The Romance of the Coast | Page 4

down to look at the wreck. The carter's mare was terror-stricken by the wrath of the sea, and galloped down the beach. In passing the coble the mare plunged, and the axle-tree of the cart staved in the head of the boat below the water-line. This was very bad; but the leader of the forlorn hope did not give himself time to waver. Taking off his coat, he stuffed it into the hole; and then, calling in another volunteer, he said, "Sit against that." The men took their places very coolly, and the little boat was thrust out amid the broken water. Amidst all this the face of one woman who stood looking at the men arrested my attention. It was very white, and her eyes had a look in them that I cannot describe, though I have seen it since in my sleep. The men in the boat were her husband and her sons. She said nothing, but kept her hands tightly clasped; and her lips parted every time the boat rose on the crown of a wave. We could not see those good fellows half the time: all we could tell was that the man who was sitting against the jacket had to bale very hard. Presently the deep bow of the boat rose over a travelling sea, and she ground on the sand. She was heavily laden with the brig's crew of limp and shivering Danish seamen. And it was not a moment too soon for her to be ashore: the brig parted almost directly, and the wreckage was strewn all along the beach.
The men who did this action never had any reward. And it did not matter; for they took a very moderate view of their own merits. They knew, of course, that they had done a good morning's work; but it never occurred to them that they ought to have a paragraph in the newspapers and be called brave. The sort of courage they exhibited they would have described, if their attention had been called to it, as "only natural." The old hero who went through a heavy sea with a staved-in boat is still living. His name is Big Tom, and his home is at Cresswell, in the county of Northumberland. He does not know that he is at all heroic; but it is pleasant to think of him after reading about those wretched excursionists who drowned each other in sheer fright within sight of his home. He has often saved life since then. But when he puts out to sea now he does not need to use a stove-in coble: he is captain of the smart lifeboat; and his proudest possession is a photograph which shows his noble figure standing at the bow.

THE FISHERWOMAN.
On bleak mornings you might see the movements of Peggy's stooping figure among the glistening brown weeds that draped the low rocks; and somehow you always noticed her most on bleak mornings. When the joy of the summer was in the air, and the larks were singing high up in the sky, it seemed rather pleasant than otherwise to paddle about among the quiet pools and on the cold bladder-wrack. But when the sky was leaden, and the wind rolled with strange sounds down the chill hollows, it was rather pitiful to see a barefooted woman tramping in those bitter places. The sea seemed to wait for every fresh lash of the blast; and when the grey water sprang into brief spurts of spray you felt how cruelly Peggy's bare limbs were cut by the wind. But she took it all kindly, and made no moan about anything. Towards eight o'clock you would meet her tramping over the sand with her great creel full of bait slung on her forehead. Her feet gripped at the sand, and her strong leg looked ruddy and hard. Her hands were always rough, and covered with little scratches received while she baited the lines; but these were no miseries to Peggy, and her face always seemed composed and quiet. She would not pass you without a word, and her voice was pleasant with low gutturals. If her eyes reminded you of the sea, you put it down to a natural fancy. They were not at all poetic or sentimental; for Peggy was a rough woman. But something there was in the gleam of her pale clear eyes that made you think of the far northern seas, by the borders of which her forefathers in a remote time were probably born. As I have said, Peggy could use very rough words when farmers' wives tired her with too much chaffering; but mostly her face had a hard placidity that refreshed the mind, just as it is refreshed by considering the deliberate ways of harmless animals.
Towards