Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
THE WRECK OF THE THOMAS J.
"I THINK that a fire would be a nice thing," Elspeth suggested. "Somehow, a good blaze always makes me feel as though I were defeating the wind and rain. They howl all the louder, out of very rage and jealousy."
Jim fetched in an armful of the Thomas J. Haskell and built a fire.
"It's a nice combination," Elspeth said; "whistling wind and crackling logs."
"Storm Motive from the Silver Shoal Symphony," murmured Jim, fanning the young flames; "shrieking wind, in the strings; counterpoint of snapping fire, in the percussion and woodwind; perpetual undertone of the sea worked out by the double-basses."
"I'm glad that I've seen a real storm here," Joan said. "Now I can imagine what it's like in winter."
"But this isn't a real storm at all," laughed Jim. "Why, it's a mere puff of the bellows compared to a time like—well, the night the Thomas J. went on the Reef."
"I know what you can do, Fogger!" Garth announced. "You can be on the settle, and I'll sit on your lap, and you ean tell Joan about the wreck of the Thomas J. Make it a real story, like the one about Rangor Head."
"I'm afraid I couldn't do that," Jim said. "I'm not such a gallant young lad as Roger, nor is this such a weird place as Radulgo. I can tell only what really happened."
"Please do!" Joan begged. "I've often meant to ask you about the wreck. How jolly this is, with the firelight and all!"
She sat down upon the floor and gazed at the leaping sparks and glowing embers, while Elspeth took out her knitting and established herself beside Jim on the settle. Garth decided that his father's lap was not, after all, the most advantageous place. He brought the cushion from a chair and lay down, elbows upon it, beside Joan, his chin in his hands and the colored driftwood flames shining into his eyes. The rosy glow of the fire flickered about the room and wavered upon the low, white ceiling, glinting here and there on burnished brass and the smooth polish of old wood.
"Go ahead, Fogger," Garth commanded; "and do please make it like a story."
"Well," Jim said, "''T was the night before Christmas,' but, unlike the gentleman of that poem, the keeper of a certain light was not asleep. He was very wide awake, and so was his wife. His son slept, however, and knew nothing of the excitement until the next day."
"I always did think it wasn't fair of you, not to wake me up," Garth broke in.
"Who said anything about you?" Jim demanded. "This is a story. The lightkeeper's son was very small and not so hale and hearty as you are. It would have upset his Christmas, and he couldn't have seen a thing, anyhow. As I was about to remark, it was the second day of a real storm. Half the lighthouse was sheathed in ice; the landing groaned and broke under it. Great waves came surging across the rock, and spray smothered up against the heavy storm-windows. The wind was blowing a whole gale, and would have blown any one off the tower, if he'd been foolish enough to go out on the gallery. The green water on the Reef leaped higher than the rocks, and white foam flew far above that. The night came down as black as a pitch caldron, and the sound of raging wind and waves grew all the more fearsome by coming out of the darkness. The keeper's man was away, spending Christmas ashore with his old mother, so that the keeper was single-handed. He went up to light his lamp, and in the lantern he felt the tower tremble and the iron stairs shudder under him.
"Before the keeper's son went to bed, he hung his stocking at the chimney-place," (Jim looked up at the mantel shelf, and so did Garth) "and there it was, blowing to and fro in the gusts that came whirling down the chimney and scattering the embers. He worried a great deal about the good Saint Nick's being able to get to the Light in such very bad weather; but his mother assured him that Santa Claus was quite used to the Arctic regions—storms, too, no doubt—and that, as he didn't have to come in a boat, it really made no difference. So the keeper's son went to sleep, much relieved.
"Close on to midnight the keeper, who was on watch, made out two misty lights reeling through the darkness. They were the lights of a schooner. The master of the vessel told the keeper, later on, what happened aboard his ship, and I'll tell it to you. They saw the Light, it seems, and they likewise heard the breakers, but for the life of them they couldn't keep her off. The sheets were frozen hard and cut the men's hands that hauled them, and the wind blew fit to sweep everything off the decks. They were getting heavier weather than the lighthouse, and the skipper feared every second that a mast would be carried away. As it was, half the taffrail went and all that was adrift on deck. The crew worked like madmen, with their 'oilers' frozen stiff and their faces stung raw.
"The lightkeeper, peering out into the storm, saw the tossing masthead lights veer closer inshore; then flames sprang out aboard the vessel from a tar-barrel they'd lit up as a signal of distress. Almost at once, from the Life-Saving Station two miles down the coast, a red light flared up. This meant: 'We see you; we're coming!' and a minute later a blue fire shone out on the beach. That said: 'Don't try to land in your own boats.'
"But the captain of the schooner told the keeper afterward that something had to be done, and done quick. Every sea pounded the Thomas J. further on to the Reef; at any moment her back might break and the crew would be left in a hideous position. So they waited for a 'smooth' when three big waves met and passed, and they got off somehow in a whaleboat. They thought every instant that they would certainly be hurled back against the schooner and smashed to bits. The lighthouse was much nearer than the Coast Guard Station, so for the light they pulled. They had a ship's lantern in the bow, and the keeper could see it swinging across the dark. The crew of the schooner rowed like mad, and they were about fifty yards away from the vessel when she broke clean in two just abaft the beam. Her stern plunged one way and her bows the other. Meanwhile, the keeper was watching the lantern in the whaleboat. Sometimes he could see it, and sometimes it was hidden from him when the boat slid into the trough of a big sea. Then one time it did not emerge, and the keeper heard a five-fold shout carried down the wind.
"If this were a real story—the sort in a book, I mean—he would have reflected nobly that his duties included the rescuing of drowning mariners; he would have gone up to gaze at his sleeping child before dashing into the night; he would have wept to see the stocking hanging at the chimney-piece. But, not being a story-book person (I told you he wasn't like Roger), he merely jumped into his oilers and out at the door in one bound, without even thinking of his wife and child. He wanted to get the men, so he got 'em."
Jim stopped, with an air of perfect finality, and puffed at his pipe serenely.
"I knew he wouldn't tell this story properly!" cried Elspeth. "What's the use of being a book-writing person, if you go and telescope your thrilling climax like that? I shall collaborate in this tale." She waved a knitting-needle. "When this keeper jumped out at the door," she related, "he was nearly blown down. His short oilskin coat filled with wind and behaved like a balloon-sail. The rock was covered with salt ice, but the keeper wriggled to the landing, launched his dory, and slid into it. His wife, you may imagine, was feeling so happy! For, considering that the whaleboat had been swamped, the chances for the dory didn't seem much greater. The seas were very big, but the boat slid up and down over them very neatly. The keeper's big woollen mittens were soaked immediately; then they froze, and his face froze, also. He shouted to the men in the water, and they shouted faintly in answer. He pulled steadily at his oars, and the dory did her best, till presently he came up with the men.
"Two of them had cork jackets, and the others were clinging to them, kicking and fighting to keep up in the icy water. The captain was holding to an oar, swimming feebly. The whaleboat had been carried away. Jim—the keeper, I should say—hauled the men aboard the dory, so stiff and chilled that they could hardly help themselves. He managed to keep his lantern alight and the boat right side up till they all were aboard. The least exhausted of the five men pulled the other pair of oars with the keeper, and two more bailed steadily, for the dory shipped water at every stroke. The boat staggered on nobly, plunging and shaking herself free, and came in at last on the crest of a roller halfway up the rock. Perhaps I can trust Jim to go on now."
"Any one would suppose she'd been there!" her husband remarked. "Hasn't she a graphic style! Well, there's little more to narrate. The Coast Guard people came up the beach with their breeches-buoy apparatus after the schooner had broken in two. The crew of the Thomas J. would very likely have been at the bottom of the sea, if they'd waited. Instead of that, they were shivering around the lighthouse stove, wrapped in all sorts of queer blankets and sweaters, and imbibing hot coffee and brandy and such. The keeper imbibed some, too. And the skipper saw that stocking hanging before the fireplace (Santa Claus had come, after all, and filled it, for it was bulging with toys and things). The captain stood up. He was wearing a long blanket, wrapped around him like a toga, and his face was blue.
"'Gosh, boys!' said he. 'Look at that!' Then he held up his glass of brandy. 'Merry Christmas, boys!' he said, in a voice as hoarse as a fog-horn, 'Merry Christmas!' And that's the only part of it that's really at all like a story-book."
Like a taut-stretched wire the wind sang around the tower; the hungry sea roared against the rock; but on the glowing hearth the bones of the Thomas J. Haskell, schooner, blazed and crackled merrily.