Chapter XXI: Retribution

Smarting still with the blows those ruffians had given me, I thought of all the evil fortune had wrought me, and burned for vengeance; and terribly I had it, ere the morning sun rose from the sea.

The sound of a strange voice--a woman's voice, too!--was now heard. A woman in that sequestered lighthouse! From whence, and how had she come? I heard also the ribald fun and coarse laughter of the two beacon-keepers. Slipping off my shoes, I crept down the ladder, and peeping through the hatch in the ceiling of the lower apartment, saw the Messieurs Dick Knuckleduster and Broken-nosed Bill seated near a table, drinking and smoking with a woman of repulsive aspect, but with whom they seemed on somewhat intimate terms.

Sinewy, bony, and gaunt, she had the hooked-nose, large keen black eyes, and thick animal mouth of a Jewess of the lowest class. She seemed to be about forty years of age, and was clad in a dirty cap, over which a red handkerchief was tied; a sailor's pea-jacket enveloped the upper part of her person, a short red linsey-wolsey skirt shrouded the lower; while her large feet, which in size bore a due proportion to her dingy, clumsy hands, were encased in a pair of old military boots. Her visage, which was as yellow as an old drumhead, was seamed by a hundred dirty wrinkles; and her mouth had certain hirsute appendages, of a hue so dark as to render her sex almost doubtful, and her aspect diabolical. She wore large gold ear-rings, and had in her mouth a short black pipe, which was only removed to make way for a battered tin mug, from which she was imbibing gin-and-water, hot.

By the number of bottles upon the table, she seemed to have brought to the beacon an ample supply of alcohol under cloud of night; and, from the tenor of the conversation that was in progress, I gathered that this fair daughter of Judah was not an unfrequent visitor.

My attention was next attracted by several jewels and trinkets which the worthy officials of this Pharos were offering her for sale. She seemed a bumboat woman, or slopseller, such as one may find keeping a shop of the humblest class in the meaner alleys of a seaport town; and they addressed her by the euphonious name of "Mother Snatchblock."

"This gold watch and ring ain't worth much," said she; "but where did they come from?"

"The sea," growled Bill.

"The sea is mighty productive hereabout; did they bite your jiggerhook, when fishing?"

"They came in the usual way, Mother Snatchblock; so, if you must know, we had 'em from a gentleman, _as_ escaped from the wreck of the Dutch galley that foundered in the last gale on the tail of the bank."

"Did he swim from there to the Sandridge?"

"Ay--every fathom of the way; in a rough, wild sea, too, to the steps of the beacon."

"A strong fellow he must have been!"

"Strong--damn him! I should think so. Look at the knock on the head he gave me, when I took his dainty ring from him," said Bill, exhibiting an ugly and half-healed gash, which his red knitted cap had hitherto concealed.

"The ring was't worth it, Bill, my boy."

"Come now, old woman--don't cry stinking fish; the stone is a waluable stone."

"A bit of green glass."

"A real emerald, if I know aught about it."

"Which you don't," said the Jewess, placing the ring, which was of great beauty, on the tip of one of her thick dirty fingers; "but you should have waited till the gent was asleep, and then----"

"Then--what?"

She passed a finger significantly across her throat, a motion at which the ruffian laughed, and the other said,--

"Sleep--confound his bones, he sleeps sound enough now, lashed to an old kedge anchor. Do you see the round hole in the timber there?"

"Yes."

"The ball we sent through his brains lodged _there_; but pass the bottle o'stingo over here, and let us say no more about it; for sometimes I think he rises out o' the water o' nights, with the anchor on his back, and knocks at the door--and faith, I shall quit this place when I can!"

The reader may imagine the horror and repugnance with which I listened to these terrible details of the inner life of the inhabitants of this solitary beacon. After they had drunk and smoked for a time, during which the woman gave them all the shore gossip, squared accounts to their satisfaction, and concealed the jewellery and trinkets about her person, she said,--

"And now about this boy that you have on board--I mean above stairs?"

"Well, and wot about him?" asked Bill surlily.

"Didn't we cotch the young varmint making signals to a foreign schooner?" added Knuckleduster, with a sonorous expletive.

"How did you know her to be foreign?" asked Mother Snatchblock.

"By the swabs that hung over her side, and the lubberly way she lay to and then hauled her wind again, when filling her foreyard and standing off. She nearly lost her rudder on the shoal, so that youngster's signal might have cost her dear if the wind had freshened."

"You've been feeding this young biscuit-nibbler too well," said the kind Mrs. Snatchblock; "starve him, Bill--for starvation is the best tamer I know of."

"Now that you speak out, I think we shall."

"And a little starving, or saving, its the same thing, will increase the profit o' wot we makes on him, by giving him up to government, so pass the bottle of Old Tom over 'for a last pull.'"

"I'm blessed if it is ever out of your hand, Mother Snatchblock."

"I means the water mug."

"You've had so much of both, old woman, that you don't know one from tother; fire away, if you will--take the stuff stark naked--but if you get one more sheet in the wind, you'll find it troublesome work to fetch the cove of Compton Rennel to-night in that punt of yours."

"For this young powder-monkey as will be," resumed this hideous and now half-tipsy woman, "we shall get about one pound one, from the lufftenant of the press-gang at Compton Kennel, and we must go shares in that."

"Shares, in course, mother--but what! only one pound one, when the bounty is so high, and the North Sea fleet on the pint o' starting for the Texel?"

"Only a guinea, I tell you," responded the Jewess doggedly, with an oath; "if I arrange all about them jewels, you may well chuck this boy--what's his name----"

"Holliver Hellis," said Broken-nosed Bill.

"Into the bargain."

"Well, be it so," said the ruffians together.

"Now for another whiff, and then for the shore," said Mother Snatchblock, buttoning up her pea-jacket, and tightening the scarlet bandanna under her chin.

A sudden thought--a wild hope of escape now seized me.

This woman must have come off to us in some way. Could this have been by the schooner I had signalled? That was unlikely by the remarks I had heard--besides, she spoke of leaving _immediately_.

I put my shoes in my pocket, slipped softly up to the gallery again, and looking round, saw a little punt moored to the steps of the beacon, and tossing like a cockle-shell on the rollers that came in succession over the ridge, about thirty feet below me.

"What shall I do?" I asked myself; "wait till she has pushed off--then leap into the sea and swim after her, in the hope of moving her sympathy?"

The revelations I had just heard, and the character of the wretch, alike forbade the hope of such a result; so my resolution was taken at once.

A lightning rod, which ascended from the water to the roof of the lighthouse, was close by me, and bolted securely to its side by iron cramps. I grasped it, swung myself over, and aided alike by my agility, by hope, and rage, at all I had undergone, I came down hand over hand with ease, my feet being firmly planted at every step, on the planked, and sloping side of the edifice.

On beginning my descent, I observed that one of the beacon lamps had been carelessly trimmed, and hung over to one side, by which the flame already reached the woodwork, and had set the joists _on fire_. To repair this neglect was still in my power; but to reascend might cost me liberty--perhaps life. My bones were yet aching from the brutality I had endured.

"Bah!" said I, "let them swim if they can," and continued my descent.

Easily reaching the steps, I sprang into the punt--untied the painter, mechanically, and with the celerity of one in a dream, pushed off vigorously from the accursed spot.

"Thank God! thank God!" I exclaimed, with a hurrah of joy, and shipping a pair of sculls that were lashed to the thwart, rowed away, I cared not in what direction, so that I placed the deep blue water between myself and the beacon, the door of which at that moment opened, and its two inmates appeared on the slimy iron steps, lighting down their fair visitor by means of a horn lantern.

The tipsy Jewess uttered an imprecation on discovering that her boat was gone; but I was only eight or ten yards from the beacon, and the broad glare of its triple lights, each blazing within a huge round reflector, shone full upon me.

I uttered a loud and exulting laugh. They saw me in an instant, and all shouted at once a volley of hoarse oaths, and orders "to come back," with threats of being shot if I disobeyed. But I laughed louder still, and pulled more vigorously away, quitting the line of light, however, lest they might actually put their threat in execution.

While the baffled Jewess screamed, stamped herself into a frenzy at the door of the beacon, the two men disappeared and hurried up stairs, I doubted not, to procure a couple of government muskets which they possessed, for the purpose of having a shot at me from the upper gallery; but the flames, which I saw already filling all the second story of the building, must have barred their way, for I soon saw them again at the door gesticulating violently, while their dark figures were strongly defined in black outline against the red and lurid light within.

But still I shouted exultingly, and pulled breathlessly away.

A strong odour of burning wood was soon wafted over the water, for the whole beacon was built of timber, which was old, dry, and being yearly pitched and painted, it burned with all the fierce rapidity of an ignited tar-barrel. Within, the entire edifice seemed filled with light and flame, like the cone of a furnace; suddenly there was a crash, as the red-hot machinery, with all its wheels, lamps, reflectors, and iron-work, vanished with the descending roof, and a pyramid of red and roaring fire shot upward into the dark midnight sky, diffusing a light in every direction, even to the far horizon of the German Sea, and all along the low flat shore. Every wave that broke above the desolate Sandridge, as it raised its crested head, seemed for the moment a wave of fire, for the whole sea became, as it were, a sheet of reflected flame.

This sudden spectacle and terrible catastrophe arrested my exertions; for a few minutes I gazed in wonder and bewilderment. Then moved by pity, I put the punt about, and, animated by an emotion of generosity, of which the objects were totally unworthy, sculled with all my strength towards the spot, to aid the three wretches who merited so little at my hands.

The iron gallery and the slender lightning-rod were distinctly visible against the dark sky, for both were glowing and red-hot; but the former fell, hissing into the sea, and the latter, after waving to and fro, bent over, willow-like, in the form of a slender arch, above the flames, which, as there was not a breath of wind, and the night was exceedingly calm, roared steadily upward, and with a terrible sound. The beacon was soon reduced to a mere skeleton, amid the charred timbers of which, the flames began to sink and die; thus, in less than half-an-hour, not a vestige of it remained, save the scorched heads of the wooden piles which had upheld it above the sea.

As the latter again became dark, and I heard no sounds but the lonely booming of the surf and the beating of my own heart, shudderingly I put the boat about, and pulled shoreward in the direction of a little red spark that seemed to indicate a habitation; and seeking the while to avoid the numerous boats which (now that the beacon was fairly burned down) put off rapidly, with all their crews, intent on rendering assistance when too late.

I had now no feeling either of vengeance or of anger at the three miserable creatures who must have perished in the wooden beacon; and, though in no way to blame for the dreadful catastrophe, their hideous visages seemed to pursue me as I pulled towards the shore, which rose rapidly as I approached it. I beached the punt upon a shelving slope of land, and sprang ashore with a shout of joy, although alike ignorant of where I was or what might next befall me.

The night was warm and the air was balmy, for it came from fields of ripening corn. I sought the shelter of a coppice that grew close to the sandy beach, and stretching my limbs at full length on the long thick grass, in my danger and solitude, there made many good and wise mental resolutions, now, when far, far from my mother's once happy home, never to say or do aught of which she could not approve, to remember all her instructions and precepts, and her love for me, as a restraint from the paths of temptation and vice. In these good resolutions I found a consolation in my loneliness, sorrow, and remorse, and so, after a time, I fell into a disturbed and uneasy sleep.