Part 13 (1/2)

”Forgive me for interrupting,” said Richard; ”but I don't understand this matter. Is it supposed that a vessel announces her own destruction beforehand?”

”Sometimes,” said Trevethick, gravely. ”A s.h.i.+p is as well known here--if she belongs to this part of the coast--as a house is known in the Midlands. Well, if she's doomed, Madge--and it ain't only Madge neither--will see her days before she comes to her end. This _Firefly,_ for example, belonged to Polwheel, and had been away for weeks.”

”But still she was expected home?” interrogated Richard.

”Ay, that's it,” said Solomon, once more nodding approval. ”The old woman had that in her mind.”

”Why so?” argued Trevethick. ”What was the _Firefly_ to her that she should think she saw her drive into the bay, and break to pieces against the rock out yonder? And why should she tell her vision to Harry?”

”That certainly seems strange, indeed,” said Richard, ”as showing she attached importance to the affair herself. It was a most curious coincidence, to say the least of it. But what is this Flying Dutchman, of which you also spoke? I did not know he ever came so far out of his proper lat.i.tude as this.”

”He's seen before great storms, however,” said Trevethick; ”you ask the coast-guard men, and hear what _they_ say. There's many a craft has put out to her from Gethin, and come quite close, so that a man might almost reach her with a boat-hook, and then, all of a sudden, there is nothing to be seen but the big waves.”

John Trevethick had more to say to the same effect, to which Richard listened with attentive courtesy; while at the same time he held to the same skeptical view entertained by Solomon. Thus he won the good opinion of both men; and of that of the girl he felt already a.s.sured. He scarcely ever addressed himself to Harry, and as much as possible avoided gazing at her. If the idea of his paying any serious attention to her had ever been put into her father's mind, the intelligence that he had been the friend and guest of Carew's had been probably sufficient to dissipate it: the social position which that fact implied seemed to make it out of the question that he should be Harry's suitor. It only remained for him to disabuse Solomon of the same notion. This was at first no easy task; but the stubbornness with which his rival resisted his attempts at conciliation gave way by degrees, and at last vanished.

To have been able to make common cause with him upon this question of local superst.i.tion was a great point gained. Solomon had a hard head, and prided himself upon his freedom from such weaknesses; and he hailed an ally in a battle-field on which he had contended at odds, five nights out of every seven, for years. Harry, as we have seen, shared her father's sentiments in the matter; and it was a great stroke of policy in Richard to have espoused the other side. He would, of course, have much preferred to agree with her--to have embraced any view which had the attraction of her advocacy; but it now gave him genuine pleasure to find his opposition exciting her to petulance. She was not petulant with Solomon, but left her father to tilt with him after his own fas.h.i.+on.

From the superst.i.tions of the coast they fought their way to those of the mines. Old Trevethick believed in ”Knockers” and ”Buccas,” spirits who indicate the position of good lodes by blows with invisible picks; and, as these had more immediate connection with his own affairs than the nautical phenomena, he clung to his creed with even greater tenacity than before. So fierce was their contention that it was with difficulty that Richard could put in an inquiry as to whence these spirits came who thus interested themselves in the success of human ventures.

”I know nothing of that,” said Trevethick, frankly, ”any more than I know where that wind comes from that is shaking yonder pane; I only know that it is there.”

”Nay, father, but _I_ know,” said Harry, with a little blush at her own erudition: ”the Buccas are the ghosts of the old Jews who crucified our Lord, and were sent as slaves by the Roman emperor to work the Cornish mines.”

”Very like,” said Trevethick, approvingly, although probably without any clear conception of the historical picture thus presented to him. ”It's the least they could do in the spirit, after having done so much mischief in the flesh.”

The contradiction involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these favorers of industry, there were any spirits who worked ill to miners.

”Well, I can't say as there are,” said the landlord, with the air of a man who can afford to give a point in an argument; ”but there's a many things not of this world that happen underground, leastway in _our_ mines, for Sol there is from the north, and it mayn't be the same in those parts.”

”It certainly is not,” interrupted Solomon, taking his pipe out of his mouth to intensify the positiveness of his position.

”I say,” continued Trevethick, reddening, ”that down in Cornwall here there is scarce a mine without its spirit o' some sort. At Wheal Vor, for example, a man and his son were once blown to pieces while blasting; and, nothing being left of them but fragments of flesh, the engine-man put 'em into the furnace with his shovel; and now the pit is full of little black dogs. I've seen one of 'em myself.”

Solomon laughed aloud.

Richard was expecting an explosion of wrath. The old man turned toward him quietly, and observed with tender gravity: ”And in a certain mine, which Sol and I are both acquainted with, a white rabbit always shows itself before any accident which proves fatal to man. It was seen on the day that Sol's father sacrificed his life for mine.” Then he told the story which Richard had already heard from Harry's lips, while Solomon smoked in silence, and Harry looked hard at the fire, as though--as Richard thought--to avoid meeting the glance of her father's hereditary benefactor.

”You are right to remember such a n.o.ble deed as long as you live,” said Richard, when the old man had done. ”My own life,” added he, in a lower tone, ”was once preserved by one whom I shall love and honor as long as I have breath.”

He saw the color glow on the young girl's cheek, and the fire-light s.h.i.+ne with a new brilliance in her eyes. Neither Trevethick nor Solomon had caught his observation; at the moment it was made the former was stretching out his great hand to the latter, moved by that memory of twenty years ago, and, perhaps, in token of forgiveness for his recent skepticism.

”Then there's the Dead Hand at Wheal Danes, father,” observed Harry, in somewhat hasty resumption of the general subject. ”That's as curious as any, and more terrible.”

”Wheal Danes!” said Solomon. ”Why, how comes that about, when n.o.body can never have been killed there? It's been disused ever since the Roman time, I thought?”

”Yes, yes; so it has,” answered Trevethick, impatiently.

”But I thought you told me about it yourself, father?” persisted Harry.

”How you saw the Thing, with a flame at the finger-tops, going up and down where the ladders used to be, and heard voices calling from the pit.”

”Not I, wench--not I. That was only what was told me by other folks.--Take another gla.s.s of your own sherry before supper, Sir; and after that we will have a bowl of punch.”