Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Lighthouse
All this Ruby had seen and calculated when he passed the north end of the rock the first time, and he had fixed the exact spot where he should take the plunge on repassing it. He acted so promptly that a few minutes sufficed to carry him towards the eddy, the tide being in his favour. But when he was about to swim into it, a wave burst completely over the ledge, and, pouring down on his head, thrust him back. He was almost stunned by the shock, but retained sufficient presence of mind to struggle on. For a few seconds he managed to bear up against wind and tide, for he put forth his giant strength with the energy of a desperate man, but gradually he was carried away from the rock, and for the first time his heart sank within him.
Just then one of those rushes or swirls of water, which are common among rocks in such a position, swept him again forward, right into the eddy which he had struggled in vain to reach, and thrust him violently against the rock. This back current was the precursor of a tremendous billow, which came towering on like a black moving wall. Ruby saw it, and, twining his arm amongst the seaweed, held his breath.
The billow fell! Only those who have seen the Bell Rock in a storm can properly estimate the roar that followed. None but Ruby himself could tell what it was to feel that world of water rushing overhead. Had it fallen directly upon him, it would have torn him from his grasp and killed him, but its full force had been previously spent on Cunningham’s Ledge. In another moment it passed, and Ruby, quitting his hold, struck out wildly through the foam. A few strokes carried him through Sinclair’s and Wilson’s tracks into the little pool formerly mentioned as Port Stevenson.
(The author has himself bathed in Port Stevenson, so that the reader may rely on the fidelity of this description of it and the surrounding ledges.)
Here he was in comparative safety. True, the sprays burst over the ledge called The Last Hope in heavy masses, but these could do him no serious harm, and it would take a quarter of an hour at least for the tide to sweep into the pool. Ruby therefore swam quietly to Trinity Ledge, where he landed, and, stepping over it, sat down to rest, with a thankful heart, on Smith’s Ledge, the old familiar spot where he and Jamie Dove had wrought so often and so hard at the forge in former days.
He was now under the shadow of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, which towered high above his head; and the impression of immovable solidity which its cold, grey, stately column conveyed to his mind, contrasted powerfully with the howling wind and the raging sea around. It seemed to him, as he sat there within three yards of its granite base, like the impersonation of repose in the midst of turmoil; of peace surrounded by war; of calm and solid self-possession in the midst of fretful and raging instability.
No one was there to welcome Ruby. The lightkeepers, high up in the apartments in their wild home, knew nothing and heard nothing of all that had passed so near them. The darkness of the night and the roaring of the storm was all they saw or heard of the world without, as they sat in their watch tower reading or trimming their lamps.
But Ruby was not sorry for this; he felt glad to be alone with God, to thank Him for his recent deliverance.
Exhausting though the struggle had been, its duration was short, so that he soon recovered his wonted strength. Then, rising, he got upon the iron railway, or “rails”, as the men used to call it, and a few steps brought him to the foot of the metal ladder conducting to the entrance-door.
Climbing up, he stood at last in a place of safety, and disappeared within the doorway of the lighthouse.
Chapter Twenty Nine
The Wreck
Meantime the French privateer sped onward to her doom.
The force with which the French commander fell when Ruby cast him off, had stunned him so severely that it was a considerable time before he recovered. The rest of the crew were therefore in absolute ignorance of how to steer.
In this dilemma they lay-to for a short time, after getting away to a sufficient distance from the dangerous rock, and consulted what was to be done. Some advised one course, and some another, but it was finally suggested that one of the English prisoners should be brought up and commanded to steer out to sea.
This advice was acted on, and the sailor who was brought up chanced to be one who had a partial knowledge of the surrounding coasts. One of the Frenchmen who could speak a few words of English, did his best to convey his wishes to the sailor, and wound up by producing a pistol, which he cocked significantly.
“All right,” said the sailor, “I knows the coast, and can run ye straight out to sea. That’s the Bell Rock Light on the weather-bow, I s’pose.”
“Oui, dat is de Bell Roke.”
“Wery good; our course is due nor’west.”
So saying, the man took the wheel and laid the ship’s course accordingly.
Now, he knew quite well that this course would carry the vessel towards the harbour of Arbroath, into which he resolved to run at all hazards, trusting to the harbour-lights to guide him when he should draw near. He knew that he ran the strongest possible risk of getting himself shot when the Frenchmen should find out his faithlessness, but he hoped to prevail on them to believe the harbour-lights were only another lighthouse, which they should have to pass on their way out to sea, and then it would be too late to put the vessel about and attempt to escape.
But all his calculations were useless, as it turned out, for in half an hour the men at the bow shouted that there were breakers ahead, and before the helm could be put down, they struck with such force that the topmasts went overboard at once, and the sails, bursting their sheets and tackling, were blown to ribbons.
Just then a gleam of moonlight struggled through the wrack of clouds, and revealed the dark cliffs of the Forfar coast, towering high above them. The vessel had struck on the rocks at the entrance to one of those rugged bays with which that coast is everywhere indented.
At the first glance, the steersman knew that the doom of all on board was fixed, for the bay was one of those which are surrounded by almost perpendicular cliffs; and although, during calm weather, there was a small space between the cliffs and the sea, which might be termed a beach, yet during a storm the waves lashed with terrific fury against the rocks, so that no human being might land there.
It chanced at the time that Captain Ogilvy, who took great delight in visiting the cliffs in stormy weather, had gone out there for a midnight walk with a young friend, and when the privateer struck, he was standing on the top of the cliffs.
He knew at once that the fate of the unfortunate people on board was almost certain, but, with his wonted energy, he did his best to prevent the catastrophe.
“Run, lad, and fetch men, and ropes, and ladders. Alarm the whole town, and use your legs well. Lives depend on your speed,” said the captain, in great excitement.
The lad required no second bidding. He turned and fled like a greyhound.
The lieges of Arbroath were not slow to answer the summons. There were neither lifeboats nor mortar-apparatus in those days, but there were the same willing hearts and stout arms then as now, and in a marvellously short space of time, hundreds of the able-bodied men of the town, gentle and semple, were assembled on these wild cliffs, with torches, rope, etcetera; in short, with all the appliances for saving life that the philanthropy of the times had invented or discovered.
But, alas! these appliances were of no avail. The vessel went to pieces on the outer point of rocks, and part of the wreck, with the crew clinging to it, drifted into the bay.
The horrified people on the cliffs looked down into that dreadful abyss of churning water and foam, into which no one could descend. Ropes were thrown again and again, but without avail. Either it was too dark to see, or the wrecked men were paralysed. An occasional shriek was heard above the roar of the tempest, as, one after another, the exhausted men fell into the water, or were wrenched from their hold of the piece of wreck.
At last one man succeeded in catching hold of a rope, and was carefully hauled up to the top of the cliff.
It was found that this was one of the English sailors. He had taken the precaution to tie the rope under his arms, poor fellow, having no strength left to hold on to it; but he was so badly bruised as to be in a dying state when laid on the grass.
“Keep back and give him air,” said Captain Ogilvy, who had taken a prominent part in the futile efforts to save the crew, and who now kneeled at the sailor’s side, and moistened his lips with a little brandy.
The poor man gave a confused and rambling account of the circumstances of the wreck, but it was sufficiently intelligible to make the captain acquainted with the leading particulars.
“Were there many of your comrades aboard?” he enquired. The dying man looked up with a vacant expression. It was evident that he did not quite understand the question, but he began again to mutter in a partly incoherent manner.
“They’re all gone,” said he, “every man of ’em but me! All tied together in the hold. They cast us loose, though, after she struck. All gone! all gone!”
After a moment he seemed to try to recollect something.
“No,” said he, “we weren’t all together. They took Ruby on deck, and I never saw him again. I wonder what they did—”
Here he paused.
“Who, did you say?” enquired the captain with deep anxiety.
“Ruby—Ruby Brand,” replied the man.
“What became of him, said you?”
“Don’t know.”
“Was he drowned?”
“Don’t know,” repeated the man.
The captain could get no other answer from him, so he was compelled to rest content, for the poor man appeared to be sinking.
A sort of couch had been prepared for him, on which he was carried into the town, but before he reached it he was dead. Nothing more could be done that night, but next day, when the tide was out, men were lowered down the precipitous sides of the fatal bay, and the bodies of the unfortunate seamen were sent up to the top of the cliffs by means of ropes. These ropes cut deep grooves in the turf, as the bodies were hauled up one by one and laid upon the grass, after which they were conveyed to the town, and decently interred.
The spot where this melancholy wreck occurred is now pointed out to the visitor as “The Seamen’s Grave”, and the young folk of the town have, from the time of the wreck, annually recut the grooves in the turf, above referred to, in commemoration of the event, so that these grooves may be seen there at the present day.
It may easily be imagined that poor Captain Ogilvy returned to Arbroath that night with dark forebodings in his breast.
He could not, however, imagine how Ruby came to be among the men on board of the French prize; and tried to comfort himself with the thought that the dying sailor had perhaps been a comrade of Ruby’s at some time or other, and was, in his wandering state of mind, mixing him up with the recent wreck.
As, however, he could come to no certain conclusion on this point, he resolved not to tell what he had heard either to his sister or Minnie, but to confine his anxieties, at least for the present, to his own breast.
Chapter Thirty
Old Friends in New Circumstances
Let us now return to Ruby Brand; and in order that the reader may perfectly understand the proceedings of that bold youth, let us take a glance at the Bell Rock Lighthouse in its completed condition.
We have already said that the lower part, from the foundation to the height of thirty feet, was built of solid masonry, and that at the top of this solid part stood the entrance-door of the building—facing towards the south.
The position of the door was fixed after the solid part had been exposed to a winter’s storms. The effect on the building was such that the most sheltered or lee-side was clearly indicated; the weather-side being thickly covered with limpets, barnacles, and short green seaweed, while the lee-side was comparatively free from such incrustations.
The walls at the entrance-door are nearly seven feet thick, and the short passage that pierces them leads to the foot of a spiral staircase, which conducts to the lowest apartment in the tower, where the walls decrease in thickness to three feet. This room is the provision store. Here are kept water-tanks and provisions of all kinds, including fresh vegetables which, with fresh water, are supplied once a fortnight to the rock all the year round. The provision store is the smallest apartment, for, as the walls of the tower decrease in thickness as they rise, the several apartments necessarily increase as they ascend.
The second floor is reached by a wooden staircase or ladder, leading up through a “manhole” in the ceiling. Here is the lightroom store, which contains large tanks of polished metal for the oil consumed by the lights. A whole year’s stock of oil, or about 1100 gallons, is stored in these tanks. Here also is a small carpenter’s bench and tool-box, besides an endless variety of odds and ends,—such as paint-pots, brushes, flags, waste for cleaning the reflectors, etcetera, etcetera.
Another stair, similar to the first, leads to the third floor, which is the kitchen of the building. It stands about sixty-six feet above the foundation. We shall have occasion to describe it and the rooms above presently. Meanwhile, let it suffice to say, that the fourth floor contains the men’s sleeping-berths, of which there are six, although three men is the usual complement on the rock. The fifth floor is the library, and above that is the lantern; the whole building, from base to summit, being 115 feet high.
At the time when Ruby entered the door of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, as already described, there were three keepers in the building, one of whom was on his watch in the lantern, while the other two were in the kitchen.
These men were all old friends. The man in the lantern was George Forsyth, who had been appointed one of the light-keepers in consideration of his good services and steadiness. He was seated reading at a small desk. Close above him was the blazing series of lights, which revolved slowly and steadily by means of machinery, moved by a heavy weight. A small bell was struck slowly but regularly by the same machinery, in token that all was going on well. If that bell had ceased to sound, Forsyth would at once have leaped up to ascertain what was wrong with the lights. So long as it continued to ring he knew that all was well, and that he might continue his studies peacefully—not quietly, however, for, besides the rush of wind against the thick plate-glass of the lantern, there was the never-ceasing roar of the ventilator, in which the heated air from within and the cold air from without met and kept up a terrific war. Keepers get used to that sound, however, and do not mind it.
Each keeper’s duty was to watch for three successive hours in the lantern.
Not less familiar were the faces of the occupants of the kitchen. To this apartment Ruby ascended without anyone hearing him approach, for one of the windows was open, and the roar of the storm effectually drowned his light footfall. On reaching the floor immediately below the kitchen he heard the tones of a violin, and when his head emerged through the manhole of the kitchen floor, he paused and listened with deep interest, for the air was familiar.
Peeping round the corner of the oaken partition that separated the manhole from the apartment, he beheld a sight which filled his heart with gladness, for there, seated on a camp-stool, with his back leaning against the dresser, his face lighted up by the blaze of a splendid fire, which burned in a most comfortable-looking kitchen range, and his hands drawing forth most pathetic music from a violin, sat his old friend Joe Dumsby, while opposite to him on a similar camp-stool, with his arm resting on a small table, and a familiar black pipe in his mouth, sat that worthy son of Vulcan, Jamie Dove.
The little apartment glowed with ruddy light, and to Ruby, who had just escaped from a scene of such drear and dismal aspect, it appeared, what it really was, a place of the most luxurious comfort.
Dove was keeping time to the music with little puffs of smoke, and Joe was in the middle of a prolonged shake, when Ruby passed through the doorway and stood before them.
Dove’s eyes opened to their widest, and his jaw dropt, so did his pipe, and the music ceased abruptly, while the face of both men grew pale.
“I’m not a ghost, boys,” said Ruby, with a laugh, which afforded immense relief to his old comrades. “Come, have ye not a welcome for an old messmate who swims off to visit you on such a night as this?”
Dove was the first to recover. He gasped, and, holding out both arms, exclaimed, “Ruby Brand!”
“And no mistake!” cried Ruby, advancing and grasping his friend warmly by the hands.
For at least half a minute the two men shook each other’s hands lustily and in silence. Then they burst into a loud laugh, while Joe, suddenly recovering, went crashing into a Scotch reel with energy so great that time and tune were both sacrificed. As if by mutual impulse, Ruby and Dove began to dance! But this was merely a spurt of feeling, more than half-involuntary. In the middle of a bar Joe flung down the fiddle, and, springing up, seized Ruby round the neck and hugged him, an act which made him aware of the fact that he was dripping wet.
“Did ye swim hoff to the rock?” he enquired, stepping back, and gazing at his friend with a look of surprise, mingled with awe.
“Indeed I did.”
“But how? why? what mystery are ye rolled up in?” exclaimed the smith.
“Sit down, sit down, and quiet yourselves,” said Ruby, drawing a stool near to the fire, and seating himself. “I’ll explain, if you’ll only hold your tongues, and not look so scared like.”
“No, Ruby; no, lad, you must change yer clothes first,” said the smith, in a tone of authority; “why, the fire makes you steam like a washin’ biler. Come along with me, an’ I’ll rig you out.”
“Ay, go hup with ’im, Ruby. Bless me, this is the most amazin’ hincident as ever ’appened to me. Never saw nothink like it.”
As Dove and Ruby ascended to the room above, Joe went about the kitchen talking to himself, poking the fire violently, overturning the camp-stools, knocking about the crockery on the dresser, and otherwise conducting himself like a lunatic.
Of course Ruby told Dove parts of his story by fits and starts as he was changing his garments; of course he had to be taken up to the lightroom and go through the same scene there with Forsyth that had occurred in the kitchen; and, of course, it was not until all the men, himself included, had quite exhausted themselves, that he was able to sit down at the kitchen fire and give a full and connected account of himself, and of his recent doings.
After he had concluded his narrative, which was interrupted by frequent question and comment, and after he had refreshed himself with a cup of tea, he rose and said—
“Now, boys, it’s not fair to be spending all the night with you here, while my old comrade Forsyth sits up yonder all alone. I’ll go up and see him for a little.”
“We’ll go hup with ’ee, lad,” said Dumsby.
“No ye won’t,” replied Ruby; “I want him all to myself for a while; fair play and no favour, you know, used to be our watchword on the rock in old times. Besides, his watch will be out in a little, so ye can come up and fetch him down.”
“Well, go along with you,” said the smith. “Hallo! that must have been a big ’un.”
This last remark had reference to a distinct tremor in the building, caused by the falling of a great wave upon it.
“Does it often get raps like that?” enquired Ruby, with a look of surprise.
“Not often,” said Dove, “once or twice durin’ a gale, mayhap, when a bigger one than usual chances to fall on us at the right angle. But the lighthouse shakes worst just the gales begin to take off and when the swell rolls in heavy from the east’ard.”
“Ay, that’s the time,” quoth Joe. “W’y, I’ve ’eard all the cups and saucers on the dresser rattle with the blows o’ them heavy seas, but the gale is gittin’ to be too strong to-night to shake us much.”
“Too strong!” exclaimed Ruby.
“Ay. You see w’en it blows very hard, the breakers have not time to come down on us with a ’eavy tellin’ blow, they goes tumblin’ and swashin’ round us and over us, hammerin’ away wildly everyhow, or nohow, or anyhow, just like a hexcited man fightin’ in a hurry. The after-swell, that’s wot does it. That’s wot comes on slow, and big, and easy but powerful, like a great prize-fighter as knows what he can do, and means to do it.”
“A most uncomfortable sort of residence,” said Ruby, as he turned to quit the room.
“Not a bit, when ye git used to it,” said the smith. “At first we was rather skeered, but we don’t mind now. Come, Joe, give us ‘Rule, Britannia’—‘pity she don’t rule the waves straighter,’ as somebody writes somewhere.”
So saying, Dove resumed his pipe, and Dumsby his fiddle, while Ruby proceeded to the staircase that led to the rooms above.
Just as he was about to ascend, a furious gust of wind swept past, accompanied by a wild roar of the sea; at the same moment a mass of spray dashed against the small window at his side. He knew that this window was at least sixty feet above the rock, and he was suddenly filled with a strong desire to have a nearer view of the waves that had force to mount so high. Instead, therefore, of ascending to the lantern, he descended to the doorway, which was open, for, as the storm blew from the eastward, the door was on the lee-side.
There were two doors—one of metal, with thick plate-glass panels at the inner end of the passage; the other, at the outer end of it, was made of thick solid wood bound with metal, and hung so as to open outwards. When the two leaves of this heavy door were shut they were flush with the tower, so that nothing was presented for the waves to act upon. But this door was never closed except in cases of storm from the southward.
The scene which presented itself to our hero when he stood in the entrance passage was such as neither pen nor pencil can adequately depict. The tide was full, or nearly so, and had the night been calm the water would have stood about twelve or fourteen feet on the sides of the tower, leaving a space of about the same height between its surface and the spot at the top of the copper ladder where Ruby stood; but such was the wild commotion of the sea that this space was at one moment reduced to a few feet, as the waves sprang up towards the doorway, or nearly doubled, as they sank hissing down to the very rock.
Acres of white, leaping, seething foam covered the spot where the terrible Bell Rock lay. Never for a moment did that boiling cauldron get time to show one spot of dark-coloured water. Billow after billow came careering on from the open sea in quick succession, breaking with indescribable force and fury just a few yards to windward of the foundations of the lighthouse, where the outer ledges of the rock, although at the time deep down in the water, were sufficiently near the surface to break their first full force, and save the tower from destruction, though not from many a tremendous blow and overwhelming deluge of water.
When the waves hit the rock they were so near that the lighthouse appeared to receive the shock. Rushing round it on either side, the cleft billows met again to leeward, just opposite the door, where they burst upwards in a magnificent cloud of spray to a height of full thirty feet. At one time, while Ruby held on by the man-ropes at the door and looked over the edge, he could see a dark abyss with the foam shimmering pale far below; another instant, and the solid building perceptibly trembled, as a green sea hit it fair on the weather-side. A continuous roar and hiss followed as the billow swept round, filled up the dark abyss, and sent the white water gleaming up almost into the doorway. At the same moment the sprays flew by on either side of the column, so high that a few drops were thrown on the lantern. To Ruby’s eye these sprays appeared to be clouds driving across the sky, so high were they above his head. A feeling of awe crept over him as his mind gradually began to realise the world of water which, as it were, overwhelmed him—water and foam roaring and flying everywhere—the heavy seas thundering on the column at his back—the sprays from behind arching almost over the lighthouse, and meeting those that burst up in front, while an eddy of wind sent a cloud swirling in at the doorway, and drenched him to the skin! It was an exhibition of the might of God in the storm such as he had never seen before, and a brief sudden exclamation of thanksgiving burst from the youth’s lips, as he thought of how hopeless his case would have been had the French vessel passed the lighthouse an hour later than it did.
The contrast between the scene outside and that inside the Bell Rock Lighthouse at that time was indeed striking. Outside there was madly raging conflict; inside there were peace, comfort, security: Ruby, with his arms folded, standing calmly in the doorway; Jamie Dove and Joe Dumsby smoking and fiddling in the snug kitchen; George Forsyth reading (the Pilgrim’s Progress mayhap, or Robinson Crusoe, for both works were in the Bell Rock library) by the bright blaze of the crimson and white lamps, high up in the crystal lantern.
If a magician had divided the tower in two from top to bottom while some ship was staggering past before the gale, he would have presented to the amazed mariners the most astonishing picture of “war without and peace within” that the world ever saw!
