School Reading by Grades: Sixth Year Part 13

II.

The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion, and awoke. It was broad day--eight or nine o'clock; the storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and some one knocking and calling at my door.

"What is the matter?" I cried.

"A wreck! close by!"

I sprang out of bed, and asked what wreck?

[Ill.u.s.tration:

From the Painting by A. Marlon. Carbon by Braun, Clement & Co.

Engraved by Walter Aikman.

The Shipwreck.

"A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! Its thought she'll go to pieces every moment."

The excited voice went clamoring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.

Numbers of people were there before us, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of had been diminished by the silencing of half a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented bore the expression of being _swelled_; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.

In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless attempts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman standing next me pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat,--which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable,--beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure, with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the sh.o.r.e at this moment: the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage, flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoa.r.s.ely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach: four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam ends towards the sh.o.r.e, now nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on sh.o.r.e increased. Men groaned and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.

They were making out to me, in an agitated way, that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the sh.o.r.e, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

I ran to him, as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But distracted though I was by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face, and his look out to sea, awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms, and implored the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand.

Another cry arose from the sh.o.r.e; and, looking towards the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have intreated the wind. "Mas'r Davy," he said cheerily, grasping me by both hands, "if my time is come, 'tis come. If't an't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a going off!"

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined, but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trowsers, a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist, another round his body; and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the sh.o.r.e, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope, which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water--rising with the hills, falling with valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land.

They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free, or so I judged from the motion of his arm--and was gone, as before.

And now he made for the wreck--rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the sh.o.r.e, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly.

At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,--when a high, green, vast hillside of water, moving on sh.o.r.eward from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in.

Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet--insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

--_From "David Copperfield," by Charles d.i.c.kens._

THE HAPPY VALLEY.

The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a s.p.a.cious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only pa.s.sage by which it could be entered was a cavern that pa.s.sed under a rock, of which it has been long disputed whether it was the work of Nature or of human industry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dr. Samuel Johnson.]

The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron forged by the artificers of ancient days, so ma.s.sy that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them.

From the mountains, on every side, rivulets descended, that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl which Nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise, from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees. The banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers. Every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the gra.s.s or browse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them.

On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures; on another, all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together; the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of the time.

Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pa.s.s their lives in this blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought capable of adding novelty to luxury.

Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of long experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight and new compet.i.tors for imprisonment.

Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Ra.s.selas, Prince of Abyssinia," from which this selection is taken, was first published in 1759. "The late Mr.

Strahan, the printer, told me," says Boswell, "that Johnson wrote it, so that with the profits he might defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it over. None of his writings have been so extensively diffused over Europe, for it has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages. This tale, with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shows us that this stage of our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit.'"

The peculiarities of style which distinguish all of Johnson's writings are well ill.u.s.trated in this story. Notice the stately flow of high-sounding words; the dignified formality of many of the descriptive pa.s.sages; and the richness and perfection which characterize the production as a whole.

THE Pa.s.s OF KILLIECRANKIE.

John Graeme of Claverhouse, whose t.i.tle of Viscount Dundee had been given him in reward for his cruelties to the Western Covenanters, was the instigator and leader of a revolt of the Highland clans against the government of William III. in Scotland. General Mackay, with his loyal Scotch regiments, was sent out to suppress the uprising. But as they climbed the pa.s.s of Killiecrankie, on the 27th of July, 1689, Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand clansmen, and swept them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the moment of victory broke, however, the only bond which held the Highlanders together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through the Lowlands melted helplessly away.