Chapter Twenty Three.
How Captain Bream fared in his Search, and what came of it
The finding of an individual in a large emigrant ship may not inaptly be compared to the finding of a needle in a haystack. Foreseeing the difficulty, the missionary asked Captain Bream how he proposed to set about it.
“You say that you do not know the married name of your sister?” he said, as they drew near to the towering sides of the great vessel.
“No; I do not.”
“And you have not seen her for many years?”
“Not for many years.”
“Nevertheless, you are quite sure that you will recognise her when you do see her?”
“Ay, as sure as I am that I’d know my own face in a lookin’-glass, for she had points about her that I’m quite sure time could never alter.”
“You are involved in a great difficulty, I fear,” continued his friend, “for, in the first place, the time at your disposal is not long; you cannot ask for the number of her berth, not having her name, and there is little probability of your being able to see every individual in a vessel like this while they keep moving about on deck and below.”
The captain admitted that the difficulties were great and his countenance grew longer, for, being as we have said a remarkably sympathetic man, the emotions of his heart were quickly telegraphed to his features.
“It strikes me,” continued the missionary, in a comforting tone, “that your best chance of success will be to enter my service for the occasion, and go about with me distributing New Testaments and tracts. You will thus, as it were, have a reason for going actively about looking into people’s faces, and even into their berths. Excuse me for asking—what do you think of doing if you find your sister, for the vessel starts in a few hours?”
“Oh, I’ll get her—and—and her husband to give up the voyage and return ashore with me. I’m well enough off to make it worth their while.”
The missionary did not appear to think the plan very hopeful, but as they ran alongside at the moment them was no time for reply.
It was indeed a bewildering scene to which they were introduced on reaching the deck. The confusion of parting friends; of pushing porters with trunks and boxes; perplexed individuals searching for lost luggage; distracted creatures looking for lost relatives; calm yet energetic officers in merchant-service uniform moving about giving directions; active seamen pushing through the crowds in obedience to orders; children of all sizes playing and getting in people’s way; infants of many kinds yelling hideously or uttering squalls of final despair. There was pathos and comicality too, intermingled. Behold, on one side, an urchin sitting astonished—up to his armpits in a bandbox through which he has just crashed—and an irate parent trying to drag him out; while, on your other side, stands a grief-stricken mother trying to say farewell to a son whose hollow cheeks, glittering eyes, and short cough give little hope of a meeting again on this side the grave. Above all the din, as if to render things more maddening, the tug alongside keeps up intermittent shrieks of its steam-whistle, for the first bell has rung to warn those who are not passengers to prepare for quitting the steamer. Soon the second bell rings, and the bustle increases while in the excitement of partings the last farewells culminate.
“We don’t need to mind that bell, having our boat alongside,” said the missionary to Captain Bream, as they stood a little to one side silently contemplating the scene. “You see that smart young officer in uniform, close to the cabin skylight?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the captain.”
“Indeed. He seems to me very young to have charge of such a vessel.”
“Not so young as he looks,” returned the other. “I shall have to get his permission before attempting anything on board, so we must wait here for a few minutes. You see, he has gone into his cabin with the owners to have a few parting words. While we are standing you’ll have one of the best opportunities of seeing the passengers, for most of them will come on deck to bid relatives and friends farewell, and wave handkerchiefs as the tug steams away, so keep your eyes open. Meanwhile, I will amuse you with a little chit-chat about emigrants. This vessel is one of the largest that runs to Australia.”
“Indeed,” responded the captain, with an absent look and tone that would probably have been the same if his friend had said that it ran to the moon. The missionary did not observe that his companion was hopelessly sunk in the sea of abstraction.
“Yes,” he continued, “and, do you know, it is absolutely amazing what an amount of emigration goes on from this port continually, now-a-days. You would scarcely believe it unless brought as I am into close contact with it almost daily. Why, there were no fewer than 26,000 emigrants who sailed from the Thames in the course of last year.”
“How many hogsheads, did you say?” asked the captain, still deeply sunk in abstraction.
A laugh from his friend brought him to the surface, however, in some confusion.
“Excuse me,” he said, with a deprecatory look; “the truth is, my mind is apt to wander a bit in such a scene, and my eyes chanced to light at the moment you spoke on that hogshead over there. How many emigrants, did you say?”
“No fewer than 26,000,” repeated the missionary good-naturedly, and went on to relate some interesting incidents, but the captain was soon again lost in the contemplation of a poor young girl who had wept to such an extent at parting from a female friend, then in the tug, that her attempts to smile through the weeping had descended from the sublime to the ridiculous. She and her friend continued to wave their kerchiefs and smile and cry at each other notwithstanding, quite regardless of public opinion, until the tug left. Then the poor young thing hid her sodden face in her moist handkerchief and descended with a moan of woe to her berth. Despite the comical element in this incident, a tear was forced out of Captain Bream’s eye, and we rather think that the missionary was similarly affected. But, to say truth, the public at large cared little for such matters. Each was too much taken up with the pressing urgency of his or her own sorrows to give much heed to the woes of strangers.
“People in such frames of mind are easily touched by kind words and influences,” said the missionary in a low voice.
“True, the ground is well prepared for you,” returned the captain softly, for another group had absorbed his attention.
“And I distribute among them Testaments, gospels, and tracts, besides bags filled with books and magazines.”
“Was there much powder in ’em?” asked the captain, struggling to the surface at the last word.
“I don’t know about that,” replied his friend with a laugh, “but I may venture to say that there was a good deal of fire in some of them.”
“Fire!” exclaimed the captain in surprise. Explanation was prevented by the commander of the vessel issuing at that moment from the cabin with the owners. Hearty shakings of hands and wishes for a good voyage followed. The officers stood at the gangway; the last of the weeping laggards was kindly but firmly led away; the tug steamed off, and the emigrant vessel was left to make her final preparations for an immediate start on her long voyage to the antipodes, with none but her own inhabitants on board, save a few who had private means of quitting.
“Now is our time,” said the missionary, hastening towards the captain of the vessel.
For one moment the latter gave him a stern look, as if he suspected him of being a man forgotten by the tug, but a bland smile of good-will overspread his features when the former explained his wishes.
“Certainly, my good sir, go where you like, and do what you please.”
Armed with this permission, he and Captain Bream went to work to distribute their gifts.
Most of the people received these gladly, some politely, a few with suspicion, as if they feared that payment was expected, and one or two refused them flatly. The distributers, meanwhile, had many an opportunity afforded, when asked questions, of dropping here and there “a word in season.”
As this was the first time Captain Bream had ever been asked to act as an amateur distributer of Testaments and tracts, he waited a few minutes, with one of his arms well-filled, to observe how his companion proceeded, and then himself went to work.
Of course, during all this time, he had not for an instant forgotten the main object of his journey. On the contrary, much of the absence of mind to which we have referred was caused by the intense manner in which he scanned the innumerable faces that passed to and fro before him. He now went round eagerly distributing his gifts, though not so much impressed with the importance of the work as he would certainly have been had his mind been less pre-occupied. It was observed, however, that the captain offered his parcels and Testaments only to women, a circumstance which caused a wag from Erin to exclaim—
“Hallo! old gentleman, don’t ye think the boys has got sowls as well as the faimales?”
This was of course taken in good part by the captain, who at once corrected the mistake. But after going twice round the deck, and drawing forth many humorous as well as caustic remarks as to his size and general appearance, he was forced to the conclusion that his sister was not there. The lower regions still remained, however.
Descending to these with some hope and a dozen Testaments, he found that the place was so littered with luggage, passengers, and children, that it was extremely difficult to move. To make the confusion worse, nearly the whole space between decks had been fitted up with extra berths—here for the married, there for the unmarried—so that very little room indeed was left for passage, and exceedingly little light entered.
But Captain Bream was not affected by such matters. He was accustomed to them, and his eyesight was good. He was bent on one object, which he pursued with quiet, unflagging perseverance—namely, that of gazing earnestly into the face of every woman in the ship.
So eager was the poor man about it that he forgot to offer the last armful of Testaments which he had undertaken to distribute, and simply went from berth to berth staring at the females. He would undoubtedly have been considered mad if it had not been that the women were too much taken up with their own affairs to think much about any one with whom they had nothing to do.
One distracting, and also disheartening, part of the process was, that, owing to the general activity on board, he came again and again to the same faces in different parts of the vessel, but he so frequently missed seeing others that hope was kept alive by the constant turning up of new faces. Alas! none of them bore any resemblance to that for which he sought so earnestly!
At last he returned to the place where his friend was preaching. By that time, however, the crowd was so great that he could not enter. Turning aside, therefore, into an open berth, with a feeling of weariness and depression creeping over his mind and body, he was about to sit down on a box, when a female voice at the other end of the berth demanded to know what he wanted.
Hope was a powerful element in Captain Bream’s nature. He rose quickly and stopped to gaze attentively into a female face, but it was so dark where she sat on a low box that he could hardly see her, and took a step forward.
“Well, Mr Imprence, I hope as you’ll know me again,” said the woman, whose face was fiery red, and whose nature was furious. “What do you want here?”
The captain sighed profoundly. That was obviously not his sister! Then a confused feeling of incapacity to give a good reason for being there came over him. Suddenly he recollected the Testaments.
“Have one?” he said eagerly, as he offered one of the little black books.
“Have what?”
“A Testament.”
“No, I won’t have a Testament, I’m a Catholic,” said the woman as she looked sternly up.
Captain Bream was considering how he might best suggest that the Word of God was addressed to all mankind, when a thought seemed to strike the woman.
“Are you the cap’n?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied absently, and with some degree of truth.
“Then it’s my opinion, cap’n, an’ I tell it you to your face, that you ought to be ashamed of yourself to put honest men an’ wimen in places like this—neither light, nor hair, nor nothink in the way of hornament to—”
“Captain Bream! are you there, sir?” cried the voice of his friend the missionary at that moment down the companion-hatch.
“Ay, ay, I’m here.”
“I’ve found her at last, sir.”
The captain incontinently dropped the dozen Testaments into the woman’s lap and went up the companion-ladder like a tree-squirrel.
“This way, sir. She’s sittin’ abaft the funnel.”
In a few seconds Captain Bream and his companion stood before a pretty-faced, fair-haired woman with soft gentle eyes, which suddenly opened with surprise as the two men hurried forward and came to a halt in front of her. The captain looked anxiously at his friend.
“Is this the—” he stopped.
“Yes, that’s her,” said the missionary with a nod. The captain turned slowly on his heel, and an irrepressible groan burst from him as he walked away.
There was no need for the disappointed missionary to ask if he had been mistaken. One look had sufficed for the captain.
Sadly they returned to the shore, and there the missionary, being near his house, invited Captain Bream to go home with him and have a cup of tea.
“It will revive you, my dear sir,” he said, as the captain stood in silence at his side with his head bowed down. “The disappointment must indeed be great. Don’t give up hope, however. But your clothes are wet still. No wonder you shiver, having gone about so long in damp garments. Come away.”
Captain Bream yielded in silence. He not only went and had a cup of his hospitable friends’s tea, but he afterwards accepted the offer of one of his beds, where he went into a high fever, from which he did not recover for many weary weeks.
Chapter Twenty Four.
The Wreck of the Evening Star
About the time that Captain Bream was slowly recovering from the fever by which he had been stricken down, a disaster occurred out on the North Sea, in connection with the Short Blue, which told powerfully on some of the men of that fleet. This was nothing less than the wreck of the Evening Star.
The weather looked very unsettled the morning on which David Bright’s turn came about to quit the fleet and sail for port. He had flown the usual flag to intimate his readiness to convey letters, etcetera, on shore, and had also, with a new feeling of pride, run up his Bethel-Flag to show his true colours, as he said, and to intimate his willingness to join with Christian friends in a parting hymn and prayer.
Some had availed themselves of the opportunity, and, just before starting, the Evening Star ran close to the mission smack.
“Lower the boat, Billy,” said the skipper to his son as they sat in the cabin.
“Ay, ay, daddy.”
There was a kindliness now in the tone of David Bright’s voice when he spoke to Billy that drew out the heart of that urchin as it had never been drawn out before, save by his mother’s soft voice, and which produced a corresponding sweetness in the tones of the boy—for “love begets love.”
The mission skipper received his visitor with unwonted heartiness.
“I pray the Lord to give you a good time on shore, David,” he said, as they went down to the cabin, where some of the other skippers were having a chat and a cup of coffee.
“He’ll do that,” said David. “He did it last time. My dear missis could scarce believe her ears when I told her I was converted, or her eyes when she saw the Bethel-flag and the temperance pledge.”
“Praise the Lord!” exclaimed two or three of those present, with deep sincerity, as David thus referred to his changed condition.
“I can’t bide with ’ee, lads,” said David, “for time’s up, but before startin’ I would like to have a little prayer with ’ee, an’ a hymn to the Master’s praise.”
We need not say that they were all ready to comply. After concluding, they saw him into his boat, and bade him God-speed in many a homely but hearty phrase.
“Good-bye, skipper; fare ye well, Billy; the Lord be with ’ee, Joe.”
John Gunter was not omitted in the salutations, and his surly spirit was a little, though not much, softened as he replied.
“Fare ye well, mates,” shouted David, as he once more stood on his own deck, and let his vessel fall away. A toss of the hand followed the salutation. Little Billy echoed the sentiment and the toss, and in a few minutes the Evening Star was making her way out of the fleet and heading westward.
The night which followed was wild, and the wind variable. Next day the sun did not show itself at all till evening, and the wind blew dead against them. At sunset, red and lurid gleams in the west, and leaden darkness in the east, betokened at the best unsteady weather.
Little did these bold mariners, however, regard such signs—not that they were reckless, but years of experience had accustomed them to think lightly of danger—to face and overcome it with equanimity. In addition to his native coolness, David Bright had now the mighty power of humble trust in God to sustain him.
It still blew hard when they drew near to land, but the wind had changed its direction, blowing more on the shore, and increasing at last to a gale which lined the whole coast with breakers. Before the Evening Star could find refuge in port, night had again descended. Unfortunately it was one of the darkest nights of the season, accompanied with such blinding sleet that it became a difficult matter to distinguish the guiding lights.
“A dirty night, Billy,” said David Bright, who himself held the tiller.
“Ay, father, it’ll be all the pleasanter when we get home.”
“True, lad; the same may be said of the heavenly home when the gales of life are over. D’ee see the light, boy?”
“No, father, not quite sure. Either it’s not very clear, or the sleet an’ spray blinds me.”
“‘Let the lower lights be burning,’” murmured the skipper, as a tremendous wave, which seemed about to burst over them, rushed beneath the stern, raising it high in the air. “You see the meanin’ o’ that line o’ the hymn now, Billy, though you didn’t when your dear mother taught it you. Bless her heart, her patience and prayers ha’ done it all.”
For some minutes after this there was silence. The men of the Evening Star were holding on to shroud or belaying-pin, finding shelter as best they could, and looking out anxiously for the “lower lights.”
“There’ll be some hands missin’, I doubt, in the Short Blue fleet to-morrow, father,” remarked Billy, with a solemn look.
“Likely enough; God have mercy on ’em,” returned Bright. “It wasn’t a much stiffer gale than this, not many years gone by, when twenty-seven smacks foundered, and a hundred and eighty souls were called to stand before their Maker.”
As David spoke a sullen roar of breaking water was heard on the port bow. They had been slightly misled, either by their uncertainty as to the position of the true lights, or by some false lights on shore. At all events, whatever the cause, they were at that moment driving towards one of the dangerous sand-banks in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth. The course of the smack was instantly changed, but it was too late. Almost before an order could be given she struck heavily, her main-mast went over the side, carrying part of the mizzen along with it. At the same time a wave broke just astern, and rushed over the deck, though happily not with its full force.
Even in that moment of disaster the bold fishermen did not quail. With their utmost energy indeed, but without confusion, they sprang to the boat which, although lifted, had not been washed away. Accustomed to launch it in all weathers, they got it into the water, and, almost mechanically, Ned Spivin and Gunter tumbled into it, while Joe Davidson held on to the painter. Billy Bright was about to follow, but looking back shouted, “Come along, father!” David, however, paid no attention to him. He still stood firmly at the tiller guiding the wreck, which having been lifted off, or over the part of the sand on which she had struck, was again plunging madly onward.
A few moments and one of those overwhelming seas which even the inexperienced perceive to be irresistible, roared after the disabled vessel. As it reached her she struck again. The billow made a clean sweep over her. Everything was carried away. The boat was overturned, the stout painter snapped, and the crew left struggling in the water.
But what of the people on shore when this terrible scene was being enacted? They were not entirely ignorant of it. Through driving sleet and spray they had seen in the thick darkness something that looked like a vessel in distress. Soon the spectral object was seen to advance more distinctly out of the gloom. Well did the fishermen know what that meant, and, procuring ropes, they hastened to the rescue, while spray, foam, sand, and even small pebbles, were swept up by the wild hurricane and dashed in their faces.
Among the fishermen was a young man whose long ulster and cap told that he was a landsman, yet his strength, and his energy, were apparently equal to that of the men with whom he ran. He carried a coil of thin rope in his left hand. With the right he partly shielded his eyes.
“They’ll be certain to strike here,” cried one of the fishermen, whose voice was drowned in the gale, but whose action caused the others to halt.
He was right. The vessel was seen to strike quite close, for the water was comparatively deep.
“She’s gone,” exclaimed the young man already referred to, as the vessel was seen to be overwhelmed.
He flung off his top-coat as he spoke, and, making one end of the small line fast round his waist, ran knee-deep into the water. Some of the fishermen acted in a somewhat similar fashion, for they knew well that struggling men would soon be on the shore.
They had not to wait long, for the crew of the Evening Star were young and strong, and struggled powerfully for their lives. In a few minutes the glaring eyes of Zulu appeared, and the young man of the ulster made a dash, caught him by the hair, and held on. It seemed as if the angry sea would drag both men back into its maw, but the men on the beach held on to the rope, and they were dragged safely to land.
A cheer on right and left told that others were being rescued. Then it became known who the wrecked ones were.
“It’s the Evening Star!” exclaimed one.
“Poor David!” said another.
Then the cry was raised, “Have ’ee got little Billy?”
“Ay, here he comes!” shouted a strange voice.
It was that of the youth of the ulster, who now stood waist-deep eagerly stretching out his hands towards an object with which the wild waves seemed to sport lovingly. It was indeed little Billy, his eyes closed, his face white, and his curly yellow hair tossing in the foam, but he made no effort to save himself; evidently the force of the sea and perhaps the cold had been too much for his slight frame to bear.
Twice did the young man make a grasp and miss him. To go deeper in would have perhaps insured his own destruction. The third time he succeeded in catching the boy’s hair; the men on shore hauled them in, and soon little Billy lay on the beach surrounded by anxious fishermen.
“Come, mates,” said one, in a deep voice, “let’s carry him to his mother.”
“Not so,” said the young man who had rescued Billy, and who had only lain still for a moment where he had fallen to recover breath. “Let him lie. Undo his necktie, one of you.”
While he spoke he was busy making a tight roll of his own coat which he immediately placed under the shoulders of Billy, and proceeded at once to attempt to restore breathing by one of the methods of resuscitating the drowned.
The fishermen assisted him, some hopefully, some doubtfully, a few with looks of disbelief in the process. The youth persevered, however, with unflagging patience, well knowing that half-drowned people have been restored after nearly an hour of labour.
“Who is he?” inquired one fisherman of another, referring to the stranger.
“Don’t you know him, mate?” asked the other in surprise.
“No, I’ve just come ashore, you know.”
“That’s Mr Dalton, the young banker, as takes such a lift o’ the temp’rance coffee-taverns an’ Blue-Ribbon movement.”
“He’s comin’-to, sir!” exclaimed a voice eagerly.
This had reference to little Billy, whose eyelids had been seen to quiver, and who presently heaved a sigh.
“Fetch my coat,” said Dalton. “He will indeed be restored, thank God.”
The big ulster was brought. Billy was carefully wrapped up in it, and one of the stoutest among his fisher friends lifted him in his arms and bore him off to his mother.
“Have all the others been rescued?” inquired Dalton, eagerly, when Billy had been carried away.
No one could answer the question. All knew that some of the Evening Star’s crew had been saved, but they could not say how many.
“They’ve bin taken to the Sailor’s Home, sir,” said one man.
“Then run up like a good fellow and ask if all are safe,” said Dalton. “Meanwhile I will remain here and search the beach lest there should be more to rescue.”
Turning again to the foaming sea the young banker proceeded slowly along the shore some distance, when he observed the body of a man being rolled up on the sand and dragged back by each returning wave. Rushing forward he caught it, and, with the aid of the fishermen, carried it beyond the reach of the hungry waves. But these waves had already done their worst. Dalton applied the proper means for restoration, but without success, and again the fishermen began to look gravely at each other and shake their heads.
“Poor woman!” they murmured, but said no more. Their feelings were too deep for speech as they mourned for one who was by that time a widow, though she knew it not.
At that moment some of the men came running down from the town—one, a tall, strong figure, ahead of them. It was Joe Davidson. He had been more exhausted than some of the others on being rescued, and had been led to the Sailor’s Home in a scarcely conscious condition. When they began to reckon up the saved, and found that only one was missing, Joe’s life seemed to return with a bound. Breaking from those who sought to restrain him he ran down to the beach.
He knelt beside the drowned fisherman with a wild expression in his eyes as he laid hold of something that partly covered the drowned man. It was his own Bethel-flag which David Bright had twisted round his body! Joe sprang up and clasped his hands as if to restrain them from violent action.
“Oh, David!” he said, and stopped suddenly, while the wild look left his eyes and something like a smile crossed his features. “Can it be true that ye’ve gone so soon to the Better Land?”
The words gathered in force as they were uttered, and it was with a great cry of grief that he shouted, “Oh, David, David! my brother!” and fell back heavily on the sand.