I Saw Three Ships | Page 3

Young Zeb, from whose throat uncomfortable sounds were issuing. His eyes rolled piteously, and great tears ran down his cheeks.
"Slap en 'pon the back, Calvin: he's chuckin'."
"Ay--an' the pa'son at' here endeth!'"
"Slap en, Calvin, quick! For 'tis clunk or stuffle, an' no time to lose."
Down in the nave a light rustle of expectancy was already running from pew to pew as Calvin Oke brought down his open palm with a whack! knocking the sufferer out of his seat, and driving his nose smartly against the back-rail in front.
Then the voice of Parson Babbage was lifted: "I publish the Banns of marriage between Zebedee Minards, bachelor, and Ruby Tresidder, spinster, both of this parish. If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons--"
At this instant the church-door flew open, as if driven in by the wind that tore up the aisle in an icy current. All heads were turned. Parson Babbage broke off his sentence and looked also, keeping his forefinger on the fluttering page. On the threshold stood an excited, red-faced man, his long sandy beard blown straight out like a pennon, and his arms moving windmill fashion as he bawled--
"A wreck! a wreck!"
The men in the congregation leaped up. The women uttered muffled cries, groped for their husbands' hats, and stood up also. The choir in the gallery craned forward, for the church-door was right beneath them. Parson Babbage held up his hand, and screamed out over the hubbub--
"Where's she to?"
"Under Bradden Point, an' comin' full tilt for the Raney!"
"Then God forgive all poor sinners aboard!" spoke up a woman's voice, in the moment's silence that followed.
"Is that all you know, Gauger Hocken?"
"Iss, iss: can't stop no longer--must be off to warn the Methodeys! 'Stablished Church first, but fair play's a jewel, say I."
He rushed off inland towards High Lanes, where the meeting-house stood. Parson Babbage closed the book without finishing his sentence, and his audience scrambled out over the graves and forth upon the headland. The wind here came howling across the short grass, blowing the women's skirts wide and straining their bonnet-strings, pressing the men's trousers tight against their shins as they bent against it in the attitude of butting rams and scanned the coast-line to the sou'-west. Ruby Tresidder, on gaining the porch, saw Young Zeb tumble out of the stairway leading from the gallery and run by, stowing the pieces of his flute in his pocket as he went, without a glance at her. Like all the rest, he had clean forgotten the banns.
Now, Ruby was but nineteen, and had seen plenty of wrecks, whereas these banns were to her an event of singular interest, for weeks anticipated with small thrills. Therefore, as the people passed her by, she felt suddenly out of tune with them, especially with Zeb, who, at least, might have understood her better. Some angry tears gathered in her eyes at the callous indifference of her father, who just now was revolving in the porch like a weathercock, and shouting orders east, west, north, and south for axes, hammers, ladders, cart-ropes, in case the vessel struck within reach.
"You, Jim Lewarne, run to the mowhay, hot-foot, an' lend a hand wi' the datchin' ladder, an'--hi! stop!--fetch along my second-best glass, under the Dook o' Cumberland's picter i' the parlour, 'longside o' last year's neck; an'-hi! cuss the chap--he's gone like a Torpointer! Ruby, my dear, step along an' show en--Why, hello!--"
Ruby, with head down, and scarlet cloak blown out horizontally, was already fighting her way out along the headland to a point where Zeb stood, a little apart from the rest, with both palms shielding his eyes.
"Zeb!"
She had to stand on tip-toe and bawl this into his ear. He faced round with a start, nodded as if pleased, and bent his gaze on the Channel again.
Ruby looked too. Just below, under veils of driving spray, the seas were thundering past the headland into Ruan Cove. She could not see them break, only their backs swelling and sinking, and the puffs of foam that shot up like white smoke at her feet and drenched her gown. Beyond, the sea, the sky, and the irregular coast with its fringe of surf melted into one uniform grey, with just the summit of Bradden Point, two miles away, standing out above the wrack. Of the vessel there was, as yet, no sign.
In Ruby's present mood the bitter blast was chiefly blameworthy for gnawing at her face, and the spray for spoiling her bonnet and taking her hair out of curl. She stamped her foot and screamed again--
"Zeb!"
"What is't, my dear?" he bawled back in her ear, kissing her wet cheek in a preoccupied manner.
She was about to ask him what this wreck amounted to, that she should for the moment sink to