Although it was snowing hard, it was not a dark night. There was a half moon hidden behind those thin, fleecy clouds, which carry the snow across the North Sea and cast it noiselessly upon the low-lying coast, from Thanet to the Wash, which knows less rain and more snow than any in England. A gale of wind was blowing from the north-east; not in itself a wild gale, but at short intervals a fresh burst of wind brought with it a thicker fall of snow, and during these squalls the force of the storm was terrific. A man, who had waited on the far shore of the river for a quiet interval, had at last made his way to the Farlingford side. He moored his boat and stumbled heavily up the steps.
There was no one on the quay. The street was deserted, but the lights within the cottages glowed warmly through red blinds here and there. The majority of windows were, however, secured with a shutter, screwed tight from within. The man trotted steadily up the street. He had an unmistakable air of discipline. It was only six o'clock, but night had closed in three hours ago. The coast-guard looked neither to one side nor the other, but ran on at the pace of one who had run far and knows that he cannot afford to lose his breath; for his night's work was only begun.
The coast-guard station stands on the left-hand side of the street, a long, low house in a bare garden. In answer to the loud summons, a red-faced little man opened the door and let out into the night a smell of bloaters and tea—the smell that pervades all Farlingford at six o'clock in the evening.
“Something on the Inner Curlo Bank,” shouted the coast-guard in his face, and turning on his heel, he ran with the same slow, organised haste, leaving the red-faced man finishing a mouthful on the mat.
The next place of call was at River Andrew's, the little low cottage with rounded corners, below the church.
“Come out o' that,” said the coast-guard, with a contemptuous glance of snow-rimmed eyes at River Andrew's comfortable tea-table. “Ring yer bell. Something on the Inner Curlo Bank.”
River Andrew had never hurried in his life, and like all his fellows, he looked upon coast-guards as amateurs mindful, as all amateurs are, of their clothes.
“A'm now going,” he answered, rising laboriously from his chair. The coast-guard glanced at his feet clad in the bright green carpet-slippers, dear to seafaring men. Then he turned to the side of the mantelpiece and took the church keys from the nail. For everybody knows where everybody else keeps his keys in Farlingford. He forgot to shut the door behind him, and River Andrew, pessimistically getting into his sea-boots, swore at his retreating back.
“Likely as not, he'll getten howld o' the wrong roup,” he muttered; though he knew that every boy in the village could point out the rope of “John Darby,” as that which had a piece of faded scarlet flannel twisted through the strands.
In a few minutes the man, who hastened slowly, gave the call, which every man in Farlingford answered with an emotionless, mechanical promptitude. From each fireside some tired worker reached out his hand toward his most precious possession, his sea-boots, as his forefathers had done before him for two hundred years at the sound of “John Darby.” The women crammed into the pockets of the men's stiff oilskins a piece of bread, a half-filled bottle—knowing that, as often as not, their husbands must pass the night and half the next day on the beach, or out at sea, should the weather permit a launch through the surf.
There was no need of excitement, or even of comment. Did not “John Darby” call them from their firesides or their beds a dozen times every winter, to scramble out across the shingle? As often as not, there was nothing to be done but drag the dead bodies from the surf; but sometimes the dead revived—some fair-haired, mystic foreigner from the northern seas, who came to and said, “T'ank you,” and nothing else. And next day, rigged out in dry clothes and despatched toward Ipswich on the carrier's cart, he would shake hands awkwardly with any standing near and bob his head and say “T'ank you” again, and go away, monosyllabic, mystic, never to be heard of more. But the ocean, as it is called at Farlingford, seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of such Titans to throw up on the rattling shingle winter after winter. And, after all, they were seafaring men, and therefore brothers. Farlingford turned out to a man, each seeking to be first across the river every time “John Darby” called them, as if he had never called them before.
To-night none paused to finish the meal, and many a cup raised half-way was set down again untasted. It is so easy to be too late.
Already the flicker of lanterns on the sea-wall showed that the rectory was astir. For Septimus Marvin, vaguely recalling some schoolboy instinct of fair-play, knew the place of the gentleman and the man of education among humbler men in moments of danger and hardship, which should, assuredly, never be at the back.
“Yonder's parson,” some one muttered. “His head is clear enow, I'll warrant, when he hears 'John Darby.'”
“'Tis only on Sundays, when 'John' rings slow, 'tis misty,” answered a sharp-voiced woman, with a laugh. For half of Farlingford was already at the quay, and three or four boats were bumping and splashing against the steps. The tide was racing out, and the wind, whizzing slantwise across it, pushed it against the wooden piles of the quay, making them throb and tremble.
“Not less'n four to the oars!” shouted a gruff voice, at the foot of the steps, where the salt water, splashing on the snow, had laid bare the green and slimy moss. Two or three volunteers stumbled down the steps, and the first boat got away, swinging down-stream at once, only to be brought slowly back, head to wind. She hung motionless a few yards from the quay, each dip of the oars stirring the water into a whirl of phosphorescence, and then forged slowly ahead.
Septimus Marvin was not alone, but was accompanied by a bulky man, not unknown in Farlingford—John Turner, of Ipswich, understood to live “foreign,” but to return, after the manner of East Anglians, when occasion offered. The rector was in oilskins and sou'wester, like any one else, and the gleam of his spectacles under the snowy brim of his headgear seemed to strike no one as incongruous. His pockets bulged with bottles and bandages. Under his arm he carried a couple of blanket horse-cloths, useful for carrying the injured or the dead.
“The Curlo—the Inner Curlo—yes, yes!” he shouted in response to information volunteered on all sides. “Poor fellows! The Inner Curlo, dear, dear!”
And he groped his way down the steps, into the first boat he saw, with a simple haste. John Turner followed him. He had tied a silk handkerchief over his soft felt hat and under his chin.
“No, no!” he said, as Septimus Marvin made room for him on the after-thwart. “I'm too heavy for a passenger. Put my weight on an oar,” and he clambered forward to a vacant thwart.
“Mind you come back for us, River Andrew!” cried little Sep's thin voice, as the boat swirled down stream. His wavering bull's-eye lantern followed it, and showed River Andrew and another pulling stroke to John Turner's bow, for the banker had been a famous oar on the Orwell in his boyhood. Then, with a smack like a box on the ear, another snow-squall swept in from the sea, and forced all on the quay to turn their backs and crouch. Many went back to their homes, knowing that nothing could be known for some hours. Others crouched on the landward side of an old coal-shed, peeping round the corner.
Miriam and Sep, and a few others, waited on the quay until River Andrew or another should return. It was an understood thing that the helpers, such as could man a boat or carry a drowned man, should go first. In a few minutes the squall was past, and by the light of the moon, now thinly covered by clouds, the black forms of the first to reach the other shore could be seen straggling across the marsh toward the great shingle-bank that lies between the river and the sea. Two boats were moored at the far side, another was just making the jetty, while a fourth was returning toward the quay. It was River Andrew, faithful to his own element, who preferred to be first here, rather than obey orders on the open beach.
There were several ready to lend a helping hand against tide and wind, and Miriam and Sep were soon struggling across the shingle, in the footsteps of those who had gone before. The north-east wind seared their faces like a hot iron, but the snow had ceased falling. As they reached the summit of the shingle-bank, they could see in front of them the black line of the sea, and on the beach, where the white of the snow and the white of the roaring surf merged together, a group of men.
One or two stragglers had left this group to search the beach, north or south; but it was known, from a long and grim experience, that anything floating in from the tail of the Inner Curlo Bank must reach the shore at one particular point. A few lanterns twinkled here and there, but near the group of watchers a bonfire of wreckage and tarry fragments and old rope, brought hither for the purpose, had been kindled.
Two boats, hauled out of reach of a spring tide, were being leisurely prepared for launching. There was no hurry; for it had been decided by the older men that no boat could be put to sea through the surf then rolling in. At the turn of the tide, in two hours' time, something might be done.
“Us cannot see anything,” a bystander said to Miriam. “It is just there, where I am pointing. Sea Andrew saw something a while back—says it looked like a schooner.”
The man stood pointing out to sea to the southward. He carried an unlighted torch—a flare, roughly made, of tarred rope, bound round a stick. At times, one or another would ignite his flare, and go down the beach holding it above his head, while he stood knee deep in the churning foam to peer out to sea. He would presently return, without comment, to beat out his flare against his foot and take his place among the silent watchers. No one spoke; but if any turned his head sharply to one side or other, all the rest wheeled, like one man, in the same direction and after staring at the tumbled sea would turn reproachful glances on the false alarmist.
Suddenly, after a long wait, four men rushed without a word into the surf; their silent fury suggesting oddly the rush of hounds upon a fox. They had simultaneously caught sight of something dark, half sunk in the shallow water. In a moment they were struggling up the shingle slope toward the fire, carrying a heavy weight. They laid their burden by the fire, where the snow had melted away, and it was a man. He was in oilskins, and some one cut the tape that tied his sou'wester. His face was covered with blood.
“'Tis warm,” said the man who had cut away the oilskin cap, and with his hand he wiped the blood away from the eyes and mouth. Some one in the background drew a cork, with his teeth, and a bottle was handed down to those kneeling on the ground.
Suddenly the man sat up—and coughed.
“Shipmets,” he said, with a splutter, and lay down again. Some one held the bottle to his lips and wiped the blood away from his face again.
“My God!” shouted a bystander, gruffly. “'Tis William Brooke, of the Cottages.”
“Yes. 'Tis me,” said the man, sitting up again. “Not that arm, mate; don't ye touch it. 'Tis bruk. Yes; 'tis me. And 'The Last Hope' is on the tail of the Inner Curlo—and the spar that knocked me overboard fell on the old man, and must have half killed him. But Loo Barebone's aboard.”
He rose to his knees, with one arm hanging straight and piteous from his shoulder, then slowly to his feet. He stood wavering for a moment, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spluttered. Then, looking straight in front of him, with that strange air of a whipped dog which humble men wear when the hand of Heaven is upon them, he staggered up the beach toward the river and Farlingford.
“Where are ye goin'?” some one asked.
“Over to mine,” was the reply. “A'm going to my old woman, shipmets.&rd............