I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales Part 4

But the next instant he took down the gla.s.s, with a whitened face, and handed it to the parson.

The parson looked too. "Terrible!--terrible!" he said, very slowly, and pa.s.sed it on to Farmer Tresidder.

"What is it? Where be I to look? Aw, pore chaps--pore chaps!

Man alive--but there's one movin'!"

Zeb s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.s.

"'Pon the riggin', Zeb, just under her lee! I saw en move-- a black-headed chap, in a red shirt--"

"Right, Farmer--he's clingin', too, not lashed." Zeb gave a long look.

"Darned if I won't!" he said. "Cast over them corks, Sim Udy! How much rope have 'ee got, Jim?" He began to strip as he spoke.

"Lashins," answered Jim Lewarne.

"Splice it up, then, an' hitch a dozen corks along it."

"Zeb, Zeb!" cried his father, "What be 'bout?"

"Swimmin'," answered Zeb, who by this time had unlaced his boots.

"The notion! Look here, friends--take a look at the bufflehead!

Not three months back his mother's brother goes dead an' leaves en a legacy, 'pon which, he sets up as jowter--han'some painted cart, tidy little mare, an' all complete, besides a bravish sum laid by. A man of substance, sirs--a life o' much price, as you may say. Aw, Zeb, my son, 'tis hard to lose 'ee, but 'tis harder still now you're in such a very fair way o' business!"

"Hold thy clack, father, an' tie thicky knot, so's it won't slip."

"Shan't. I've a-took boundless pains wi' thee, my son, from thy birth up: hours I've a-spent curin' thy propensities wi' the strap--ay, hours.

D'ee think I raised 'ee up so carefully to chuck thyself away 'pon a come-by-chance furriner? No, I didn'; an' I'll see thee jiggered afore I ties 'ee up. Pa'son Babbage--"

"Ye dundering old shammick!" broke in the parson, driving the ferule of his cane deep in the sand, "be content to have begotten a fool, and thank heaven and his mother he's a gamey fool."

"Thank'ee, Pa'son," said Young Zeb, turning his head as Jim Lewarne fastened the belt of corks under his armpits. "Now the line--not too tight round the waist, an' pay out steady. You, Jim, look to this.

R-r-r--mortal cold water, friends!" He stood for a moment, clenching his teeth--a fine figure of a youth for all to see. Then, shouting for plenty of line, he ran twenty yards down the beach and leapt in on the top of a tumbling breaker.

"When a man's old," muttered the parson, half to himself, "he may yet thank G.o.d for what he sees, sometimes. Hey, Farmer! I wish I was a married man and had a girl good enough for that naked young hero."

"Ruby an' he'll make a han'some pair."

"Ay, I dare say: only I wasn't thinking o' _her_. How's the fellow out yonder?"

The man on the wreck was still clinging, drenched twice or thrice in the half-minute and hidden from sight, but always emerging. He sat astride of the dangling foremast, and had wound tightly round his wrist the end of a rope that hung over the bows. If the rope gave, or the mast worked clear of the tangle that held it and floated off, he was a dead man.

He hardly fought at all, and though they shouted at the top of their lungs, seemed to take no notice--only moved feebly, once or twice, to get a firmer seat.

Zeb also could only be descried at intervals, his head appearing, now and again, like a cork on the top of a billow. But the last of the ebb was helping him, and Jim Lewarne, himself at times neck-high in the surf, continued to pay out the line slowly. In fact, the feat was less dangerous than it seemed to the spectators. A few hours before, it was impossible; but by this there was little more than a heavy swell after the first twenty yards of surf. Zeb's chief difficulty would be to catch a grip or footing on the reef where the sea again grew broken, and his foremost dread lest cramp should seize him in the bitterly cold water. Rising on the swell, he could spy the seaman tossing and sinking on the mast just ahead.

As it happened, he was spared the main peril of the reef, for in fifty more strokes he found himself plunging down into a smooth trough of water with the mast directly beneath. As he shot down, the mast rose to him, he flung his arms out over it, and was swept up, clutching it, to the summit of the next swell.

Oddly enough, his first thought, as he hung there, was not for the man he had come to save, but for that which had turned him pale when first he glanced through the telescope. The foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived.

Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb--who had been vaguely wondering how on earth he contrived to keep his seat and yet hold on by the rope without being torn limb from limb--now discovered this end of the mast to be so tightly jammed and tangled against the wreck as practically to be immovable. The man's face was about as scaring as the corpses'; for, catching sight of Zeb, he betrayed no surprise, but only looked back wistfully over his left shoulder, while his blue lips worked without sound. At least, Zeb heard none.

He waited while they plunged again and emerged, and then, drawing breath, began to pull himself along towards the stranger. They had seen his success from the beach, and Jim Lewarne, with plenty of line yet to spare, waited for the next move. Zeb worked along till he could touch the man's thigh.

"Keep your knee stiddy," he called out; "I'm goin' to grip hold o't."

For answer, the stranger only kicked out with his foot, as a pettish child might, and almost thrust him from his hold.

"Look'ee here: no doubt you'm 'mazed, but that's a curst foolish trick, all the same. Be that tangle fast, you'm holding by?"

The man made no sign of comprehension.

"Best not trust to't, I reckon," muttered Zeb: "must get past en an'

make fast round a rib. Ah! would 'ee, ye varment?"

For, once more, the stranger had tried to thrust him off; and a struggle followed, which ended in Zeb's getting by and gripping the mast again between him and the wreck.

"Now list to me," he shouted, pulling himself up and flinging a leg over the mast: "ingrat.i.tood's worse than witchcraft. Sit ye there an'

inwardly digest that sayin', while I saves your life."

He untied the line about his waist, then, watching his chance, s.n.a.t.c.hed the rope out of the other's hand, threw his weight upon it, and swung in towards the vessel's ribs till he touched one, caught, and pa.s.sed the line around it, high up, with a quick double half-hitch. Running a hand down the line, he dropped back upon the mast. The stranger regarded him with a curious stare, and at last found his voice.

"You seem powerfully set on saving me."

His teeth chattered as he spoke, and his face was pinched and hollow-eyed from cold and exposure. But he was handsome, for all that-- a fellow not much older than Zeb, lean and strongly made. His voice had a cultivated ring.

"Yes," answered Zeb, as, with one hand on the line that now connected the wreck with the sh.o.r.e, he sat down astride the mast facing him; "I reckon I'll do't."

"Unlucky, isn't it?"

"What?"

"To save a man from drowning."

"Maybe. Untie these corks from my chest, and let me slip 'em round yourn. How your fingers do shake, to be sure!"

"I call you to witness," said the other, with a shiver, "you are saving me on your own responsibility."

"Can 'ee swim?"

"I could yesterday."

"Then you can now, wi' a belt o' corks an' me to help. Keep a hand on the line an' pull yoursel' along. Tide's runnin' again by now.

When you'm tired, hold fast by the rope an' sing out to me. Stop; let me chafe your legs a bit, for how you've lasted out as you have is more than I know."

"I was on the foretop most of the night. Those fools--" he broke off to nod at the corpses.

"They'm dead," put in Zeb, curtly.

"They lashed themselves, thinking the foremast would stand till daylight. I climbed down half an hour before it went. I tell you what, though; my legs are too cramped to move. If you want to save me you must carry me."