Roland Cashel Volume I Part 59

"Bear a hand there, boys!" cried Sickleton; "shake out the mainsail!"

"You 'll carry away the mast," cried Cashel, as he heard the order.

"It 's like enough," growled the pilot, "but yonder's the lee-sh.o.r.e."

"I could save her--I 'm certain I could save her," said Cashel.

"He's thinking of the lady," said the pilot to Sickleton; and the contemptuous tone showed how humbly he estimated him.

"Breakers ahead!--shoal water!" shouted a voice from the bow.

"'Bout ship!" cried Sickleton; "stand by sheets and tacks there--down helm! Are ye ready, men?" And the next moment the obedient vessel spun round, and was cleaving the water on another tack.

"What is it? where am I? is this a dream?" said Lady Kilgoff, as she moved back the hair from her eyes, and looked up at Cashel, who for hours had never moved or stirred.

"To _me_ it has been a delicious dream," said Cashel, as he met her glance; "and if it were not that you may feel alarmed, it would be still such."

"What a terrible sea! Where are we?"

"Not far from sh.o.r.e," said Cashel, encouragingly.

"A devilish deal too near it, though," muttered the pilot, under his breath.

"Oh, I remember all now. Where is my Lord, Mr. Cashel? Is he ill?"

"He 's gone below--he is sleeping, I believe. It has been a wild night for _you_; and you 've pa.s.sed it here on the deck."

"Here?" said she, looking up and blushing, for she still lay supported against Roland, and one of his hands held the boat-cloak across her.

"Yes, here," said Cashel, with a voice and manner that made the color mount to her cheeks and as suddenly desert them again.

Meanwhile the lieutenant had gone below, and reappeared with a chart, over which he and the pilot now bent in the deepest consideration.

"Then that must have been the 'Calf' Light we saw to the eastward," said Sickleton, pointing to the map.

"I 'd say so too," replied the other, "if such a run did n't seem impossible; but we only tripped our anchor last night before sunset."

"Ten hours, though!--one can do a deal in ten hours!" said the lieutenant.

"It may be worth as many years sometimes!" said Cashel, in a whisper to her at his side.

"Breakers right ahead!" shouted the man at the bow.

"We 're among the 'Barrels!'" cried, the pilot; "back the topsail! down mainsail!--"

But it was too late! Like a sea-bird rising to its flight, the light craft bounded forward, till her shining copper glanced above the waves, and then, with a spring, dashed onward, amid the foam and spray that rose like a mist around her. The frothy shower flew over the deck, while the hissing water spurted up on every side with a crashing, splintering sound. The keel came down, and while a loud cry broke forth, "She 's struck!" the mast snapped suddenly across, and fell with its draped rigging into the sea.

"Stand by! cut away the boats!" shouted Sickleton; and seizing a hatchet, gave the example himself, while Cashel, lifting the now lifeless form of Lady Kilgoff, placed her in the boat. The confusion and terror became now extreme. The breaking sea had already forced its way through the vessel's bottom, and issued in a clear jet of blue water from the hatchways. The first boat launched was rapidly crowded, and scarcely had it touched the water than it was swamped. For an instant the struggling figures were seen battling with the waves, but in a moment after they were gone!

Mainly through Sickleton and Cashel's exertions, the second boat was got ready, and just about to be launched, when Roland turned to seek Lord Kilgoff, whom, up to that moment, he had entirely forgotten. Scarcely had he reached the binnacle, when the old man, pale and almost dead with terror, stood before him. "Is she safe, sir?--is my Lady safe?" cried he, tremulously.

"Quite so; come along, there 's not a moment to lose."

"Oh, Mr. Cashel, do not leave me!" cried Lady Kilgoff, as the boat was lifted from its place, and swung by the halyards from side to side.

"You cannot surely resist that appeal, sir," said Lord Kilgoff, his withered and worn features flushed with a pang of sudden anger.

"I must see to _your_ safety, my Lord, or none else is likely to do it,"

said Cashel, sternly; and as he spoke he lifted the old man and placed him in the boat. "Stay where you are, Sickleton," cried he to the lieutenant; "I 'll cut her adrift. So there! my boys, all together--larboard now." And as the vessel heaved over to the surge, the boat was launched. A shrill cry of terror was heard above the raging storm; for Cashel, in his eagerness to secure the others' safety, had perilled his own, and now the boiling surf rushed between the yacht and the boat, defying every effort to approach.

"Never fear for me," said Roland, boldly; "the distance is short, and I 've swum in many a heavier surf." And he swung himself, as he spoke, by a loose stay into the sea. n.o.bly breasting the mad waves, he was seen at intervals, now borne on the white-crested billows, now deep down in the dark trough of waters. His Indian teaching had taught him, too, to dive at times through the coming surf, and thus escape its force, and so did he emerge from the great ma.s.s of waters that seemed almost to have buried him. Bending to the oars, the boat's crew pulled manfully through the tide, and at last gaining a little bay, floated into calm water, just as Cashel had got a footing on a reef of rock, a short distance from land.

"Safe!" cried he, as he drew his wearied limbs up the little craggy eminence, from which he could see the yacht still storm-lashed and heaving, and follow with his eyes the boat, as with bounding speed she made for sh.o.r.e.

No sooner had Sickleton safely landed his freight than he put out again to rescue those in the yacht, while Cashel, bruised, bleeding, and torn, made his way slowly to the little hut where Lord and Lady Kilgoff had taken shelter.

His entrance was little noticed. The cabin was full of country people and fishermen,--some earnestly proffering advice and counsel, others as eagerly questioning all about the recent calamity. In a great straw chair, beside the fire, sat Lord Kilgoff, his head resting on a country-woman's shoulder, while another bathed his temples to restore animation.

"Where is she?" said Cashel, pa.s.sionately; and the tone and look of the speaker turned attention towards him.

"'T is her husband," whispered the woman of the house, courtesying respectfully to the youth, who, in all the torn disorder of his dress, looked the gentleman; and with that she drew him into an inner room, where upon a low settle lay the pale and scarce breathing form of Lady Kilgoff.

"Don't be afeared, yer honer, she 'll be betther in a minute or two. She has more courage than her father there," and she pointed to the outside room where Lord Kilgoff sat. "Indeed, the first word she spoke was about yerself."

Cashel made a gesture to be silent, and sat down beside the settle, his gaze fixed on the features, which, in their calm loveliness, had never seemed more beautiful.

The stillness that now reigned in the little cabin, only broken by the low whisperings without, the calm tranquillity so suddenly succeeding to the terrible convulsion, the crowd of sensations pressing on the brain, and, above all, the immense fatigue he had gone through, brought on such a sense of stupor that Cashel fell heavily on the floor, and with his head leaning against the settle, fell into a sound sleep.

Before evening had closed in most of the party had recovered from their fatigues, and sat grouped in various att.i.tudes round the blazing fire of the cabin. In a deep, old-fashioned straw chair, reclined, rather than sat, Lady Kilgoff; a slightly feverish flush lent a brilliancy to her otherwise pale features, deepening the expression of her full soft eyes, and giving a more animated character to the placid beauty of her face.

Her hair, in all the loose freedom of its uncared for state, fell in great voluptuous ma.s.ses along her neck and shoulders, while part of a finely-turned arm peeped out beneath the folds of the wide scarlet cloak which the fisherman's wife had lent her in lieu of her own costly "Cashmere."

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Next to her sat Roland; and although dressed in the rough jacket of a sailor, his throat encircled by a rude cravat of colored worsted, he seemed in the very costume to have regained some of his long-lost joyousness, and, notwithstanding the sad event of the night, to be in a very ecstasy of high spirits. Sickleton, too, seemed like one who regarded the whole adventure as a circ.u.mstance too common-place for much thought, and busied himself writing letters to various persons at Cashel's dictation, sorely puzzled from time to time to follow out the thread of an intention, which Roland's devotion to the lady at his side more than once interrupted.

The most disconsolate and woe-begone of all was the poor peer, who, propped up by cushions, sat with unmeaning gaze steadily riveted on the fire. There was something so horribly absurd, too, in the costume in which he was clad, that converted all pity into a sense of ridicule.

A great wide pea-jacket encircled his shrunken, wasted figure to the knees, where the thin attenuated legs appeared, clad in blue worsted stockings, whose wide folds fell in a hundred wrinkles around them; a woollen cap of red and orange stripes covered his head, giving a most grotesque expression to the small and fine-cut features of his face.

If Lady Kilgoff and Cashel had not been too much interested on other topics, they could not have failed to discover, in the occasional stealthy glances that Sickleton cast on the old lord, that the costume had been a thing of his own devising, and that the rakish air of the nightcap, set sideways on the head, was owing to the sailor's inveterate fondness for a joke, no matter how ill-timed the moment or ill-suited the subject of it.

Behind them, and in a wider circle, sat the fisherman and his family, the occasional flash of the fire lighting up the gloom where they sat, and showing, as in a Rembrandt, the strong and vigorous lines of features where health and hardship were united--the whole forming in the light and shadow a perfect subject for a painter.

From the first moment of the mishap, Lord Kilgoff had sunk into a state of almost child-like imbecility, neither remembering where he was, nor taking interest in anything, an occasional fractious or impatient remark at some parsing inconvenience being all the evidence he gave of thought. It devolved, therefore, upon Cashel to make every arrangement necessary,--an a.s.sumption on his part which his natural respect and delicacy made no small difficulty. As for Lady Kilgoff, she appeared implicitly to yield to his judgment on every point; and when Roland suggested that, instead of returning to Dublin and all its inevitable rumors, they should at once proceed to Tubbermore, she a.s.sented at once, and most willingly.

It was with this object, then, that Sickleton sat, pen in hand, making notes of Cashel's directions, and from time to time writing at his dictation to various tradesmen whose services he stood in need of.

It would certainly have called for a clearer head, and a calmer than Roland's, to have conducted the conversation with the lady and the command to the gentleman, who sat at either side of him. Many a sad blunder did he make, and more than once did the reply intended for her Ladyship find its way into the epistle of the lieutenant, nor did the mistake appear till a reading of the doc.u.ment announced it. At these, a burst of laughter was sure to break forth, and then my Lord would look up, and, pa.s.sing his fingers across his temples, seem trying to recall his lost and wandering faculties--efforts that the changeful play of his features showed to be alternately failing and succeeding, as reason, tide-like, ebbed and flowed within his brain.

It was as Sickleton wrote down at Cashel's direction the order for a considerable sum of money to be distributed among the crew of the yacht, that Lord Kilgoff, catching as it were in a momentary lucidness the meaning of the words, said aloud, "This is not munificence, sir. I tell you this is the wasteful extravagance of the buccaneer, not the generosity of a true gentleman."

The other suddenly started at the words, and while Lady Kilgoff's deep flush of pa.s.sion and Cashel's look of astonishment exhibited their feelings, Sickleton's hearty laugh showed the racy enjoyment deficient delicacy can always reap from an awkward dilemma.