Chapter XXI: The Wreck of the 'cumberland.'

That next half-hour seemed to be the longest for Antony that ever he had passed in his lifetime. That is what he said to his sister Aggie when he wrote and told her all about the events of this fearful night. He first went back towards his caravan, closely followed by Wallace, who appeared to watch his every movement, certain in his canine mind that Antony would do something to find his mistress. For a master stands in the place of a god to his faithful dog, and the latter believes him omnipotent. Hardly knowing what he did, he lit the great lamps, and through their dark-crimson shades their light streamed like blood across the sand and on the surf.

For long minutes he sat beside Wallace, the dog giving vent occasionally to that long, sad sigh that shows every one who knows and understands such an animal that he is in grief--the dog sighing, the man chafing at his own helplessness.

Presently he got up, and descended the steps. He met Mary bustling around, and told her his fears.

All she answered was, 'Then God help our bonny bairn this dread and awful night!'

No comfort in that quarter.

'I fear the worst, Mary,' he said.

'Let us hope for the best, then,' said Mary.

Then he set himself to walking rapidly up and down the beach as if to work away his awful anxiety. And thus a good half-hour was passed. 'Had she succeeded in reaching the doomed ship,' he told himself, 'there would have been some sign ere now. Hallo!'

Another flash, another report, and almost immediately after the meteor-track of a splendid rocket rising high in air, turned a little towards the west, then bursting with a dull sound into brightest flame.

'Thank God!' cried Antony, 'the daring child has got safely on board.'

Something cold and damp touched his hand, and he found Wallace by his side; and the gentle touch gave him both comfort and hope. But just at that moment Antony made a strange discovery, which he put into words, though these were not spoken aloud, but to his heart, as it were.

'I love that child,' he told himself with the frankness of youth, 'more than is good for my peace of mind, more than is good for my future happiness or probably hers; for if she is spared this sad night to get safely on shore, soon now the parting must come, and I go away on my road in life and Lotty on hers. Heaven help the child and me!'

Just as he was communing with himself, the dark o' the neap was riven once more by a rocket's gleam that swayed and rose and burst as before.

It will be better to go back a little and follow the gipsy lass's movements as she went sweeping down the river that night and headed straight for that boiling sea. Surely she had more than the strength and skill of any two man-o'-war's men, and more than the daring of a Grace Darling to venture forth on such a forlorn hope.

But she had reasoned thus with herself: 'Even if I fail to reach the ship, I can, I think, sweep my light skiff quickly round and go rushing back to the river on the scud of the furious sea, and if I miss that the surf will rush me right up upon the beach, and I will not lose either my life nor Antony's _Jenny Wren_.'

Both wind and waves tossed the little boat about, but bravely did Lotty keep her head to the mountain seas. So high and wild were some of the breakers that they lifted the bows high in air and almost sank the skiff stern first. The first quarter of an hour's pull was the worst. After this, though the waves were higher, they did not break so much. Ah! but Lotty soon saw that they were sweeping high and horrible right over the stranded vessel, and for quite a long time she hovered near, hesitating how and when to approach.

At last she said to herself, 'It must be now or never.'

So high on a wavetop was she as the boat went dashing on from windward that the brave girl could see right down on to the wave-washed deck. Perhaps it was well for Lotty that the bark was so firmly, so steadfastly fixed on the rocks; bad for the ship, it is true, for from this position never could she move except in staves and broken timbers.

The sailors had seen the coming skiff, and three of them, at imminent peril, rushed to the side and seized it in time; and next moment Lotty, safe for the time being, was on the slippery upper deck of the bark, and even the _Jenny Wren_ was hauled on board. Right aft in the skiff was a little locker, and it was in this Lotty had stowed the rockets.

On the beach, about an hour after this, shapeless black things were driven up by the spume and the rush of the waves, and these were quickly seized by the hands of the ready fishermen who had been attracted to the spot. Antony himself was there, in fear and trembling lest one of the bodies washed in might be--oh, terrible!--Lotty's own.

* * * * *

Bob Stevens was a hard, rosy-faced man, bold and blue-eyed, strong in muscle, without one superfluous ounce of fat. Those eyes of his had peered into the darkness overcanopying many a stormy sea, those hard brown hands were at home with either tiller or oar, and more than at home with tack or sheet; a fisherman by trade, a sailor bold as ever trod a slippery deck, and master of the B---- lifeboat. Bob had gone quietly into the bar-parlour of the 'Lovat Arms' on that evening, with three of his pals, all life-boatmen, and they were smoking and enjoying modest glass and yarn when a man in oilskins rushed hurriedly in.

'Bob, you'll be wanted,' he said. 'There's a ship on the Partan Rocks.'

'God help her if she's there to-night!' said one of Bob's crew.

'Up with your drams, lads, and we'll get the _Maiden_ out at once.'

In an almost incredibly short space of time, and just as the second red rocket cleft the darkness of the sky, the _Maiden_ was launched and standing out to sea. So quickly had they gone that the men's wives knew nothing of their going until they had made good their offing and were swallowed up in the dark o' the neap. The _Maiden_ could sail as close to the wind as any boat on the coast; but it needed all her seaworthiness and all Bob's skill to-night to battle with these fierce and seething seas.

Never in this world will all the brave deeds done by our British lifeboats' crews be recorded. Perhaps--_quien sabe?_--their stories may be told on the shores of the Heavenly Canaan, where it is to be hoped we shall all meet.

But now, through the darkness, the ocean lit up by the white of the curling waves, the _Maiden_ toils on, up the watery hills, down with a rush into the vales between, hit, buffeted, overwhelmed, and shivering, but still striving on and on and on.

Will she be in time?

Perhaps hardly not, for the last rocket has been fired, and out of the goodly crew of seventeen men and a boy that left London but two weeks ago only nine are now alive. The rest have been swept away into the black, yawning seas, and washed shorewards to death on the turn of the tide.

Lotty is down below, for here is the captain's wife and baby, whom the little gipsy lass is doing her best to comfort. And she is thus engaged when her quick ear is sensible of knocking and scraping along the leeside bulwarks, and presently she cries aloud with joy, her eyes sparkling, her face sweetly flushed in the light of the lamp in gimbals.

'Saved, dear lady, saved!' she says to the skipper's wife. For she has heard strange voices on the deck, manly voices shouting strange orders high above the wail of wind and dash of raging sea.

She and her companions are soon lifted by some of the rescuers and carried as if babies in the strong arms of the rough but kindly men; and in a few minutes all are on board the lifeboat, the last man to throw himself in being the brave skipper himself.

Bob Stevens presently feels a tug at his arm, and a young girl's voice says in his ear, 'Do not try to beach her; the sea is high and the bottom is rock. Up the Burn o' Bogie with her. I'm going forward,' continued the voice; and Bob said, many a time after this, it sounded to him like the voice of a seraph--'I'm going forward with my flashlight, and will guide you safe up the burn.'

It is needless to say that the voice was Lotty's, and next minute she was as far forward as one could get in a boat like this, with the light in her hand. She could see the fearful, roaring white of the seas that dashed on shore; but there were hills with their black heads yonder too, and it was by these she kept the course, till, with boiling waves high and threatening on both sides of her, the lifeboat glided into the still, deep waters of the Burn o' Bogie.

It was Antony himself who lifted Lotty from the bows and landed her safe on shore; and in all the vast crowd, that had gathered from every part of the country, hardly was there a dry eye or a heart that did not throb with joy in thinking of the brave deed done this night by the little gipsy lass.

* * * * *

'And to think, my dear,' said Mrs Oak the skipper's wife of the lost bark _Cumberland_, as she was leaving for the south two or three weeks after this, 'that I may never have a chance of doing you a favour for all your brave kindness to us! Oh surely,' she added as she pressed Lotty's hand, and would not let it go, 'the King himself will hear of your gallantry and pluck, and thank you. Good-bye, Lotty, oh good-bye, and God be with you aye!--Kiss the child, James,' she said to her husband; 'kiss the darling that saved our lives.'

Big, brown-bearded James did as he was told. And Lotty was made to promise that if ever she came to Shepherd's Bush she would pay Capstan Cottage a visit, where she, this burly skipper's wife, lived when her husband was far at sea.

But as she made this promise, little did Lotty think how soon she would meet this kindly woman once again.

* * * * *

They say it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The storm that caused the sad and awful wreck of the good bark _Cumberland_ had been by no means an ill-wind to the showman Biffins Lee. No one knew better than he did how to take advantage of a windfall. Immediately after the disaster his people had all to work extra time. No extra pay--that was quite another matter. But the Queerest Show had to be got into full swing, for hundreds of people from all directions flocked towards it, not only to see the scene of the wreck and to pick up souvenirs thereof on the beach, but to see Lotty the heroine, or to listen to the story of her daring and courage from the lips of Biffins Lee; for the girl herself was far too modest and shy to say one word concerning it. In fact, she thought very little about the matter, and could not have been made to believe that she had given evidence of any extra courage in doing what she had done. She knew from the first that in her _Jenny Wren_ there would be no great difficulty in taking out a few rockets to the stranded ship, and she did so. Of course, it had been a little awkward getting alongside, and all that; but then--well, she was successful, and that perhaps as much by chance, she thought, as her own good management.

She shrank instinctively, therefore, from being made a hero of, and lionised; and when she saw newspapers effulgent with flowery language descriptive of her deed of daring, and calling her the second Grace Darling, and all that, she could have torn the pages out and burned them. Indeed, that is precisely what she would have done, only the papers belonged to the show and not to her.

But Biffins Lee had extracts made from these articles, printed in big, attractive capitals, and posted up near to the show, and great posters here and there at roadsides, with big black hands and pointing fingers on them:

THIS WAY TO THE QUEEREST SHOW ON EARTH.

GRACE DARLING,
WHO SAVED THE CREW OF THE 'CUMBERLAND.'

EVERY VARIETY OF AMUSEMENT,
SERIOUS AND COMICAL.

BEARS, APES, LIVING SKELETON, AND
THE DREADED DOOROOCOOLIE.
ONLY LIVING MERMAN IN THE WORLD.

Well, Lotty could not help this; but when told that she must appear on the stage in front of a specially prepared scenic screen--rocks, sea, and wrecked ship, with the little _Jenny Wren_ bounding over the waves, and she in it; and that, moreover, she must dress as 'Grace Darling Redivivus' and describe her adventure, then for the first time in her life she became a beautiful but tearful little rebel.

'Father, father,' she cried, 'I cannot, _will not_ do this!'

'_Will not_, eh? Well,' was the reply, 'and when I tell you that you must and shall, what is your answer to be?'

'That I sha'n't.'

The scene that followed is one which no author would care to dwell upon. But, losing all control over himself, the fat and burly showman advanced with his fist clenched and eyes aflame, and no doubt might have done poor innocent Lotty serious injury. But just at that moment came a fresh actress on the scene, in the person of Crona herself. Dressed as usual in the clean starched mob-cap or mutch, her tartan plaid and garments fluttering around her in the breeze blowing off the sea, a long staff in her hand, and Joe the raven on her shoulder, she appeared as suddenly as if she had sprung from the earth, and interposed her presence 'twixt the showman and child.

'Back!' she almost screamed, 'back, Biffins Lee. Lay but a finger on that child, and there is an end to your show and to your career as well.'

'How dare you, woman! Who are you that interferes with the legal right of a parent to reprimand a disobedient child?'

'Who am I, Biffins Lee?' she repeated. Then she made one step towards him and hissed something in his ear.

LASS. PAGE 224. ]

Lee started as if shot, and stood there before the witch, pale, perspiring, and trembling.

But Crona only laughed.

'Come with your fairy godmother, darling.' She placed an arm around Lotty, and together they left the stage.