The Pillar of Light Part 16

"Yes. He believed, if that awful thing took place whilst we were below, we might escape. I can see it all now. I had the vaguest sort of suspicion, but he hoodwinked me."

"Had we known we would not have left him," cried Enid, pa.s.sionately.

"Yes, we would. Think of him, sticking to his post. Was it for us to disobey?"

Overcome by their feelings, they stood in silence for a little while.

Through the thick gla.s.s they could dimly distinguish Brand's figure. A great wave a.s.sailed the lantern and Enid screamed loudly.

"Don't, dear!" cried Constance, shrilly. "Father would not remain there if it were dangerous."

Nevertheless, they both breathed more freely when they saw him again, an indeterminate shape against the luminous gloom.

Constance felt that she must speak. The sound of her own voice begat confidence.

"I have never really understood dad until tonight," she said. "What an enn.o.bling thing is a sense of duty. He would have died here quite calmly, Enid, yet he would avoid the least risk out there. That would be endangering his trust. Oh, I am glad we are here. I have never lived before this hour."

Enid stole a wondering glance at her sister. The girl seemed to be gazing into depths immeasurable. Afterwards the words came back to her mind: "That would be endangering his trust."

Brand faced the gale a full five minutes. He returned hastily.

"There is a big steamer heading this way--a liner, I fancy," he gasped, half choked with spray. "I fear she is disabled. She is firing rockets, and I suppose her siren is going constantly, though I cannot hear it."

He ran to the room beneath. Flushed with this new excitement, the girls donned their oilskin coats and arranged their sou'westers. When he hurried up the stairs he was carrying four rockets. He noted their preparations.

"Don't come out until I have fired the alarm signal," he shouted, "and tie your dresses tightly around your knees."

They heard the loud hissing of the rockets, and the four reports traveled dully from the sky. Three white star-bursts and one red told the Land's End coastguards that a ship in need of help was near the Gulf Rock. Probably they had already seen the vessel's signals. In any event, they would not miss the display from the lighthouse.

Walking with difficulty, the girls crept out on to the balcony.

Brand had already gone to the windward side. The first rush of the gale made them breathless, yet they persevered and reached him. They were greeted by a climber, but their father, with a hand on their shoulders, pressed them down, and the spray crashed against the lantern behind them. He knew they would take no harm. When the vessel pa.s.sed, their boots and stockings would be soaked. Then he could insist that they should go to bed.

At first they distinguished nothing save a chaotic blend of white and yellow foam, driving over the reef at an apparently incredible speed.

Overhead, the black pall of the sky seemed to touch the top of the lantern. Around, in a vast circle carved out of the murky wilderness, the wondrous beam of the light fought and conquered its unwearied foes.

Constance caught the three quick flashes of the Seven Stones lightship away to the right. She fancied she saw a twinkling ahead, but this was the St. Agnes light, and neither girl could make out other sight or sound until Brand pointed steadily towards one spot in the darkness.

Before they could follow his indication they were compelled to duck to avoid another wave. Then, as if it had just popped up out of the sea, they divined a tiny white spark swinging slowly across a considerable area. It was by that means that Brand had estimated the size and nearness of the steamer, and soon they glimpsed the red and green side-lights, though ever and anon these were hidden by the torrents of water sweeping over her decks. Of the vessel they could see nothing whatever.

Steadily she rolled along her fearful path. Having once found her, there was no difficulty in estimating the rapidity of her approach. Enid, whose eyes were strong and far-sighted, fancied she caught a fitful vision of a big, black hull laboring in the yellow waves.

Though it was difficult to speak, she crept close to Brand and screamed:

"Is she drifting onto the reef?"

"I fear so," he answered.

"Then she will be lost!"

"Yes. Unless they manage to pa.s.s to s'uth'ard."

Luckily for poor human nature, mental stress and physical effort rarely unite forces. The mere attempt to resist the wind, the constant watchfulness needed to avoid the ambitious seas, though these, strange to say, appeared to be diminishing in size and volume as the tide rose, served to dull the horror of the threatened tragedy.

Brand quitted them for an instant to glue his eyes to the lantern, after wiping a s.p.a.ce on the gla.s.s: he must see if the lamp needed tending.

Satisfied by the scrutiny, he stood behind the girls, who had shrunk closely together the moment he retired.

"They are trying hard to steer clear of the reef," he shouted. "Twice they have got her head round, but the sea is too strong for them. I am afraid she is doomed."

Now, they unquestionably saw the great body of the ship. Her funnels showed most clearly, making sharply defined black daubs on the heaving desert of froth. The plunging whirls of the masthead light were enough to prove how the unfortunate vessel was laboring in what might prove to be her final agony.

And the pity of it! The wind was dropping. In another hour the weather might moderate appreciably, the tide would sweep her away from the horrible reef, and help would be forthcoming. Indeed, even then, a powerful steam trawler was preparing to fight her way out of Penzance harbor, with brave men on board ready to take any risk to save a ship in distress.

But the hour was grudged by fate. They could plainly hear the hoa.r.s.e blasts of the steamer's foghorn, and again a rocket spurted its path to the clouds. She was barely a mile away, and, if anything, in a worse position than before, as the wind remained fixed in the southwest, and the tide, at this stage, curved in towards the land ere it began to flow back again to the Atlantic.

"Can nothing be done?" screamed Constance, rendered half frantic by the thought that the steamer would go to pieces before their eyes.

"Nothing," was the answer. "Pray for them. They are in the hands of G.o.d."

In gruesome distinctness they watched the vessel's approach. The siren ceased. Had those on board abandoned hope? Pitching and rolling in a manner that suggested the possibility of foundering in deep water, she came on with fatal directness. Suddenly, a dreadful thought came to Brand's mind. The lighthouse stood on the easterly and most elevated portion of the reef, whose bearings ran southwest by west and north-northwest. At low-water, some two acres of jagged rocks were exposed. On all sides the soundings fell to sixteen and eighteen fathoms. What if this helpless leviathan, of ten thousand tons or more dead weight, were to strike the pillar? This was quite possible with the tide at its present level. It all depended whether her bows were raised or lowered at the moment of impact. In the one case she would smash away many feet of rock, and perhaps damage the foundations of the lighthouse: in the other, her sharp prow would stab into the vitals of the granite, and the huge column might collapse in common ruin with its colossal a.s.sailant.

One of the girls, he never remembered which of them, spoke to him. He could not answer. For a second time that night he knew what fear meant.

He watched the onward plunging of the vessel with stupefied eyes. He saw, as in a dream, that her officers and crew were still making desperate efforts to weather the reef. But, with the utter malignity of fate, though they might have swung her to port, she would not budge a yard to starboard, for now both wind and waves a.s.sailed her most vehemently on the starboard quarter.

Then when she was little more than twice her own length distant, he was certain that a dim form on the bridge signaled to the chart-house. With a miraculous deftness, on the a.s.sumption that her wheel was put hard over, she fell away from the racing seas. Her red light disappeared; her green light curved into full view. The next wave lifted her bodily, with a mad joy that it should be able to use her to batter its enemy, the rock.

Then she struck, with a sickening crash that was plainly audible above the roar of the reef. This was not enough. Another rush of foaming water enveloped her and smashed her again on an inner ledge. There she lodged, falling inertly over to starboard.

And Brand found his voice once more, for, as sure as this terrible night would have its end, so surely had the gallant captain of the steamer refused to imperil the lighthouse when all hope of saving his ship had vanished.

The tears were in Brand's eyes. His arms encircled the two girls.

"There goes a fine ship, commanded by a brave man," he cried.

And that was the beginning of the captain's requiem.

CHAPTER VII

THE LOTTERY

Just as the spin of a coin may mean loss or gain in some trumpery dispute or game of the hour, in like manner, apparently, are the graver issues of life or death determined at times. It is not so, we know.

Behind the triviality on which men fasten with amazement as the governing factor in events there lies an inscrutable purpose. Yet, to those watching the destruction of the splendid vessel, there was little evidence of other than a blind fury in the fashion of her undoing.

The hoa.r.s.e words had scarce left Brand's lips before a third wave, higher and more truculent than its predecessors, sprang right over the lost ship and smothered her in an avalanche of water. No doubt this monster swept away some of the officers and crew. It was impossible to be certain of aught save the one thing--that the steamer would surely break up before their eyes. The wind, now blowing in fierce gusts, the sea, rising each minute, the clouds of spray chasing each other in eerie flights through s.p.a.ce, the grinding, incessant, utterly overwhelming noise of the reef, made all sights and sounds indefinite, nebulous, almost fantastic.

But when the giant billow receded, leaving the ship like a dark rock in the midst of innumerable cascades, the catastrophe took place which Brand would have foreseen were his thoughts less tumultuous. With the support of the sea withdrawn from half its length the huge hull must either slip back into deep water or break in two. The slender steel sh.e.l.l of an ocean liner is not constructed to resist the law of gravity acting on full five thousand tons. So the solid-looking colossus cracked like a carrot, and the after part fell back into the watery chasm, there to be swallowed instantly, amidst a turmoil which happily drowned the despairing shrieks of far more than half of those on board.