Chapter XXX: The Maiden Rocks

“What need we more if hearts be true,
Our voyage safe, our port in view.”

—KEBLE.

A TELEGRAM that a steamer had been wrecked on the Maiden Rocks filled three homes with dismay. The rocks were sought out in maps, and found to be specks lying between County Antrim and Scotland—no doubt terrible in their reality.

Another day brought something more definite. It _was_ the _Afra_,—“wrecked in the fog of October 11th. Boats got off.”

That was all; but a day’s post brought letters, of which the fullest was from Dolores:

“CORNCASTLE, LARNE, CO. ANTRIM, IRELAND,
_October_ 12.

“DEAREST AUNT LILY,—

“I trust Phyllis has by this time heard from Bernard, as I heard him
called on, as a good oarsman, to go in the first boat, and we saw
Angela’s bonnet. We—that is Wilfred, Nag, and the Bishop—are all
safe here, with eight or nine others. Will will do well, I trust.
He quite owes his life to Nag. This is how it was: We had not long
been out of the Mersey before an impenetrable fog came down upon us,
and we could not see across the deck; but on we went, on what proved
to be our blind way, till, after a night and day, just as we were
getting up from dinner, there came a hideous shock and concussion,
throwing us all about the room; and in less than a minute it was
repeated, with horrible crackings, tearings, yells and shouts. No
one needed to tell us what it meant, and down came the call, ‘Don’t
wait to save your things, only wraps, ladies! Up on deck!
Life-belts if you can!’ I remember Bernard standing at the top of
the ladder, helping us up, and somehow, I understand from him, that
we were on a reef, and might either remain there, and sink, or be
washed off. The fog was clearing, and there was a dim light up high,
somewhere, one of the lighthouses, I believe. I don’t quite know how
it all went; I think we kept in the background, round the Bishop, and
that a boat full of emigrant women was put off. I know there were
only about half a dozen women left, who had been crying and refusing
to leave their husbands; and about thirty altogether, men and women,
were somehow got into our boat with the chief mate; the Bishop all
consolation and prayer; poor Wilfred limp, cold and trembling, for he
had been very seasick till the last moment, when Bernard pulled him
out of his berth, and put him into a lifebelt. The sea was not very
rough, with an east wind; but the mate said the current was so strong
he could make no way against it. It would bring us on to the Irish
cliffs, and then, God help us! Knowing what that coast is, I thought
there was no hope; and as it was beginning to grow light there rose
an awful wall, all black and white, ready to close upon us; but just
as I set my teeth and tried to recollect prayers, or follow the
Bishop’s, but I could only squeeze Agatha harder and harder, there
was a fresh shouting among the men, and the boat was heaved up in a
fearful way, then down. It was tide, and we were near upon breakers;
but there were answering shouts, or so they said—I believe a line was
thrown, and a light shown. But as the boat rose again, Nag and I
expected to be hurled on the rocks the next moment, and clung
together. But instead—though the waves had almost torn us asunder—we
were lying on a stony beach, and human hands were dragging at
us—voices calling and shouting about our not being dead. God had
helped us! We had been carried into a clift where there is a
coastguard station; and the good men had come down and were helping
us on shore. But before I well knew anything, Agatha was on her
feet; I heard her cry ‘Wilfred, Wilfred!’ and then I saw her dragging
him, quite like a dead thing, out of the surf, just in time before
another great wave rushed in which would have washed them both back,
if a man had not grappled her at the very moment, calling out, ‘Let
go, let go, he’s a dead man!’ She did not let go; when the wave
broke, happily, just short of them, and another came to help, and
saved them from being sucked back. Then the Bishop came and assured
us that he was alive, and got the men to carry him up to the
coastguard cottages; indeed, it was an awful escape; for of our
boatload most were lost altogether, three lie dead, dashed against
the rock, and two more, the mate one of them, have broken limbs.
Wilfred was unconscious for a long time, at least an hour; but by the
help of spoonfuls of whiskey he came round to a dreamy kind of state,
and he does not seem to suffer much; and the Bishop, the Preventive
man and Nag all are sure no limbs are broken, but he seems incapable
of movement except his hands. It may be only jar upon the spine, and
go off in another day or two; but we do not dare to send for a
doctor, or anything else, indeed, till we have some money; for we all
of us have lost everything except five shillings in my pocket and two
in Nag’s. Even our wraps were washed off—I believe Agatha gave hers
to a shivering woman in the boat. The Bishop, too, gave away his
coat, forgetting to secure his purse. But the people are very kind
to us—North, or Scotch Irish Presbyterians, I think—for they don’t
seem to know what to make of his being a Bishop when they found he
was not R.C., though they call him His Reverence. Please send us an
order to get cashed, at Larne, six miles off, where this is posted.
Wilfred lies on the good Preventive woman’s bed, clean and fairly
comfortable, and they have made a shake-down in their parlour for Nag
and me. The Bishop _says_ he is well off, but I believe he is always
looking after the mate and the other man in the other house, and
sleeps, if at all, in a chair. Nag is _the_ nurse. She had
ambulance lessons, you know, when at the High School, and profited by
them more than I ever did, and Wilfred likes to have her about him,
and when he is dazed, as he always is at first waking, he calls her
Vera. But don’t be uneasy about him, dear Aunt Lily. Deadly
sea-sickness, a night of tossing and cold, and then this terrible
landing may well upset him, and probably he will be on his legs by
the time you get this letter.

“I find our disaster was on the Maiden Rocks, a horrible group, I
only wonder that any one gets past them. There are five of them, the
wicked Sirens, and three have lighthouses, but not very efficient
ones, and apt to disappear in the fog, and there are reefs beneath on
one of which we came to grief. The folk here think a wreck on these
Maidens absolutely fatal, so we cannot be but most thankful for being
alive, though it is a worse experience than the Rotuma earthquake.

“Fergus would think the place worth all we have undergone. The crags
are wonderful, chalk at the bottom, basalt above, and of course all
round to the Giant’s Causeway it is finer still. Well may we, as the
Bishop is always doing, give thanks that we were taken, by the Divine
Hand guiding tide and current, to this milder and less inhospitable
opening.

“We can afford to dispense with less majesty, for one of those finer
cliffs would have been our destruction.

“This is going to Larne, where there is a railway station and
something of a town, and the Bishop has written to the doctor of the
place. I will write again when he has been here. I hope to send you
another and more cheery account to-morrow, or whenever post goes.

“Nag is writing to her sister. I trust you will have heard of
Bernard and Angela. Their boat was a better one than ours, and
certainly got off safely. Let us know as soon you can.

“Your most loving niece,
“D. M. MOHUN.”

Agatha had also written to Magdalen, very briefly, to assure her of her safety and thankfulness, and to say she could not leave Wilfred till more efficient care arrived, or till she had means to come back with. She was evidently too busy over her patient to have much possibility of writing, even if she had paper, which seemed to be scarce at Corncastle.

The Bishop also wrote to Clement, and to Sir Jasper and others; but he also could say little, only that he trusted that Angela and Bernard were safe elsewhere, having heard them called, and, as he believed, seen them off in the first boat, so that probably they had been already heard of before these letters arrived. Their own party had been spared from being dashed against the rocks almost by a miracle; and Agatha Prescott’s courage and readiness, as now her nursing faculties, were beyond all praise, as indeed was the brave patience of Miss Mohun. He could only look on and be thankful, and hope for tidings of those who were as his own children. The next day’s letters spoke of the doctor as so much perplexed about Wilfred, and nothing had been heard at Larne of the other boats.

But no tidings came; there was too much cause to fear that the first boat had been borne away by the currents and swamped. Lady Merrifield could not leave Phyllis in such a crisis of suspense, and Sir Jasper was hardly fit for such a journey, so that his wife was much relieved when her brother, General Mohun, came to Clipstone, and undertook to hasten out to Corncastle, with money and appliances, including a nurse.

“Oh, Reggie, always good at need! I hardly dare to send my good old Halfpenny—!”

“No, Mamma, send me. You know I had the ambulance lessons with Nag,” said Mysie, “and we could get a real nurse from Belfast or Dublin, if it was wanted.”

So it was arranged, and uncle and niece started, but hope faded more and more! Were those two precious young lives so early quenched?