it up, and descended to the back door, to see if
anyone were about who might give her news. But the town-place was
deserted by all save the ducks, the old white sow, and a melancholy crew
of cocks and hens huddled under the dripping eaves of the cow-house.
Returning to her room, she settled down on the window-seat, and watched
the blaze of the bonfire increase as the short day faded.

The grey became black. It was six o'clock, and neither her father nor
Mary Jane had returned. Seven o'clock struck from the tall clock in the
kitchen, and was echoed ten minutes after by the Dutch clock in the
parlour below. The sound whirred up through the planching twice as loud
as usual. It was shameful to be left alone like this, to be robbed,
murdered, goodness knew what. The bonfire began to die out, but every
now and then a circle of small black figures would join hands and dance
round it, scattering wildly after a moment or two. In a lull of the
wind she caught the faint sound of shouts and singing, and this
determined her.

She turned back from the window and groped for her tinder-box.
The glow, as she blew the spark upon the dry rag, lit up a very pretty
but tear-stained pair of cheeks; and when she touched off the brimstone
match, and, looking up, saw her face confronting her, blue and tragical,
from the dark-framed mirror, it reminded her of Lady Macbeth.
Hastily lighting the candle, she caught up a shawl and crept
down-stairs. Her clogs were in the hall; and four horn lanterns dangled
from a row of pegs above them. She caught down one, lit it, and
throwing the shawl over her head, stepped out into the night.

The wind was dying down and seemed almost warm upon her face. A young
moon fought gallantly, giving the massed clouds just enough light to
sail by; but in the lane it was dark as pitch. This did not so much
matter, as the rain had poured down it like a sluice, washing the flints
clean. Ruby's lantern swung to and fro, casting a yellow glare on the
tall hedges, drawing queer gleams from the holly-bushes, and flinging an
ugly, amorphous shadow behind, that dogged her like an enemy.

At the foot of the lane she could clearly distinguish the songs, shouts,
and shrill laughter, above the hollow roar of the breakers.

"They're playin' kiss-i'-the-ring. That's Modesty Prowse's laugh.
I wonder how any man _can_ kiss a mouth like Modesty Prowse's!"

She turned down the sands towards the bonfire, grasping as she went all
the details of the scene.

In the glow of the dying fire sat a semicircle of men--Jim Lewarne, sunk
in a drunken slumber, Calvin Oke bawling in his ear, Old Zeb on hands
and knees, scraping the embers together, Toby Lewarne (Jim's elder
brother) thumping a pannikin on his knee and bellowing a carol, and a
dozen others--in stages varying from qualified sobriety to stark and
shameless intoxication--peering across the fire at the game in progress
between them and the faint line that marked where sand ended and sea
began.

"Zeb's turn!" roared out Toby Lewarne, breaking off _The Third Good Joy_
midway, in his excitement.

"Have a care--have a care, my son!" Old Zeb looked up to shout.
"Thee'rt so good as wed already; so do thy wedded man's duty, an' kiss
th' hugliest!"

It was true. Ruby, halting with her lantern a pace or two behind the
dark semicircle of backs, saw her perfidious Zeb moving from right to
left slowly round the circle of men and maids that, with joined hands
and screams of laughter, danced as slowly in the other direction.
She saw him pause once--twice, feign to throw the kerchief over one,
then still pass on, calling out over the racket:--

"I sent a letter to my love,
I carried water in my glove,
An' on the way I dropped it--dropped it--dropped it--"

He dropped the kerchief over Modesty Prowse.

"Zeb!"

Young Zeb whipped the kerchief off Modesty's neck, and spun round as it
shot.

The dancers looked; the few sober men by the fire turned and looked
also.

"'Tis Ruby Tresidder!" cried one of the girls; "'Wudn' be i' thy shoon,
Young Zeb, for summatt."

Zeb shook his wits together and dashed off towards the spot, twenty
yards away, where Ruby stood holding the lantern high, its ray full on
her face. As she started she kicked off her clogs, turned, and ran for
her life.

Then, in an instant, a new game began upon the sands. Young Zeb, waving
his kerchief and pursuing the flying lantern, was turned, baffled,
intercepted--here, there, and everywhere--by the dancers, who scattered
over the beach with shouts and peals of laughter, slipping in between
him and his quarry. The elders by the fire held their sides and cheered
the sport. Twice Zeb was tripped up by a mischievous boot, floundered
and went sprawling; and the roar was loud and long. Twice he picked
himself up and started again after the lantern, that zigzagged now along
the fringe of the waves, now up towards the bonfire, now off along the
dark shadow of the cliffs.

Ruby could hardly sift her emotions when she found herself panting and
doubling in flight. The chase had started without her will or dissent;
had suddenly sprung, as it were, out of the ground. She only knew that
she was very angry with Zeb; that she longed desperately to elude him;
and that he must catch her soon, for her breath and strength were
ebbing.

What happened in the end she kept in her dreams till she died.
Somehow she had dropped the lantern and was running up from the sea
towards the fire, with Zeb's feet pounding behind her, and her soul
possessed with the dread to feel his grasp upon her shoulders.
As it fell, Old Zeb leapt up to his feet with excitement, and opened his
mouth wide to cheer.

But no voice came for three seconds: and when he spoke this was what he
said--

"Good Lord, deliver us!"

She saw his gaze pass over her shoulder; and then heard these words come
slowly, one by one, like dropping stones. His face was like a ghost's
in the bonfire's light, and he muttered again--"From battle and murder,
and from sudden death--Good Lord, deliver us!"

She could not understand at first; thought it must have something to do
with Young Zeb, whose arms were binding hers, and whose breath was hot
on her neck. She felt his grasp relax, and faced about.

Full in front, standing out as the faint moon showed them, motionless,
as if suspended against the black sky, rose the masts, yards, and
square-sails of a full-rigged ship.

The men and women must have stood a whole minute--dumb as stones--before
there came that long curdling shriek for which they waited. The great
masts quivered for a second against the darkness; then heaved, lurched,
and reeled down, crashing on the Raney.

CHAPTER III.

THE STRANGER.

As the ship struck, night closed down again, and her agony, sharp or
lingering, was blotted out. There was no help possible; no arm that
could throw across the three hundred yards that separated her from the
cliffs; no swimmer that could carry a rope across those breakers; nor
any boat that could, with a chance of life, put out among them. Now and
then a dull crash divided the dark hours, but no human cry again reached
the shore.

Day broke on a grey sea still running angrily, a tired and shivering
group upon the beach, and on the near side of the Raney a shapeless
fragment, pounded and washed to and fro--a relic on which the watchers
could in their minds re-build the tragedy.

The Raney presents a sheer edge to seaward--an edge under which the
first vessel, though almost grazing her side, had driven in plenty of
water. Shorewards, however, it descends by gradual ledges.
Beguiled by the bonfire, or mistaking Ruby's lantern for the tossing
stern-light of a comrade, the second ship had charged full-tilt on the
reef and hung herself upon it, as a hunter across a fence. Before she
could swing round, her back was broken; her stern parted, slipped back
and settled in many fathoms; while the fore-part heaved forwards,
toppled down the reef till it stuck, and there was slowly brayed into
pieces by the seas. The tide had swept up and ebbed without dislodging
it, and now was almost at low-water mark.

"'May so well go home to breakfast," said Elias Sweetland, grimly, as he
took in what the uncertain light could show.

"Here, Young Zeb, look through my glass," sang out Farmer Tresidder,
handing the telescope. He had been up at the vicarage drinking hot grog
with the parson and the rescued men, when Sim Udy ran up with news of
the fresh disaster; and his first business on descending to the Cove had
been to pack Ruby and Mary Jane off to bed with a sound rating. Parson
Babbage had descended also, carrying a heavy cane (the very same with
which he broke the head of a Radical agitator in the bar of the "Jolly
Pilchards," to the mild scandal of the diocese), and had routed the rest
of the women and chastised the drunken. The parson was a remarkable
man, and looked it, just now, in spite of the red handkerchief that
bound his hat down over his ears.

"Nothing alive there--eh?"

Young Zeb, with a glass at his left eye, answered--

"Nothin' left but a frame o' ribs, sir, an' the foremast hangin' over,
so far as I can see; but 'tis all a raffle o' spars and riggin' close
under her side. I'll tell 'ee better when this wave goes by."

But the next instant he took down the glass, with a whitened face, and
handed it to the parson.

The parson looked too. "Terrible!--terrible!" he said, very slowly,
and passed it on to Farmer Tresidder.

"What is it? Where be I to look? Aw, pore chaps--pore chaps!
Man alive--but there's one movin'!"

Zeb snatched the glass.

"'Pon the riggin', Zeb, just under her lee! I saw en move--
a black-headed chap, in a red shirt--"

"Right, Farmer--he's clingin', too, not lashed." Zeb gave a long look.
"Darned if I won't!" he said. "Cast over them corks, Sim Udy! How much
rope have 'ee got, Jim?" He began to strip as he spoke.

"Lashins," answered Jim Lewarne.

"Splice it up, then, an' hitch a dozen corks along it."

"Zeb, Zeb!" cried his father, "What be 'bout?"

"Swimmin'," answered Zeb, who by this time had unlaced his boots.

"The notion! Look here, friends--take a look at the bufflehead!
Not three months back his mother's brother goes dead an' leaves en a
legacy, 'pon which, he sets up as jowter--han'some painted cart, tidy
little mare, an' all complete, besides a bravish sum laid by. A man of
substance, sirs--a life o' much price, as you may say. Aw, Zeb, my son,
'tis hard to lose 'ee, but 'tis harder still now you're in such a very
fair way o' business!"

"Hold thy clack, father, an' tie thicky knot, so's it won't slip."

"Shan't. I've a-took boundless pains wi' thee, my son, from thy birth
up: hours I've a-spent curin' thy propensities wi' the strap--ay, hours.
D'ee think I raised 'ee up so carefully to chuck thyself away 'pon a
come-by-chance furriner? No, I didn'; an' I'll see thee jiggered afore
I ties 'ee up. Pa'son Babbage--"

"Ye dundering old shammick!" broke in the parson, driving the ferule of
his cane deep in the sand, "be content to have begotten a fool, and
thank heaven and his mother he's a gamey fool."

"Thank'ee, Pa'son," said Young Zeb, turning his head as Jim Lewarne
fastened the belt of corks under his armpits. "Now the line--not too
tight round the waist, an' pay out steady. You, Jim, look to this.
R-r-r--mortal cold water, friends!" He stood for a moment, clenching
his teeth--a fine figure of a youth for all to see. Then, shouting for
plenty of line, he ran twenty yards down the beach and leapt in on the
top of a tumbling breaker.

"When a man's old," muttered the parson, half to himself, "he may yet
thank God for what he sees, sometimes. Hey, Farmer! I wish I was a
married man and had a girl good enough for that naked young hero."

"Ruby an' he'll make a han'some pair."

"Ay, I dare say: only I wasn't thinking o' _her_. How's the fellow out
yonder?"

The man on the wreck was still clinging, drenched twice or thrice in the
half-minute and hidden from sight, but always emerging. He sat astride
of the dangling foremast, and had wound tightly round his wrist the end
of a rope that hung over the bows. If the rope gave, or the mast worked
clear of the tangle that held it and floated off, he was a dead man.
He hardly fought at all, and though they shouted at the top of their
lungs, seemed to take no notice--only moved feebly, once or twice, to
get a firmer seat.

Zeb also could only be descried at intervals, his head appearing, now
and again, like a cork on the top of a billow. But the last of the ebb
was helping him, and Jim Lewarne, himself at times neck-high in the
surf, continued to pay out the line slowly. In fact, the feat was less
dangerous than it seemed to the spectators. A few hours before, it was
impossible; but by this there was little more than a heavy swell after
the first twenty yards of surf. Zeb's chief difficulty would be to
catch a grip or footing on the reef where the sea again grew broken, and
his foremost dread lest cramp should seize him in the bitterly cold
water. Rising on the swell, he could spy the seaman tossing and sinking
on the mast just ahead.

As it happened, he was spared the main peril of the reef, for in fifty
more strokes he found himself plunging down into a smooth trough of
water with the mast directly beneath. As he shot down, the mast rose to
him, he flung his arms out over it, and was swept up, clutching it, to
the summit of the next swell.

Oddly enough, his first thought, as he hung there, was not for the man
he had come to save, but for that which had turned him pale when first
he glanced through the telescope. The foremast across which he lay was
complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to
his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead
and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare
at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived.
Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out
to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it
to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb--who had been
vaguely wondering how on earth he contrived to keep his seat and yet
hold on by the rope without being torn limb from limb--now discovered
this end of the mast to be so tightly jammed and tangled against the
wreck as practically to be immovable. The man's face was about as
scaring as the corpses'; for, catching sight of Zeb, he betrayed no
surprise, but only looked back wistfully over his left shoulder, while
his blue lips worked without sound. At least, Zeb heard none.

He waited while they plunged again and emerged, and then, drawing
breath, began to pull himself along towards the stranger. They had seen
his success from the beach, and Jim Lewarne, with plenty of line yet to
spare, waited for the next move. Zeb worked along till he could touch
the man's thigh.

"Keep your knee stiddy," he called out; "I'm goin' to grip hold o't."

For answer, the stranger only kicked out with his foot, as a pettish
child might, and almost thrust him from his hold.

"Look'ee here: no doubt you'm 'mazed, but that's a curst foolish trick,
all the same. Be that tangle fast, you'm holding by?"

The man made no sign of comprehension.

"Best not trust to't, I reckon," muttered Zeb: "must get past en an'
make fast round a rib. Ah! would 'ee, ye varment?"

For, once more, the stranger had tried to thrust him off; and a struggle
followed, which ended in Zeb's getting by and gripping the mast again
between him and the wreck.

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