Chapter II (3)

"It is the story of a sacrifice," he began, "mad or great, as you please; but, mark you, it achieved its end. As a boy, I witnessed it from its beginnings. For it was at this very door that Robert Lovyes rapped when he first landed on Tresco on the night of the seventh of May twenty-two years ago, and I was here on my holidays at the time. I had been out that day in my father's lugger to the Poul, which is the best fishing-ground anywhere near Scilly, and the fog took us, I remember, at three of the afternoon. So what with that and the wind failing, it was late when we cast anchor in Grimsey Sound. The night had fallen in a brown mirk, and so still that the sound of our feet brushing through the ferns was loud, like the sweep of scythes. We sat down to supper in this kitchen about nine, my mother, my father, two men from the boat, and myself, and after supper we gathered about the fire here and talked. The talk in these parts, however it may begin, slides insensibly to that one element of which the noise is ever in our ears; and so in a little here were we chattering of wrecks and wrecks and wrecks and the bodies of dead men drowned. And then, in the thick of the talk, came the knock on the door--a light rapping of the knuckles, such as one hears twenty times a day; but our minds were so primed with old wives' tales that it fairly shook us all. No one stirred, and the knocking was repeated.

"Then the latch was lifted, and Robert Lovyes stepped in. His beard was black then--coal black, like his hair--and his face looked out from it pale as a ghost and shining wet from the sea. The water dripped from his clothes and made a puddle about his feet.

"'How often did I knock?' he asked pleasantly. 'Twice, I think. Yes, twice.'

"Then he sat down on the settle, very deliberately pulled off his great sea-boots, and emptied the water out of them.

"'What island is this?' he asked.

"'Tresco.'

"'Tresco!' he exclaimed, in a quick, agitated whisper, as though he dreaded yet expected to hear the name. 'We were wrecked, then, on the Golden Ball.'

"'Wrecked?' cried my father; but the man went on pursuing his own thoughts.

"'I swam to an islet.'

"'It would be Norwithel,' said my father.

"'Yes,' said he, 'it would be Norwithel.' And my mother asked curiously--

"'You know these islands?' For his speech was leisurely and delicate, such as we heard neither from Scillonians nor from the sailors who visit St. Mary's.

"'Yes,' he answered, his face breaking into a smile of unexpected softness, 'I know these islands. From Rosevean to Ganilly, from Peninnis Head to Maiden Bower: I know them well.'"

* * * * *

At this point Mr. Wyeth broke off his story, and crossing to the window, opened it. "Listen!" he said. I heard as it were the sound of innumerable voices chattering and murmuring and whispering in some mysterious language, and at times the voices blended and the murmurs became a single moan.

"It is the tide making on the Golden Ball," said Mr. Wyeth. "The reef stretches seawards from St. Helen's island and half way across the Sound. You may see it at low tide, a ledge level as a paved causeway, and God help the ship that strikes on it!"

Even while he spoke, from these undertones of sound there swelled suddenly a great booming like a battery of cannon.

"It is the ledge cracking," said Mr. Wyeth, "and it cracks in the calmest weather." With that, he closed the window, and, lighting his pipe, resumed his story.

* * * * *

"It was on that reef that Mr. Robert Lovyes was wrecked. The ship, he told us, was the schooner _Waking Dawn_, bound from Cardiff to Africa, and she had run into the fog about half-past three, when they were a mile short of the Seven Stones. She bumped twice on the reef, and sank immediately, with, so far as he knew, all her crew.

"'So now,' Robert continued, tapping his belt, 'since I have the means to pay, I will make bold to ask for a lodging, and for this night I will hang up here my dripping garments to Neptune.'

"'Me tabula sacer
Votiva paries--'

"I began in the pride of my schooling, for I had learned that verse of Horace but a week before.

"'This, no doubt, is the Cornish tongue,' he interrupted gravely, 'and will you please to carry my boots outside?'

"What followed seemed to me then the strangest part of all this business, though, indeed, our sea-fogs come and go as often as not with a like abruptness. But the time of this fog's dispersion shocked the mind as something pitiless and arbitrary. For had the air cleared an hour before, the _Waking Dawn_ would not have struck. I opened the door, and it was as though a panel of brilliant white was of a sudden painted on the floor. Robert Lovyes sprang up from the settle, ran past me into the open, and stood on the bracken in his stockinged feet. A little patch of fog still smoked on the shining beach of Tean; a scarf of it was twisted about the granite bosses of St. Helen's; and for the rest the moonlight sparkled upon the headlands and was spilled across miles of placid sea. There was a froth of water upon the Golden Ball, but no sign of the schooner sunk among its weeds.

"My father, however, and the two boatmen hurried down to the shore, while I was despatched with the news to Merchant's Point. My mother asked Mr. Lovyes his name, that I might carry it with me. But he spoke in a dreamy voice, as though he had not heard her.

"'There were eight of the crew. Four were below, and I doubt if the four on deck could swim.'

"I ran off on my errand, and, coming back a little later with a bottle of cordial waters, found Mr. Lovyes still standing in the moonlight. He seemed not to have moved a finger. I gave him the bottle, with a message that any who were rescued should be carried to Merchant's Point forthwith, and that he himself should go down there in the morning.

"'Who taught you Latin?' he asked suddenly.

"'Mrs. Lovyes taught me the rudiments,' I began; and with that he led me on to talk of her, but with some cunning. For now he would divert me to another topic and again bring me back to her, so that it all seemed the vagrancies of a boy's inconsequent chatter.

"Mrs. Lovyes, who was remotely akin to the Lord Proprietor, had come to Tresco three years before, immediately after her marriage, and, it was understood, at her husband's wish. I talked of her readily, for, apart from what I owed to her bounty, she was a woman most sure to engage the affections of any boy. For one thing she was past her youth, being thirty years of age, tall, with eyes of the kindliest grey, and she bore herself in everything with a tender toleration, like a woman that has suffered much.

"Of the other topics of this conversation there was one which later I had good reason to remember. We had caught a shark twelve feet long at the Poul that day, and the shark fairly divided my thoughts with Mrs. Lovyes.

"'You bleed a fish first into the sea,' I explained. 'Then you bait with a chad's head, and let your line down a couple of fathoms. You can see your bait quite clearly, and you wait.'

"'No doubt,' said Robert; 'you wait.'

"'In a while,' said I, 'a dim lilac shadow floats through the clear water, and after a little you catch a glimpse of a forked tail and waving fins and an evil devil's head. The fish smells at the bait and sinks again to a lilac shadow--perhaps out of sight; and again it rises. The shadow becomes a fish, the fish goes circling round your boat, and it may be a long while before he turns on his back and rushes at the bait.'

"'And as like as not, he carries the bait and line away."

"'That depends upon how quick you are with the gaff,' said I.' Here comes my father.'

"My father returned empty-handed. Not one of the crew had been saved.

"'You asked my name,' said Robert Lovyes, turning to my mother. 'It is Crudge--Jarvis Crudge.' With that he went to his bed, but all night long I heard him pacing his room.

"The next morning he complained of his long immersion in the sea, and certainly when he told his story to Mr. and Mrs. Lovyes as they sat over their breakfast in the parlour at Merchant's Point, he spoke with such huskiness as I never heard the like of. Mr. Lovyes took little heed to us, but went on eating his breakfast with only a sour comment here and there. I noticed, however, that Mrs. Lovyes, who sat over against us, bent her head forward and once or twice shook it as though she would unseat some ridiculous conviction. And after the story was told, she sat with no word of kindness for Mr. Crudge, and, what was yet more unlike her, no word of pity for the sailors who were lost. Then she rose and stood, steadying herself with the tips of her fingers upon the table. Finally she came swiftly across the room and peered into Mr. Crudge's face.

"'If you need help,' she said, 'I will gladly furnish it. No doubt you will be anxious to go from Tresco at the earliest. No doubt, no doubt you will,' she repeated anxiously.

"'Madame,' he said, 'I need no help, being by God's leave a man'--and he laid some stress upon the 'man,' but not boastfully--rather as though all _women_ did, or might need help, by the mere circumstance of their sex--'and as for going hence, why yesterday I was bound for Africa. I sailed unexpectedly into a fog off Scilly. I was wrecked in a calm sea on the Golden Ball--I was thrown up on Tresco--no one on that ship escaped but myself. No sooner was I safe than the fog lifted---'

"'You will stay?' Mrs. Lovyes interrupted. 'No?'

"'Yes,' said he, 'Jarvis Grudge will stay.'

"And she turned thoughtfully away. But I caught a glimpse of her face as we went out, and it wore the saddest smile a man could see.

"Mr. Grudge and I walked for a while in silence.

"'And what sort of a name has Mr. John Lovyes in these parts?' he asked.

"'An honest sort,' said I emphatically--'the name of a man who loves his wife.'

"'Or her money,' he sneered. 'Bah! a surly ill-conditioned dog, I'll warrant, the curmudgeon!"

"'You are marvellously recovered of your cold,' said I.

"He stopped, and looked across the Sound. Then he said in a soft, musing voice: 'I once knew just such another clever boy. He was so clever that men beat him with sticks and put on great sea-boots to kick him with, so that he lived a miserable life, and was subsequently hanged in great agony at Tyburn.'

"Mr. Grudge, as he styled himself, stayed with us for a week, during which time he sailed much with me about these islands; and I made a discovery. Though he knew these islands so well, he had never visited them before, and his knowledge was all hearsay. I did not mention my discovery to him, lest I should meet with another rebuff. But I was none the less sure of its truth, for he mistook Hanjague for Nornor, and Priglis Bay for Beady Pool, and made a number of suchlike mistakes. After a week he hired the cottage in which he now lives, bought his boat, leased from the steward the patch of ground in Dolphin Town, and set about building his house. He undertook the work, I am sure, for pure employment and distraction. He picked up the granite stones, fitted them together, panelled them, made the floors from the deck of a brigantine which came ashore on Annet, pegged down the thatch roof--in a word, he built the house from first to last with his own hands and he took fifteen months over the business, during which time he did not exchange a single word with Mrs. Lovyes, nor anything more than a short 'Good-day' with Mr. John. He worked, however, with no great regularity. For while now he laboured in a feverish haste, now he would sit a whole day idle on the headlands; or, again, he would of a sudden throw down his tools as though the work overtaxed him, and, leaping into his boat, set all sail and run with the wind. All that night you might see him sailing in the moonlight, and he would come home in the flush of the dawn.

"After he had built the house, he furnished it, crossing for that purpose backwards and forwards between Tresco and St. Mary's. I remember that one day he brought back with him a large chest, and I offered to lend him a hand in carrying it. But he hoisted it on his back and took it no farther than the cottage in which he lived, where it remained locked with a padlock.

"Towards Christmas-time, then, the house was ready, but to our surprise he did not move into it. He seemed, indeed, of a sudden, to have lost all liking for it, and whether it was that he had no longer any work upon his hands, he took to following Mrs. Lovyes about, but in a way that was unnoticeable unless you had other reasons to suspect that his thoughts were following her.

"His conduct in this respect was particularly brought home to me on Christmas Day. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and I walked over the hill at Merchant's Point, meaning to bathe in the little sequestered bay beyond. From the top of the hill I saw Mrs. Lovyes walking along the strip of beach alone, and as I descended the hill-side, which is very deep in fern and heather, I came plump upon Jarvis Grudge, stretched full-length on the ground. He was watching Mrs. Lovyes with so greedy a concentration of his senses that he did not remark my approach. I asked him when he meant to enter his new house.

"'I do not know that I ever shall,' he replied.

"'Then why did you build it?' I asked.

"'Because I was a fool!' and then he burst out in a passionate whisper. 'But a fool I was to stay here, and a fool's trick it was to build that house!' He shook his fist in its direction. 'Call it Grudge's Folly, and there's the name for it!' and with that he turned him again to spying upon Mrs. Lovyes.

"After a while he spoke again, but slowly and with his eyes fixed upon the figure moving upon the beach.

"'Do you remember the night I came ashore? You had caught a shark that day, and you told me of it. The great lilac shadow which rises from the depths and circles about the bait, and sinks again and rises again and takes--how long?--two years maybe before he snaps it.'

"'But he does not carry it away,' said I, taking his meaning.

"'Sometimes--sometimes," he snarled.

"'That depends on how quick we are with the gaff."

"'You!' he laughed, and taking me by the elbows, he shook me till I was giddy.

"'I owe Mrs. Lovyes everything,' I said. At that he let me go. The ferocity of his manner, however, confirmed me in my fears, and, with a boy's extravagance, I carried from that day a big knife in my belt.

"'The gaff, I suppose,' said Mr. Grudge with a polite smile when first he remarked it. During the next week, however, he showed more contentment with his lot, and once I caught him rubbing his hands and chuckling, like a man well pleased; so that by New Year's Eve I was wellnigh relieved of my anxiety on Mrs. Lovyes' account.

"On that night, however, I went down to Grudge's cottage, and peeping through the window on my way to the door, I saw a strange man in the room. His face was clean-shaven, his hair tied back and powdered; he was in his shirt-sleeves, with a satin waistcoat, a sword at his side, and shining buckles to his shoes. Then I saw that the big chest stood open. I opened the door and entered.

"'Come in!' said the man, and from his voice I knew him to be Mr. Crudge. He took a candle in his hand and held it above his head.

"'Tell me my name,' he said. His face, shaved of its beard and no longer hidden by his hair, stood out distinct, unmistakable.

"'Lovyes,' I answered.

"'Good boy,' said he. 'Robert Lovyes, brother to John.'

"'Yet he did not know you,' said I, though, indeed, I could not wonder.

"'But she did,' he cried, with a savage exultation. 'At the first glance, at the first word, she knew me.' Then, quietly, 'My coat is on the chair beside you.'

"I took it up. 'What do you mean to do?' I asked.

"'It is New Year's Eve,' he said grimly. 'The season of good wishes. It is only meet that I should wish my brother, who stole my wife, much happiness for the next twelve months.'

"He took the coat from my hands.

"'You admire the coat? Ah! true, the colour is lilac.' He held it out at arm's length. Doubtless I had been staring at the coat, but I had not even given it a thought. 'The lilac shadow!' he went on, with a sneer. 'Believe me, it is the purest coincidence.' And as he prepared to slip his arm into the sleeve I flashed the knife out of my belt. He was too quick for me, however. He flung the coat over my head. I felt the knife twisted out of my hand; he stumbled over the chair; we both fell to the ground, and the next thing I know I was running over the bracken towards Merchant's Point with Robert Lovyes hot upon my heels. He was of a heavy build, and forty years of age. I had the double advantage, and I ran till my chest cracked and the stars danced above me. I clanged at the bell and stumbled into the hall.

"'Mrs. Lovyes!' I choked the name out as she stepped from the parlour.

"'Well?' she asked. 'What is it?'

"'He is following--Robert Lovyes!'

"She sprang rigid, as though I had whipped her across the face. Then, 'I knew it would come to this at the last,' she said; and even as she spoke Robert Lovyes crossed the threshold.

"'Molly,' he said, and looked at her curiously. She stood singularly passive, twisting her fingers. 'I hardly know you,' he continued. 'In the old days you were the wilfullest girl I ever clapped eyes on.'

"'That was thirteen years ago,' she said, with a queer little laugh at the recollection.

"He took her by the hand and led her into the parlour. I followed. Neither Mrs. Lovyes nor Robert remarked my presence, and as for John Lovyes, he rose from his chair as the pair approached him, stretched out a trembling hand, drew it in, stretched it out again, all without a word, and his face purple and ridged with the veins.

"'Brother,' said Robert, taking between his fingers half a gold coin, which was threaded on a chain about Mrs. Lovyes' wrist, 'where is the fellow to this? I gave it to you on the Gambia river, bidding you carry it to Molly as a sign that I would return.'

"I saw John's face harden and set at the sound of his brother's voice. He looked at his wife, and, since she now knew the truth, he took the bold course.

"'I gave it to her,' said he, 'as a token of your death; and, by God! she was worth the lie!'

"The two men faced one another--Robert smoothing his chin, John with his arms folded, and each as white and ugly with passion as the other. Robert turned to Mrs. Lovyes, who stood like a stone.

"'You promised to wait,' he said in a constrained voice. 'I escaped six years after my noble brother.'

"'Six years?' she asked. 'Had you come back then you would have found me waiting.'

"'I could not,' he said. 'A fortune equal to your own--that was what I promised to myself before I returned to marry you.'

"'And much good it has done you,' said John, and I think that he meant by the provocation to bring the matter to an immediate issue. 'Pride, pride!' and he wagged his head. 'Sinful pride!'

"Robert sprang forward with an oath, and then, as though the movement had awakened her, Mrs. Lovyes stepped in between the two men, with an arm outstretched on either side to keep them apart.

"'Wait!' she said. 'For what is it that you fight? Not, indeed, for me. To you, my husband, I will no more belong; to you, my lover, I cannot. My woman's pride, my woman's honour--those two things are mine to keep.'

"So she stood casting about for an issue, while the brothers glowered at one another across her. It was evident that if she left them alone they would fight, and fight to the death. She turned to Robert.

"'You meant to live on Tresco here at my gates, unknown to me; but you could not.'

"'I could not,' he answered. 'In the old days you had spoken so much of Scilly--every island reminded me--and I saw you every day.'

"I could read the thought passing through her mind. It would not serve for her to live beside them, visible to them each day. Sooner or later they would come to grips. And then her face flushed as the notion of her great sacrifice came to her.

"'I see but the one way,' she said. 'I will go into the house that you, Robert, have built. Neither you nor John shall see me, but none the less, I shall live between you, holding you apart, as my hands do now. I give my life to you so truly that from this night no one shall see my face. You, John, shall live on here at Merchant's Point. Robert, you at your cottage, and every day you will bring me food and water and leave it at my door.'

"The two men fell back shamefaced. They protested they would part and put the world between them; but she would not trust them. I think, too, the notion of her sacrifice grew on her as she thought of it. For women are tenacious of sacrifice even as men are of revenge. And in the end she had her way. That night Robert Lovyes nailed the boards across the windows, and brought the door-key back to her; and that night, twenty years ago, she crossed the threshold. No man has seen her since. But, none the less, for twenty years she has lived between the brothers, keeping them apart."

This was the story which Mr. Wyeth told me as we sat over our pipes, and the next day I set off on my journey back to London. The conclusion of the affair I witnessed myself. For a year later we received a letter from Mr. Robert, asking that a large sum of money should be forwarded to him. Being curious to learn the reason for his demand, I carried the sum to Tresco myself. Mr. John Lovyes had died a month before, and I reached the island on Mr. Robert's wedding-day. I was present at the ceremony. He was now dressed in a manner which befitted his station--an old man bent and bowed, but still handsome, and he bore upon his arm a tall woman, grey-haired and very pale, yet with the traces of great beauty. As the parson laid her hand in her husband's, I heard her whisper to him, "Dust to Dust."

KEEPER OF THE BISHOP.

For a fortnight out of every six weeks the little white faced man walked the garrison on St. Mary's Island in a broadcloth frock-coat, a low waistcoat and a black riband of a tie fastened in a bow; and it gave him great pleasure to be mistaken for a commercial traveller. But during the other four weeks he was head-keeper of the lighthouse on the Bishop's Rock, with thirty years of exemplary service to his credit. By what circumstances he had been brought to enlist under the Trinity flag I never knew. But now, at the age of forty-eight he was entirely occupied with a great horror of the sea and its hunger for the bodies of men; the frock-coat which he wore during his spells on shore was a protest against the sea; and he hated not only the sea but all things that were in the sea, especially rock lighthouses, and of all rock lighthouses especially the Bishop.

"The Atlantic's as smooth as a ballroom floor," said he. It was a clear, still day and we were sitting among the gorse on the top of the garrison, looking down the sea towards the west. Five miles from the Scillies, the thin column of the Bishop showed like a cord strung tight in the sky. "But out there all round the lighthouse there are eddies twisting and twisting, without any noise, and extraordinary quick, and every other second, now here, now there, you'll notice the sea dimple, and you'll hear a sound like a man hiccoughing, and all at once, there's a wicked black whirlpool. The tide runs seven miles an hour past the Bishop. But in another year I have done with her." To her Garstin nodded across from St. Mary's to that grey finger post of the Atlantic. "One more winter, well, very likely during this one more winter the Bishop will go--on some night when a storm blows from west or west-nor'west and the Irish coast takes none of its strength."

He was only uttering the current belief of the islands. The first Bishop lighthouse had been swept away before its building was finished, and though the second stood, a fog bell weighing no less than a ton, and fixed ninety feet above the water, had been lifted from its fittings by a single wave, and tossed like a tennis-ball into the sea. I asked Garstin whether he had been stationed on the rock at the time.

"People talk of lightships plunging and tugging at their cables," he returned. "Well, I've tried lightships, and what I say is, ships are built to plunge and tug at their cables. That's their business. But it isn't the business of one hundred and twenty upright feet of granite to quiver and tremble like a steel spring. No, I wasn't on the Bishop when the bell went. But I was there when a wave climbed up from the base of the rock and smashed in the glass wall of the lantern, and put the light out. That was last spring at four o'clock in the morning. The day was breaking very cold and wild, and one could just see the waves below, a lashing tumble of grey and white water as far as the eye could reach. I was in the lantern reading 'It's never too late to mend.' I had come to where the chaplain knocks down the warder, and I was thinking how I'd like to have a go at that warder myself, when all the guns in the world went off together in my ears. And there I was dripping wet, and fairly sliced with splinters of glass, and the wind blowing wet in my face, and the lamp out, and a bitter grey light of morning, as though there never, never had been any sun, and all the dead men in the sea shouting out for me one hundred feet below," and Garstin shivered, and rose to his feet. "Well, I have only one more winter of it."

"And then?" I asked.

"Then I get the North Foreland, and the trippers come out from Margate, and I live on shore with my wife and--By the way, I wanted to speak to you about my boy. He's getting up in years. What shall I make of him? A linen-draper, eh? In the Midlands, what? or something in a Free Library, handing out Charles Reade's books? He's at home now. Come and see him!"

In Garstin's quarters, within the coastguard enclosure, I was introduced to his wife and the lad, Leopold. "What shall we call him?" Mrs. Garstin had asked, some fifteen years before. "I don't know any seafaring man by the name of Leopold," Garstin had replied, after a moment of reflection. So Leopold he was named.

Mrs. Garstin was a buxom, unimaginative woman, but she shared to the full her husband's horror of the sea. She told me of nights when she lay alone listening to the moan of the wind overhead, and seeing the column of the Bishop rock upon its base, and of mornings when she climbed from the sheltered barracks up the gorse, with her heart tugging in her breast, certain, certain that this morning, at least, there would be no Bishop lighthouse visible from the top of the garrison.

"It seems a sort of insult to the works of God," said she, in a hushed voice. "It seems as if it stood up there in God's face and cried, 'You can't hurt me!'"

"Yes, most presumptuous and provoking," said Garstin; and so they fell to talking of the boy, who, at all events, should fulfil his destiny very far inland from the sea. Mrs. Garstin leaned to the linen-drapery; Garstin inclined to the free library.

"Well, I will come down to the North Foreland," said I, "and you shall tell me which way it is."

"Yes, if--" said Garstin, and stopped.

"Yes, if--" repeated his wife, with a nod of the head.

"Oh! it won't go this winter," said I.

And it didn't. But, on the other hand, Garstin did not go to the North Foreland, nor for two years did I hear any more of him. But two years later I returned to St. Mary's and walked across the beach of the island to the little graveyard by the sea. A new tablet upon the outer wall of the church caught and held my eye. I read the inscription and remained incredulous. For the Bishop still stood. But the letters were there engraved upon the plate, and as I read them again, the futility of Garstin's fears was enforced upon me with a singular pathos.

For the Bishop still stood and Garstin had died on the Christmas Eve of that last year which he was to spend upon rock lighthouses. Of how he died the tablet gave a hint, but no more than a hint. There were four words inscribed underneath his name:

"And he was not."

I walked back to Hugh Town, wondering at the tragedy which those four words half hid and half revealed, and remembering that the tide runs seven miles an hour past the Bishop, with many eddies and whirlpools. Almost unconsciously I went up the hill above Hugh Town and came to the signal station on the top of the garrison. And so occupied was I with my recollections of Garstin that it did not strike me as strange that I should find Mrs. Garstin standing now where he had stood and looking out to the Bishop as he was used to look.

"I had not heard," I said to her.

"No?" she returned simply, and again turned her eyes seawards. It was late on a midsummer afternoon. The sun hung a foot or so above the water, a huge ball of dull red fire, and from St. Mary's out to the horizon's rim the sea stretched a rippling lagoon of the colour of claret. Over the whole expanse there was but one boat visible, a lugger, between Sennen and St. Agnes, beating homewards against a light wind.

"It was a storm, I suppose," said I. "A storm out of the west?"

"No. There was no wind, but--there was a haze, and it was growing dark." Mrs. Garstin spoke in a peculiar tone of resignation, with a yearning glance towards the Bishop as I thought, towards the lugger as I know. But even then I was sure that those last words: "There was a haze and it was growing dark," concealed the heart of her distress. She explained the inscription upon the tablet, while the lugger tacked towards St. Mary's, and while I gradually began to wonder what still kept her on the island.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of that Christmas Eve, the lighthouse on St. Agnes' Island showed its lamps; five minutes later the red beams struck out from Round Island to the north; but to the west on the Bishop all was dark. The haze thickened, and night came on; still there was no flash from the Bishop, and the islands wondered. Half an hour passed; there was still darkness in the west, and the islands became alarmed. The Trinity Brethren subsidise a St. Agnes' lugger to serve the Bishop, and this boat was got ready. At a quarter to five suddenly the Bishop light shot through the gloom, but immediately after a shutter was interposed quickly some half-a-dozen times. It was the signal of distress, and the lugger worked out to the Bishop with the tide. Of the three keepers there were now only two.

It appeared from their account that Garstin took the middle day watch, that they themselves were asleep, and that Garstin should have roused them to light the lamps at a quarter to four. They woke of their own accord in the dark, and at once believed they had slept into the night. The clock showed them it was half-past four. They mounted to the lantern room, and nowhere was there any sign of Garstin. They lit the lamps. The first thing they saw was the log. It was open and the last entry was written in Garstin's hand and was timed 3.40 P.M. It mentioned a ketch reaching northwards. The two men descended the winding-stairs, and the cold air breathed upon their faces. The brass door at the foot of the stairs stood open. From that door thirty feet of gun-metal rungs let in to the outside of the lighthouse lead down to the set-off, which is a granite rim less than a yard wide, and unprotected by any rail. They shouted downwards from the doorway, and received no answer. They descended to the set-off, and again no Garstin, not even his cap. He was not.

Garstin had entered up the log, had climbed down to the set-off for five minutes of fresh air, and somehow had slipped, though the wind was light and the sea whispering. But the whispering sea ran seven miles an hour past the Bishop.

This was Mrs. Garstin's story and it left me still wondering why she lived on at St. Mary's. I asked after her son.

"How is Leopold? What is he--a linen-draper?" She shaded her eyes with her hand and said:

"That's the St. Agnes' lugger from the Bishop, and if we go down to the pier now we shall meet it."

We walked down to the pier. The first person to step on shore was Leopold, with the Trinity House buttons on his pilot coat.

"He's the third hand on the Bishop now," said Mrs. Garstin. "You are surprised?" She sent Leopold into Hugh Town upon an errand, and as we walked back up the hill she said: "Did you notice a grave underneath John's tablet?"

"No," said I.

"I told you there was a mention in the log of a ketch."

"Yes."

"The ketch went ashore on the Crebinachs at half-past four on that Christmas Eve. One man jumped for the rocks when the ketch struck, and was drowned. The rest were brought off by the lugger. But one man was drowned."

"He drowned because he jumped," said I.

"He drowned because my man hadn't lit the Bishop light," said she, brushing my sophistry aside. "So I gave my boy in his place."

And now I knew why those words--"There was a haze and it was growing dark"--held the heart of her distress.

"And if the Bishop goes next winter," she continued, "why, it will just be a life for a life;" and she choked down a sob as a young voice hailed us from behind.

But the Bishop still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the North Foreland lights.

THE CRUISE OF THE "WILLING MIND."

The cruise happened before the steam-trawler ousted the smack from the North Sea. A few newspapers recorded it in half-a-dozen lines of small print which nobody read. But it became and--though nowadays the _Willing Mind_ rots from month to month by the quay--remains staple talk at Gorleston ale-houses on winter nights.

The crew consisted of Weeks, three fairly competent hands, and a baker's assistant, when the _Willing Mind_ slipped out of Yarmouth. Alexander Duncan, the photographer from Derby, joined the smack afterwards under peculiar circumstances. Duncan was a timid person, but aware of his timidity. He was quite clear that his paramount business was to be a man; and he was equally clear that he was not successful in his paramount business. Meanwhile he pretended to be, hoping that on some miraculous day a sudden test would prove the straw man he was to have become real flesh and blood. A visit to a surgeon and the flick of a knife quite shattered that illusion. He went down to Yarmouth afterwards, fairly disheartened. The test had been applied, and he had failed.

Now, Weeks was a particular friend of Duncan's. They had chummed together on Gorleston Quay some years before, perhaps because they were so dissimilar. Weeks had taught Duncan to sail a boat, and had once or twice taken him for a short trip on his smack; so that the first thing that Duncan did on his arrival at Yarmouth was to take the tram to Gorleston and to make inquiries.

A fisherman lounging against a winch replied to them---

"If Weeks is a friend o' yours I should get used to missin' 'im, as I tell his wife."

There was at that time an ingenious system by which the skipper might buy his smack from the owner on the instalment plan--as people buy their furniture--only with a difference: for people sometimes get their furniture. The instalments had to be completed within a certain period. The skipper could do it--he could just do it; but he couldn't do it without running up one little bill here for stores, and another little bill there for sail-mending. The owner worked in with the sail-maker, and just as the skipper was putting out to earn his last instalment, he would find the bailiffs on board, his cruise would be delayed, he would be, consequently, behindhand with his instalment and back would go the smack to the owner with a present of four-fifths of its price. Weeks had to pay two hundred pounds, and had eight weeks to earn it in. But he got the straight tip that his sail-maker would stop him; and getting together any sort of crew he could, he slipped out at night with half his stores.

"Now the No'th Sea," concluded the fisherman, "in November and December ain't a bobby's job."

Duncan walked forward to the pier-head. He looked out at a grey tumbled sky shutting down on a grey tumbled sea. There were flecks of white cloud in the sky, flecks of white breakers on the sea, and it was all most dreary. He stood at the end of the jetty, and his great possibility came out of the grey to him. Weeks was shorthanded. Cribbed within a few feet of the smack's deck, there would be no chance for any man to shirk. Duncan acted on the impulse. He bought a fisherman's outfit at Gorleston, travelled up to London, got a passage the next morning on a Billingsgate fish-carrier, and that night went throbbing down the great water street of the Swim, past the green globes of the Mouse. The four flashes of the Outer Gabbard winked him good-bye away on the starboard, and at eleven o'clock the next night far out in the North Sea he saw the little city of lights swinging on the Dogger.

The _Willing Mind's_ boat came aboard the next morning and Captain Weeks with it, who smiled grimly while Duncan explained how he had learnt that the smack was shorthanded.

"I can't put you ashore in Denmark," said Weeks knowingly. "There'll be seven weeks, it's true, for things to blow over; but I'll have to take you back to Yarmouth. And I can't afford a passenger. If you come, you come as a hand. I mean to own my smack at the end of this voyage."

Duncan climbed after him into the boat. The _Willing Mind_ had now six for her crew, Weeks; his son Willie, a lad of sixteen; Upton, the first hand; Deakin, the decky; Rall, the baker's assistant, and Alexander Duncan. And of these six four were almost competent. Deakin, it is true, was making his second voyage; but Willie Weeks, though young, had begun early; and Upton, a man of forty, knew the banks and currents of the North Sea as well as Weeks.

"It's all right," said the skipper, "if the weather holds." And for a month the weather did hold, and the catches were good, and Duncan learned a great deal. He learnt how to keep a night-watch from midnight till eight in the morning, and then stay on deck till noon; how to put his tiller up and down when his tiller was a wheel, and how to vary the order according as his skipper stood to windward or to lee; he learnt to box a compass and to steer by it; to gauge the leeway he was making by the angle of his wake and the black line in the compass; above all, he learnt to love the boat like a live thing, as a man loves his horse, and to want every scanty inch of brass on her to shine.

But it was not for this that Duncan had come out to sea. He gazed out at night across the rippling starlit water, and the smacks nestling upon it, and asked of his God: "Is this all?" And his God answered him.

The beginning of it was the sudden looming of ships upon the horizon, very clear, till they looked like carved toys. The skipper got out his accounts and totted up his catches, and the prices they had fetched in Billingsgate Market. Then he went on deck and watched the sun set. There were no cloud-banks in the west, and he shook his head.

"It'll blow a bit from the east before morning," said he, and he tapped on the barometer. Then he returned to his accounts and added them up again. After a little he looked up, and saw the first hand watching him with comprehension.

"Two or three really good hauls would do the trick," suggested Weeks.

The first hand nodded. "If it was my boat I should chance it to-morrow before the weather blows up."

Weeks drummed his fists on the table and agreed.

On the morrow the Admiral headed north for the Great Fisher Bank, and the fleet followed, with the exception of the _Willing Mind_. The _Willing Mind_ lagged along in the rear without her topsails till about half-past two in the afternoon, when Captain Weeks became suddenly alert. He bore away till he was right before the wind, hoisted every scrap of sail he could carry, rigged out a spinnaker with his balloon fore-sail, and made a clean run for the coast of Denmark. Deakin explained the manoeuvre to Duncan. "The old man's goin' poachin'. He's after soles."

"Keep a look-out, lads!" cried Weeks. "It's not the Danish gun-boat I'm afraid of; it's the fatherly English cruiser a-turning of us back."

Darkness, however, found them unmolested. They crossed the three-mile limit at eight o'clock, and crept close in under the Danish headlands without a glimmer of light showing.

"I want all hands all night," said Weeks; "and there's a couple of pounds for him as first see the bogey-man."

"Meaning the Danish gun-boat," explained Deakin.

The trawl was down before nine. The skipper stood by his lead. Upton took the wheel, and all night they trawled in the shallows, bumping on the grounds, with a sharp eye for the Danish gun-boat. They hauled in at twelve and again at three and again at six, and they had just got their last catch on deck when Duncan saw by the first grey of the morning a dun-coloured trail of smoke hanging over a projecting knoll.

"There she is!" he cried.

"Yes, that's the gun-boat," answered Weeks. "We can laugh at her with this wind."

He put his smack about, and before the gun-boat puffed round the headland, three miles away, was reaching northwards with his sails free. He rejoined the fleet that afternoon. "Fifty-two boxes of soles!" said Weeks. "And every one of them worth two-pound-ten in Billingsgate Market. This smack's mine!" and he stamped on the deck in all the pride of ownership. "We'll take a reef in," he added. "There's a no'th-easterly gale blowin' up and I don't know anything worse in the No'th Sea. The sea piles in upon you from Newfoundland, piles in till it strikes the banks. Then it breaks. You were right, Upton; we'll be lying hove-to in the morning."

They were lying hove-to before the morning. Duncan, tossing about in his canvas cot, heard the skipper stamping overhead, and in an interval of the wind caught a snatch of song bawled out in a high voice. The song was not reassuring, for the two lines which Duncan caught ran as follows--

You never can tell when your death-bells are ringing,
Your never can know when you're going to die.

Duncan tumbled on to the floor, fell about the cabin as he pulled on his sea-boots and climbed up the companion. He clung to the mizzen-runners in a night of extraordinary blackness. To port and to starboard the lights of the smacks rose on the crests and sank in the troughs, with such violence they had the air of being tossed up into the sky and then extinguished in the water; while all round him there flashed little points of white which suddenly lengthened out into a horizontal line. There was one quite close to the quarter of the _Willing Mind_. It stretched about the height of the gaff in a line of white. The line suddenly descended towards him and became a sheet; and then a voice bawled, "Water! Jump! Down the companion! Jump!"

There was a scamper of heavy boots, and a roar of water plunging over the bulwarks, as though so many loads of wood had been dropped on the deck. Duncan jumped for the cabin. Weeks and the mate jumped the next second and the water sluiced down after them, put out the fire, and washed them, choking and wrestling, about on the cabin floor. Weeks was the first to disentangle himself, and he turned fiercely on Duncan.

"What were you doing on deck? Upton and I keep the watch to-night. You stay below, and, by God, I'll see you do it! I have fifty-two boxes of soles to put aboard the fish-cutter in the morning, and I'm not going to lose lives before I do that! This smack's mine!"

Captain Weeks was transformed into a savage animal fighting for his own. All night he and the mate stood on the deck and plunged down the open companion with a torrent of water to hurry them. All night Duncan lay in his bunk listening to the bellowing of the wind, the great thuds of solid green wave on the deck, the horrid rush and roaring of the seas as they broke loose to leeward from under the smack's keel. And he listened to something more--the whimpering of the baker's assistant in the next bunk. "Three inches of deck! What's the use of it! Lord ha' mercy on me, what's the use of it? No more than an eggshell! We'll be broken in afore morning, broken in like a man's skull under a bludgeon.... I'm no sailor, I'm not; I'm a baker. It isn't right I should die at sea!"

Duncan stopped his ears, and thought of the journey some one would have to make to the fish-cutter in the morning. There were fifty-two boxes of soles to be put aboard.

He remembered the waves and the swirl of foam upon their crests and the wind. Two men would be needed to row the boat, and the boat must make three trips. The skipper and the first hand had been on deck all night. There remained four, or rather three, for the baker's assistant had ceased to count--Willie Weeks, Deakin, and himself, not a great number to choose from. He felt that he was within an ace of a panic, and not so far, after all, from that whimperer his neighbour. Two men to row the boat--two men! His hands clutched at the iron bar of his hammock; he closed his eyes tight; but the words were thundered out at him overhead, in the whistle of the wind, and slashed at him by the water against the planks at his side. He found that his lips were framing excuses.

Duncan was on deck when the morning broke. It broke extraordinarily slowly, a niggardly filtering of grey, sad light from the under edge of the sea. The bare topmasts of the smacks showed one after the other. Duncan watched each boat as it came into view with a keen suspense. This was a ketch, and that, and that other, for there was the peak of its reefed mainsail just visible, like a bird's wing, and at last he saw it--the fish-cutter--lurching and rolling in the very middle of the fleet, whither she had crept up in the night. He stared at it; his belly was pinched with fear as a starveling's with hunger; and yet he was conscious that, in a way, he would have been disappointed if it had not been there.

"No other smack is shipping its fish," quavered a voice at his elbow. It was the voice of the baker's assistant.

"But this smack is," replied Weeks, and he set his mouth hard. "And, what's more, my Willie is taking it aboard. Now, who'll go with Willie?"

"I will."

Weeks swung round on Duncan and stared at him. Then he stared out to sea. Then he stared again at Duncan.

"You?"

"When I shipped as a hand on the _Willing Mind_, I took all a hand's risks."

"And brought the willing mind," said Weeks with a smile, "Go, then! Some one must go. Get the boat tackle ready, forward. Here, Willie, put your life-belt on. You, too, Duncan, though God knows life-belts won't be of no manner of use; but they'll save your insurance. Steady with the punt there! If it slips inboard off the rail there will be a broken back! And, Willie, don't get under the cutter's counter. She'll come atop of you and smash you like an egg. I'll drop you as close as I can to windward, and pick you up as close as I can to leeward."

The boat was dropped into the water and loaded up with fish-boxes. Duncan and Willie Weeks took their places, and the boat slid away into a furrow. Duncan sat in the boat and rowed. Willie Weeks stood in the stern, facing him, and rowed and steered.

"Water!" said Willie every now and then, and a wave curled over the bows and hit Duncan a stunning blow on the back.

"Row," said Willie, and Duncan rowed and rowed. His hands were ice, he sat in water ice-cold, and his body perspired beneath his oil-skins, but he rowed. Once, on the crest of a wave, Duncan looked out and saw below them the deck of a smack, and the crew looking upwards at them as though they were a horserace. "Row!" said Willie Weeks. Once, too, at the bottom of a slope down which they had bumped dizzily, Duncan again looked out, and saw the spar of a mainmast tossing just over the edge of a grey roller. "Row," said Weeks, and a moment later, "Ship your oar!" and a rope caught him across the chest.

They were alongside the cutter.

Duncan made fast the rope.

"Push her off!" suddenly cried Willie, and grasped an oar. But he was too late. The cutter's bulwarks swung down towards him, disappeared under water, caught the punt fairly beneath the keel and scooped it clean on to the deck, cargo and crew.