Part 38 (2/2)
The figure pa.s.sed on by the wharves and warehouses, and sheltered now from the wind made good way till, some distance ahead, a door was opened, a broad patch of light shone out on the wet cobble stones, Crampton's voice said ”Good night,” and the figure drew back into a deep doorway, and waited.
The old clerk had been to the princ.i.p.al inn, where, once a week, he visited his club, and drank one gla.s.s of Hollands and water, and smoked one pipe, talking mostly to one friend, to whom if urged he would relate one old story.
This was his one dissipation; and afterwards he performed one regular duty which took him close up to the watching figure, which remained there almost breathless till Crampton had performed his regular duty and gone home.
It was ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before he pa.s.sed that watching figure, which seemed to have sunk away in the darkness that grew more dense as the gale increased.
Morning at last, a slowly breaking dawn, and with it the various sea-going men slowly leaving their homes, to direct their steps in a long procession towards one point, where the high cliff face formed a shelter from the south-west wind, and the great billows which rolled heavily in beneath the leaden sky. These came on with the regularity of machinery, to charge the cliffs at which they leaped with a hiss and a roar, and a boom like thunder, followed by a peculiar rattling, grumbling sound, as if the peal of thunder had been broken up into heavy pieces which were rolling over each other back toward the sea.
They were not pieces of thunder but huge boulders, which had been rolled over and over for generations to batter the cliffs, and then fall back down an inclined plane.
Quite a crowd had gathered on the broad, glistening patch of rugged granite, soon as the day broke, and this crowd was ever augmenting, till quite a phalanx of oilskin coats and tarpaulin hats presented its face to the thundering sea, while men shouted to each other, and swept the lead-coloured horizon with heavy gla.s.ses, or the naked hand-shaded eye, in search of some vessel trying to make the harbour, or in distress.
”She bites this morning,” said one old fisherman, shaking the spray from his dripping face, after looking round the corner of a ma.s.s of sheltering rock.
”Ay, mate, and it aren't in me to tell you how glad I am my boat's up the harbour with her nose fast to a buoy,” said another.
”There'll be widders and orphans in some ports 'fore nightfall.”
”And thank the Lord that won't be in Hakemouth.”
”I dunno so much about that,” growled a heavy-looking man, with a fringe of white hair round his face. ”Every boat that sails out of this harbour aren't in port.”
”That it is. Why, what's yer thinking about?”
”'Bout Van Heldre's brig, my lad.”
”Ah,” chorused half-a-dozen voices, ”we didn't think o' she.”
”Been doo days and days,” said the white-fringed old fisherman; ”and if she's out yonder, I say, Lord ha' mercy on 'em all, Amen.”
”Not had such a storm this time o' year since the Cape mail were wrecked off the Long Chain.”
”Ah, and that warn't so bad as this. Bound to say the brig has put into Mount's Bay.”
”And not a nice place either with the wind this how. Well, my lads, I say, there's blessings and blessings, and we ought all to be werry thankful as we aren't s.h.i.+p-owners with wessels out yonder.”
This was from the first man who had spoken; but his words were not received with much favour, and as in a lull of the wind one of the men had to use a gla.s.s, he growled out:
”Well, I dunno 'bout sending one's s.h.i.+p to sea in such a storm, but I don't see as it's such a very great blessing not to have one of your own, speshly if she happened to be a brig like Mast' Van Heldre's!”
”Hold your row,” said a man beside him, as he drove his elbow into his ribs, and gave a side jerk of his head.
The man thus adjured turned sharply, and saw close to him a st.u.r.dy-looking figure clothed from head to foot in black mackintosh, which glistened as it dripped with the showery spray.
”Ugly day, my lads.”
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