I Saw Three Ships | Page 5

from her face the others were twenty
yards away, and running fast.
CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND SHIP.
Fate, which had freakishly hurled a ship's crew out of the void upon
this particular bit of coast, as freakishly preserved them.
The very excess of its fury worked this wonder. For the craft came in
on a tall billow that flung her, as a sling might, clean against the cliff's
face, crumpling the bowsprit like paper, sending the foremast over with
a crash, and driving a jagged tooth of rock five feet into her ribs beside
the breastbone. So, for a moment it left her, securely gripped and
bumping her stern-post on the ledge beneath. As the next sea deluged
her, and the next, the folk above saw her crew fight their way forward
up the slippery deck, under sheets of foam. With the fifth or six wave
her mizen-mast went; she split open amidships, pouring out her cargo.
The stern slipped off the ledge and plunged twenty fathoms down out
of sight. And now the fore-part alone remained--a piece of deck, the
stump of the foremast, and five men clinging in a tangle of cordage,
struggling up and toppling back as each successive sea soused over
them.
Three men had detached themselves from the group above the cliff, and
were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened
them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all
the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne,
Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round

him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, both similarly laden.
Less than half-way down the rock plunged abruptly, cutting off farther
descent.
Jim Lewarne, in a cloud of foam, stood up, slipped the coil over his
head, and unwound it, glancing to right and left. Now Jim amid
ordinary events was an acknowledged fool, and had a wife to remind
him of it; but perch him out of female criticism, on a dizzy foothold
such as this, and set him a desperate job, and you clarified his wits at
once. This eccentricity was so notorious that the two men above halted
in silence, and waited.
Jim glanced to right and left, spied a small pinnacle of rock about three
yards away, fit for his purpose, sidled towards it, and, grasping, made
sure that it was firm. Next, reeving one end of the rope into a running
noose, he flung it over the pinnacle, and with a tug had it taut. This
done, he tilted his body out, his toes on the ledge, his weight on the
rope, and his body inclined forward over the sea at an angle of some
twenty degrees from the cliff.
Having by this device found the position of the wreck, and judging that
his single rope would reach, he swung back, gained hold of the cliff
with his left hand, and with his right caught and flung the leaded end
far out. It fell true as a bullet, across the wreck. As it dropped, a sea
almost swept it clear; but the lead hitched in a tangle of cordage by the
port cathead; within twenty seconds the rope was caught and made fast
below.
All was now easy. At a nod from Jim young Zeb passed down a second
line, which was lowered along the first by a noose. One by one the
whole crew--four men and a cabin-boy--were hauled up out of death,
borne off to the vicarage, and so pass out of our story.
Their fate does not concern us, for this reason--men with a narrow
horizon and no wings must accept all apparent disproportions between
cause and effect. A railway collision has other results besides wrecking
an ant-hill, but the wise ants do not pursue these in the Insurance

Reports. So it only concerns us that the destruction of the schooner led
in time to a lovers' difference between Ruby and young Zeb--two
young people of no eminence outside of these pages. And, as a matter
of fact, her crew had less to do with this than her cargo.
She had been expressly built by Messrs. Taggs & Co., a London firm,
in reality as a privateer (which explains her raking masts), but
ostensibly for the Portugal trade; and was homeward bound from
Lisbon to the Thames, with a cargo of red wine and chestnuts. At
Falmouth, where she had run in for a couple of days, on account of a
damaged rudder, the captain paid off his extra hands, foreseeing no
difficulty in the voyage up Channel. She had not, however, left
Falmouth harbour three hours before she met with a gale that started
her steering-gear afresh. To put back in the teeth of