The good people of Muirisc had shut themselves up in their cabins, on this inclement evening of which I have spoken, almost before the twilight faded from the storm-wrapt outlines of the opposite coast. If any adventurous spirit of them all had braved the blast, and stood out on the cliff to see night fall in earnest upon the scene, perhaps between wild sweeps of drenching and blinding spray, he might have caught sight of a little vessel, with only its jib set, plunging and laboring in the trough of the Atlantic outside. And if the spectacle had met his eyes, unquestionably his first instinct would have been to mutter a prayer for the souls of the doomed men upon this fated craft.
On board the Hen Hawk a good many prayers had already been said. The small coaster seemed, to its terrified crew, to have shrunk to the size of a walnut shell, so wholly was it the plaything of the giant waters which heaved and tumbled about it, and shook the air with the riotous tumult of their sport. There were moments when the vessel hung poised and quivering upon the very ridge of a huge mountain of sea, like an Alpine climber who shudders to find himself balanced upon a crumbling foot of rock between two awful depths of precipice; then would come the breathless downward swoop into howling space and the fierce buffeting of ton-weight blows as the boat staggered blindly at the bottom of the abyss; then again the helpless upward sweep, borne upon the shoulders of titan waves which reared their vast bulk into the sky, the dizzy trembling upon the summit, and the hideous plunge—a veritable nightmare of torture and despair.
Five men lay or knelt on deck huddled about the mainmast, clinging to its hoops and ropes for safety. Now and again, when the vessel was lifted to the top of the green walls of water, they caught vague glimpses of the distant rocks, darkling through the night mists, which sheltered Muirisc, their home—and knew in their souls that they were never to reach that home alive. The time for praying was past. Drenched to the skin, choked with the salt spray, nearly frozen in the bitter winter cold, they clung numbly to their hold, and awaited the end.
One of them strove to gild the calamity with cheerfulness, by humming and groaning the air of a “come-all-ye” ditty, the croon of which rose with quaint persistency after the crash of each engulfing wave had passed. The others were, perhaps, silently grateful to him—but they felt that if Jerry had been a born Muirisc man, he could not have done it.
At the helm, soaked and gaunt as a water-rat, with his feet braced against the waist-rails, and the rudder-bar jammed under his arm and shoulder, was a sixth man—the master and owner of the Hen Hawk. The strain upon his physical strength, in thus by main force holding the tiller right, had for hours been unceasing—and one could see by his dripping face that he was deeply wearied. But sign of fear there was none.
Only a man brought up in the interior of a country, and who had come to the sea late in life, would have dared bring this tiny cockle-shell of a coaster into such waters upon such a coast. The O’Ma-hony might himself have been frightened had he known enough about navigation to understand his present danger. As it was, all his weariness could nor destroy the keen sense of pleasurable excitement he had in the tremendous experience. He forgot crew and cargo and vessel itself in the splendid zest of this mad fight with the sea and the storm. He clung to the tiller determinedly, bowing his head to the rush of the broken waves when they fell, and bending knees and body this way and that to answer the wild tossings and sidelong plung-ings of the craft—always with a light as of battle in his gray eyes. It was ever so much better than fighting with mere men.
The gloom of twilight ripened into pitchy darkness, broken only by momentary gleams of that strange, weird half-light which the rushing waves generate in their own crests of foam. The wind rose in violence when the night closed in, and the vessel’s timbers creaked in added travail as huge seas lifted and hurled her onward through the black chaos toward the rocks. The men by the mast could every few minutes discern the red lights from the cottage windows of Muirisc, and shuddered anew as the glimmering sparks grew nearer.
Four of these five unhappy men were Muirisc born, and knew the sea as they knew their own mothers. The marvel was that they had not revolted against this wanton sacrifice of their lives to the whim or perverse obstinacy of an ignorant landsman, who a year ago had scarcely known a rudder from a jib-boom. They themselves dimly wondered at it now, as they strained their eyes for a glimpse of the fatal crags ahead. They had indeed ventured upon some mild remonstrance, earlier in the day, while it had still been possible to set the mainsail, and by long tacks turn the vessel’s course. But The O’Mahony had received their suggestion with such short temper and so stern a refusal, that there had been nothing more to be said—bound to him as Muirisc men to their chief, and as Fenians to their leader, as they were. And soon thereafter it became too late to do aught but scud bare-poled before the gale; and now there was nothing left but to die.
They could hear at last, above the shrill clamor of wind and rolling waves, the sullen roar of breakers smashing against the cliffs. They braced themselves for the great final crash, and muttered fragments of the Litany of the Saints between clenched teeth.
A prodigious sea grasped the vessel and lifted it to a towering height, where for an instant it hung trembling. Then with a leap it made a sickening dive down, down, till it was fairly engulfed in the whirling floods which caught it and swept wildly over its decks. A sinister thrill ran through the stout craft’s timbers, and upon the instant came the harsh grinding sound of its keel against the rocks. The men shut their eyes.
A dreadful second—and lo! the Hen Hawk, shaking herself buoyantly like a fisher-fowl emerging after a plunge, floated upon gently rocking waters—with the hoarse tumult of storm and breakers comfortably behind her, and at her sides only the sighing-harp music of the wind in the sea-reeds.
“Hustle now, an’ git out your anchor!” called out the cheerful voice of The O’Mahony, from the tiller.
The men scrambled from their knees as in a dream. They ran out the chain, reefed the jib, and then made their way over the flush deck aft, slapping their arms for warmth, still only vaguely realizing that they were actually moored in safety, inside the sheltered salt-water marsh, or muirisc, which gave their home its name.
This so-called swamp was at high tide, in truth, a very respectable inlet, which lay between the tongue of arable land on which the hamlet was built and the high jutting cliffs of the coast to the south. Its entrance, a stretch of water some forty yards in width, was over a bar of rock which at low tide could only be passed by row-boats. At its greatest daily depth, there was not much water to spare under the forty-five tons of the Hen Hawk. She had been steered now in utter darkness, with only the scattered and confusing lights of the houses to the left for guidance, unerringly upon the bar, and then literally lifted and tossed over it by the great rolling wall of breakers. She lay now tossing languidly on the choppy waters of the marsh, as if breathing hard after undue exertion—secure at last behind the cliffs.
The O’Mahony slapped his arms in turn, and looked about him. He was not in the least conscious of having performed a feat which any yachtsman in British waters would regard as incredible.
“Now, Jerry,” he said, calmly, “you git ashore and bring out the boat. You other fellows open the hatchway, an’ be gittin’ the things out. Be careful about your candle down-stairs. You know why. It won’t do to have a light up here on deck. Some of the women might happen to come out-doors an see us.”
Without a word, the crew, even yet dazed at their miraculous escape, proceeded to carry out his orders. The O’Mahony bit from his plug a fresh mouthful of tobacco, and munched it meditatively, walking up and down the deck in the darkness, and listening to the high wind howling overhead.
The Hen Hawk had really been built at Barnstable, a dozen years before, for the Devon fisheries, but she did not look unlike those unwieldy Dutch boats which curious summer visitors watch with unfailing interest from the soft sands of Scheveningen.
Her full-flushed deck had been an afterthought, dating back to the time when her activities were diverted from the fishing to the carrying industry. The O’Mahony had bought her at Cork, ostensibly for use in the lobster-canning enterprise which he had founded at Muirisc. Duck-breasted, squat and thick-lined, she looked the part to perfection.
The men were busy now getting out from the hold below a score of small kegs, each wrapped in oil skin swathings, and, after these, more than a score of long, narrow wooden cases, which, as they were passed up the little gangway from the glow of candlelight into the darkness, bore a gloomy resemblance to coffins. An hour passed before the empty boat returned from shore, having landed its finishing load, and the six men, stiff and chilled, clumsily swung themselves over the side of the vessel into it.
“Sure, it’s a new layse of life, I’m beginnin’,” murmured one of them, Dominic by name, as he clambered out upon the stone landing-place. “It’s dead I wa............