The Laughing Mill, and Other Stories. Julian Hawthorne

There was no rain, but no moon either, and the air was thick; and night coming on, it was as black as my hat. It wasn’t long afore there was a heavy sea running, and ye could have heard the surf on them Devil’s Ribs five miles inland. I shipped the lantern up in the fore gable as usual, though knowing it couldn’t show far in such a night; and, thinks I, see it or not, any ship that gets caught in the tide this weather is bound to wreck; so I’ll hope, says I to myself, that they’ll give us a wide berth. Howbe, I wasn’t sleepy, so I loaded my pipe, and, thinks I, I’ll have a snug smoke and a drop of grog alongside the kitchen fire afore turning in. No chance, thinks I, of my Scholar happening in this night; he never could beat up against that wind, not if he had Davy Jones himself to pilot him. Well, there I sat for maybe an hour, the noise of the storm getting ever louder and louder, so at times I could hardly hear the rattle of my spoon as I stirred up the grog in the tumbler. Then all of a sudden there comes a knocking at the door, quick and heavy, and up I jumps and opens it, and lo! there was the Scholar, with no hat and no coat, and that strange-coloured hair of his blown up wild about his head, and his eyes wide open and bright as a binnacle.

      “ ‘Why don’t you come in, sir?’ shouts I, loud as if I was a-hailing him at the maintop, such a noise the wind made; ‘ye’ll get the heart and lungs blown clean out of ye if ye stop there!’

      “Seemed like he answered me something, I couldn’t make out what; but he laid hold on my sleeve with that thin white hand of his, that gripped like a vice, as if he’d pull me out into the storm with him, instead of coming in to me. And by his face I could see there was a storm within him as stirred him more than the one without; and then he pointed down seawards, and, thinks I, ’tis a ship he’s seen or heard on the Devil’s Ribs. And though I knew well we could no more help any poor wrecked souls than if they was in the moon, yet it wasn’t in me to back out of going with him to see what there was to see. So just laying hold of my tarpaulin and a flask of rum, off we starts on the run, dead in the wind’s eye. How he managed for to scud over the ground at that rate is more than I could make out; the wind seemed to take no hold on him, but just let him through easy, though all the time it was near blowing my ears off.

      “Well, down we came to the beach at last, at a place about a cable’s length this side of the point. I’d kept my man in sight up to this time by reason of the white shirt he had on, his coat, as I told ye, being off him, but whither gone I’d not remembered for to ask him. But now, all of a sudden, I found he’d disappeared, and all I could see was the pale froth of the surf that came leaping up the beach, with a sound from the black wave behind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever, I presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder—ye may see it yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of the pine stump—and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped up and still; and when I looked, ’twas seemingly a young girl, about twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. She had come ashore on a bit of planking, and the Scholar he had seen her coming, and had scrambled down from the cliff in time to haul her in and under the lea of the boulder. How he did it the Lord only knows, for ten men working together might have failed in it. But there she lay, with no mark of harm or bruise upon her, and yet (as my heart misgave me) lifeless from the washing of the waves through which she had voyaged to land.

      “I saw ’twould be no use trying to give her rum yet awhile, so I stoops to lift her up along with the bit of planking that she lay upon; and Scholar Gloam he helped, though neither of us spoke, by reason of the thundering noise of the surf and the wind that half deafened us. It took us maybe a quarter of an hour, and then we were at home, and had her down before the fire, and wrapped in hot blankets, and everything done that could be done; and after nigh a couple of hours’ work, she moved the least mite in the world, and fetched a sigh. With that I sings out like I’d come upon a chest full of gold dollars, and says I, ‘All’s well, Scholar Gloam; she’s a-coming to, and she’ll live to smile on us yet!’ And then what does he do, sir, but just throws his head back with a little laugh, and topples over in a dead faint. ’Twas the exhaustion, ye must understand, as had come on all at once after the suspense of whether she was alive or dead was over. So there was I with the two of ’em to doctor. Well, I soon had the Scholar all right again; but when he saw as how the child was a-doing well, he drops off suddenly to sleep, being tired right out and unable for to keep his eyes open; and I didn’t wake him, but just threw a blanket over him, and let him sleep it out.

      “It was, maybe, half an hour after that that the little girl spoke; she had been opening her eyes and then shutting them several times, and wondering where she was got to, I suppose, poor little dear. She was pretty and white, with yellow hair and big blue eyes, and soft little feet and hands, and pointed fingers; and round her neck was the pearl-shell necklace that ye’ve seen Agatha wearing, sir. Well, she looked at me for a bit, and seemed like to cry, not knowing who I was, or where she’d got to, d’ye see; and then she said something, repeating it over twice or thrice; but I couldn’t understand her, by reason of her speaking some foreign lingo as was unknown to me. Howsoever, I took for granted that it must be some of her people she was asking after; so I pointed to the back room, and made believe as they were in there, but asleep, and not to be disturbed then. She believed me, poor little soul, and presently after dropped quietly asleep, with the tears yet under her eyelids, and the firelight flickering over her sweet face and yellow hair.

      “Well, I sat there between the two, for I wasn’t sleepy at all myself, and kept the fire alight, and my own pipe a-going, till morning, by which time the storm was mostly cleared off. So I got the old lantern down from the gable, and stirred about to get breakfast ready; and at sunrise, the two being still sleeping, I walked out to see if so be as anything of the wreck was visible. But the Devil’s Ribs was only a bank of foam, and when I came to the beach there was naught there but a few shattered timbers and bits of spars and rigging; whatever else there may have been had gone down within the whirlpool of the Devil’s Ribs, and would never see daylight more; nor was there anything to tell where the wrecked ship hailed from, or what she was, or whither she was bound. Nay, a man might well have doubted whether there’d been any wreck at all; and superstitious folks might have thought that the pretty child we had found was a sea-nymph or a mermaid, who had come on the shoulders of waves to bring us good luck—or bad, maybe! Not that I’d have ye to think, sir, that I’m of the superstitious kind, being a man as has seen much of the world, and lived a number of years in it. But ’twas a strange thing altogether, and stranger yet was to follow, as ye shall hear.

      “In my walk I happened by the boulder where I’d been with the Scholar overnight, and there I picked up a small iron box, with a big lock on it; it was lashed to four bits of wood, so as it might float, and I think it must have come ashore along with the raft that brought the little girl. Just as I laid hands on it, and cut away the lashings, I sighted one of the villagers a-coming over the cliff path towards me. So, not caring to be hailed at that time, I slipped the box in the pocket of my jacket, and steered for the house.

      “And lo! there was the fair child sitting in the chair, and the Scholar he was kneeling in front of her, with her hands in his, and they were a-talking together in that same foreign lingo as she had spoken in to me; for, d’ye see, he had learnt it all from his books, and understood it as well as she who was born to it. The child was a bit scared and tearful still, and he seemed to be a-comforting of her; and as I came in, says he, ‘Don’t let on that her folks are drowned, Jack; for I’ve told her they’re but borne away to another harbour, and will return one day to claim her. So meanwhile,’ says he, ‘she’ll come to live with me at the mill, and be my little girl; for is she not my little girl now, since ’twas I brought her forth from the ocean that would have robbed her sweet young life?’ With that he kisses her little hands, and says somewhat to her again in her own tongue. It touched my heart to see the two together, sir; for, d’ye see, the Scholar had never seemed to be aware, as I may say, of women or children until now; he had moved through life without seeing them or speaking to them, save at times in an absent, dreamy sort of a way, as though they were in different worlds. But now he was full of earnestness and a kind of joyful trembling surprise, as one who had all of a sudden opened his eyes to a great treasure, and was delighting in it all the more for that he had been unknowing of it before. He was all in all a changed man, and softened, and waked up inside, so that his eyes seemed to be a-seeing the things