Part 29 (1/2)
”We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead), and the life of the world to come. . . .”
Together we balanced it on the gunwale, and with the help of the stern-board tilted it over. It dropped, into fifteen fathoms of water.
There was another funeral next day in Lansulyan churchyard--where so many have come to be buried who never in life heard the name of Lansulyan: the harvest of Menawhidden, commemorated on weather-beaten stones and, within the church, on many tablets which I used to con on Sundays during the Vicar's discourses. The life-boat men had mustered in force, and altogether there was a large attendance at the graveside.
At one point a fit of coughing interrupted the Vicar in his recital of the service. I was the one auditor, however, who understood the meaning of it.
That evening we took our dessert again under the great elm. Somehow I felt certain he would choose this hour for his explanation: and in due course it came.
”I'm a truth-speaking man by habit,” he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it.
”But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my conscience is easy.”
He sipped his wine, and went on meditatively--
”Morals have their court of equity as well as the law of the land: and with us”--the Vicar was an old-fas.h.i.+oned Churchman--”that court is the private conscience. In this affair you insisted on putting your conscience into my hands. Well, I took the responsibility, and charge myself with any wrong you have committed, letting your confidence stand to your credit, as well as the service you have done for me--and another. Do you know the grey marble tablet on the south wall of the church--the _Nerbuddha_ monument?”
I nodded.
”'_Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Stanhope, C.B., and 105 Officers and Men of Her Majesty's 2-th Regiment of Foot, lost in the wreck of the Nerbuddha, East Indiaman, on Menawhidden, January 15th, 1857. . . ._' Then follows a list of the officers. Underneath, if you remember, is a separate slab to the officers and crew of the _Nerbuddha_, who behaved admirably, all the senior officers keeping order to the last and going down with the s.h.i.+p.”
I nodded again, for I knew the inscriptions pretty well by heart.
”The wreck happened in the first winter of my inc.u.mbency here. Then, as now, I had one pupil living with me, an excellent fellow. d.i.c.k Hobart was his name, his age seventeen or thereabouts, and my business to put some polish on a neglected education before he entered the Army.
His elder brother had been a college friend of mine, and indeed our families had been acquainted for years.
”d.i.c.k slept in the room you now occupy. He had a habit, which I never cured, of sitting up late over a pipe and a yellow-backed novel: and so he happened to be dressed that night when he saw the first signal of distress go up from Menawhidden. He came to my room at once and called me up: and while I tumbled out and began to dress, he ran down to Porth to give the alarm.
”The first signal, however, had been seen by the folks down there, and he found the whole place in a hubbub. Our first life-boat had arrived less than three months before; but the crew got her off briskly, and were pulling away l.u.s.tily for the reef when it occurred to a few of those left behind that the sea running was not too formidable for a couple of seine-boats lying high on the beach: and within five minutes these were hauled down and manned with scratch crews--d.i.c.k Hobart among them.
”Three days of east wind had knocked up a heavy swell: but the wind was blowing a moderate gale only--nothing to account for a big s.h.i.+p (as she was already reported to be) finding herself on Menawhidden.
Three signals only had been shown, and these in quick succession.
We learned afterwards that she went down within twelve minutes of striking. She had dashed straight on the Carracks, with the wind well behind her beam, topmasts housed for the night, but, barring that, canva.s.sed like a well-found s.h.i.+p sure of her sea-room. And the Carracks had torn the bottom out of her.
”The difficulty with the life-boat and two seine-boats was to find the position of the wreck, the night being pitch dark and dirty, and the calls and outcries of the poor creatures being swept down the wind to the westward. Our fellows pulled like Trojans, however, hailing and ahoying as they went; and about half-way down the line of Menawhidden they came on the first of the _Nerbuddha's_ boats, laden with women and children, in charge of the fourth officer and half-a-dozen seamen.
From her they learned the vessel's name and whereabouts, and having directed her on her way to the Porth, hurried forward again.
They pa.s.sed another boat similarly laden, and presently heard the distracting cries of swimmers, and drove straight into the wreckage and the struggling crowd of bodies. The life-boat rescued twenty-seven, and picked up four more on a second journey: the first seine-boat accounted for a dozen: the second (in which Hobart pulled an oar) was less fortunate, saving five only--and yet, as I shall tell you, my young friend had (and, for that matter, still has) abundant reason to be thankful for his voyage in her; for on that night he plucked from the sea the greatest treasure of his life.
”She--for it was a small girl of seven, and he took her from the arms of a seaman who died soon after being lifted into the boat-turned out to be the Colonel's daughter. She had stood by her mother's side above the gangway while the women pa.s.sed down the side into the boats: for that n.o.ble English lady had insisted that as it was the Colonel's duty to follow his men, so it was for the Colonel's wife to wait until every other woman and every child had filed past. The _Nerbuddha_ had gone down under her as she stood there beside her husband, steadied by his hand on her shoulder. Both bodies were afterwards recovered.
”Altogether fifty-two were buried in this parish: other bodies were washed ash.o.r.e or picked up from time to time, some at great distances up and down the Channel. In the end the list of those unaccounted for came to forty, or by other accounts thirty-six. That was my first experience of what Menawhidden could do. I have had many since: but to this day our little church--yes, even when we decorate it for harvest-festival and pile the sheaves within the Communion rails--remains for me the dark little building where the bodies lay in rows waiting to be identified, and where I and half-a-dozen volunteers took turns in keeping watch day and night while the windows shook and the damp oozed down the walls.
”The cause of the wreck was never made clear. The helmsman had gone, and the captain (his body was among the missing), and the first, second, and third officers. But two seamen who had been successively relieved at the wheel in the early hours of the night agreed on the course set by the captain. It was a course which must finally bring them straight on Menawhidden. Yet there was no evidence to show that the captain changed it. The men knew nothing of Channel navigation, and had simply obeyed orders. She had struck during the first mate's watch. The fourth officer (survivor) had also been on deck. He gave evidence that his superior, Mr. Rands, had said nothing about the course. For his own part he had supposed the s.h.i.+p to be a good fifteen miles from the coast.
They had sighted no sh.o.r.e-lights to warn them: but the weather was hazy.
Five minutes before the catastrophe Mr. Rands had remarked that the wind was increasing, but had deferred shortening sail. The s.h.i.+p was an old one, but newly rigged throughout. Her compa.s.ses had been adjusted and the s.h.i.+p swung at Greenhithe, just before the voyage. Mr. Murchison, the captain, was a trusted commander of the H.E.I.C.: he came originally from Liverpool, and had worked his way up in the company's service: a positive man and something of a disciplinarian, almost a martinet--not a man who would bear crossing easily. He was in his cabin, but came on deck at once, ready dressed; and had, with Colonel Stanhope's a.s.sistance, kept admirable order, getting out the three boats as promptly as possible. A fourth had actually been launched, and was being manned when the vessel plunged and stove her in as she went down.
”That is as much as needs be told about the _Nerbuddha_. Let me get on to the happier part of the story, that which concerns d.i.c.k Hobart and the small girl whom by Heaven's mercy he helped to save. Her name was Felicia--Felicia Rose Derwent Stanhope in full. Her uncle and guardian, Sir John Derwent, came down and fetched her home, with the bodies of her father and mother. I have told you that d.i.c.k was just then waiting for his commission, which, by the way, his family could poorly afford to purchase. Well, in recognition of his 'gallantry' (as the old gentleman was good enough to term it) Sir John, who possessed a good deal of influence, had him gazetted within six weeks, and to the 2-th Regiment-- 'for which,' so ran the gracious letter bringing the news, 'you have performed the first of what I hope will be a long list of distinguished services.'
”Pretty, was it not? Yes, but there's prettier to come. Felicia, who was an only child and quite an heiress in a small way, kept up from the first a steady correspondence with her 'preserver': childish letters, to begin with, but d.i.c.k kept them all. In Bombay, in Abyssinia, for a few weeks in England (when he saw her for the first time since the wreck), then back in India again, he has told me since that the world held but one woman for him, and that was the little girl growing up to womanhood in her Bedfords.h.i.+re home.