Wandering Heath | Page 4

tide's flowing, an' she
won't hold together another hour, they say.'
"Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast when my father got down
to the point. Six men had been cast up alive, or just breathing--a
seaman and five troopers. The seaman was the only one that had breath
to speak; and while they were carrying him into the town, the word
went round that the ship's name was the Despatch, transport, homeward
bound from Corunna, with a detachment of the 7th Hussars, that had
been fighting out there with Sir John Moore. The seas had rolled her
farther over by this time, and given her decks a pretty sharp slope; but a
dozen men still held on, seven by the ropes near the ship's waist, a
couple near the break of the poop, and three on the quarter-deck. Of
these three my father made out one to be the skipper; close by him
clung an officer in full regimentals--his name, they heard after, was
Captain Duncanfield; and last came the tall trumpeter; and if you'll
believe me, the fellow was making shift there, at the very last, to blow
'God Save the King.' What's more, he got to 'Send us victorious' before
an extra big sea came bursting across and washed them off the
deck--every man but one of the pair beneath the poop--and he dropped
his hold before the next wave; being stunned, I reckon. The others went
out of sight at once, but the trumpeter--being, as I said, a powerful man
as well as a tough swimmer--rose like a duck, rode out a couple of
breakers, and came in on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see
him broke like an egg at their feet; but when the smother cleared, there
he was, lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the
men that happened to have a rope round him--I forget the fellow's name,

if I ever heard it--jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he
began to slip back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high
enough to be out of harm, and another heave brought them up to grass.
Quick work; but master trumpeter wasn't quite dead; nothing worse
than a cracked head and three staved ribs. In twenty minutes or so they
had him in bed, with the doctor to tend him."
"Now was the time--nothing being left alive upon the transport--for my
father to tell of the sloop he'd seen driving upon the Manacles. And
when he got a hearing, though the most were set upon salvage, and
believed a wreck in the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen they
couldn't see, a good few volunteered to start off with him and have a
look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles,
nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar.
'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure enough, on the far side
of Dean Point, they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with
half a dozen men lashed to it--men in red jackets--every mother's son
drowned and staring; and a little farther on, just under the Dean, three
or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy,
side-drum and all; and, near by, part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S.
Primrose' cut on the stern-board. From this point on, the shore was
littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies--the most of them
Marines in uniform; and in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of
furniture from the captain's cabin, and amongst it a water-tight box, not
much damaged, and full of papers; by which, when it came to be
examined next day, the wreck was easily made out to be the Primrose,
of eighteen guns, outward bound from Portsmouth, with a fleet of
transports for the Spanish War--thirty sail, I've heard, but I've never
heard what became of them. Being handled by merchant skippers, no
doubt they rode out the gale and reached the Tagus safe and sound. Not
but what the captain of the Primrose (Mein was his name) did quite
right to try and club-haul his vessel when he found himself under the
land: only he never ought to have got there if he took proper soundings.
But it's easy talking.
"The Primrose, sir, was a handsome vessel--for her size, one of the
handsomest in the King's service--and newly fitted out at Plymouth

Dock. So the boys had brave pickings from her in the way of
brass-work, ship's instruments, and the like, let alone some barrels of
stores not much spoiled. They loaded themselves with as much as they
could carry, and started for home, meaning