Part 3

After about an hour and a half of as hard work as two men ever endured in a good cause, during which time I was kept constantly baling, we got close under the lee of the wrecked vessel, which had now drifted to within two miles of the shore. There were eight poor half-frozen wretches on board, one of whom was a woman, clinging to some spars which were securely lashed on the mainhold hatch. When we shouted and signalled them to throw us a rope, none of them moved. The cold and wet, and staying so long in the same position, had so stiffened them that they were unable to render us any assistance in getting on board. We then tried to approach the lee-quarter of the wreck; but just as we got under the mainchains, by which my companions meant to climb on board, a tremendous sea broke over the weather-quarter, and washing down over the lee gunwale, half filled our boat, and almost upset it.

‘We’re gone this time!’ I exclaimed.

‘Then we’ll all go together,’ cried Sam in a tone as if he rather enjoyed the idea than otherwise.

‘Out oars and pull back again,’ said Herbert calmly, without taking any notice of my frightened exclamation, for the wave had washed us some distance from the schooner.

On again approaching the wreck, we found the upper part of the fore-topmast floating about thirty feet from her side, with the fore-topmast backstay still fastened to it. After some trouble, Sam managed to cut the spar adrift and make the rope secure to our boat, the other end still being fast to the schooner. Herbert, telling me to keep the boat as clear of water as possible with the baling bucket, went forward. Taking hold of the rope, he jumped overboard, quickly drew himself hand over hand to the schooner’s side, and climbed on board by the forechains. Sam soon followed him, though he was nearly washed away by a sea which broke over the schooner. Herbert, however, who was clinging to the foreshrouds, quickly grasped his wrist, and saved him.

After a short consultation, Sam went aloft with a rope, and lying out on the lee foreyard arm, passed the end of the rope through the brace-block. He then came down on deck again, and making a bowline on a bight (a knot with two large loops) with it, gave it to Herbert, who made it and the other end of the rope fast to a belaying pin. Sam then came back to the boat to help me to receive the unfortunates. Herbert proceeded with great difficulty to the main hatch, and waiting till a huge wave had washed over the schooner, took the woman in his strong arms and brought her to where he had made fast the tackle. He then signalled us to haul the boat as near to the wreck as we dared. Then he put the woman’s head and shoulders through one loop, and her limbs through the other, and waiting his opportunity, swung her on to the boat, where we unslung her, so to speak, and passed the knot back to Herbert. The crew followed in the same manner. As Herbert was carrying the last of them down to swing him over to the boat, the schooner shipped a tremendous sea, which sent Herbert and his burden flying into the lee scuppers. After remaining in suspense for half a minute without either of them appearing above the bulwarks, Sam jumped at once overboard, dragged himself by the rope to the wreck, and climbed on board. Stooping, he disengaged the tightly clasped arms of the sailor from Herbert’s neck; he then helped his friend, who was half insensible, to rise, and propped him against the bulwarks with his arms round the backstay. Sam was then about to stoop again to help the sailor, when he recoiled with an exclamation of horror. The poor fellow’s head, as he had fallen with Herbert’s huge weight on the top of him, had struck against the main-bits, and was shattered: he was stone-dead!

With great difficulty Sam managed to put his friend into the bowline and sling him over to the boat, he himself following by the rope by which we were made fast to the schooner. Herbert, who looked very pale and ill, sank back exhausted in the stern-sheets. A thin stream of blood was trickling from his temple; and he also suffered from pain in his right side.

It was late in the afternoon ere we cast off our rope and prepared for our homeward journey. We had scarcely got fifty yards from the schooners side, when a heavy sea struck her; she shook from stem to stern, then heeled over to port till we thought she would capsize; but she righted herself again, as if struggling to keep afloat, then slowly began to sink by the bow. A second wave struck her, more on the quarter; plunging her bow into the trough of the sea, she raised her stern in the air, and, diving like some sea monster, disappeared. We afterwards learned from the captain that her cargo—loose limestone blocks of about a hundredweight each—had shifted. The list this gave to the schooner had caused the mainmast, which was already slightly sprung, to go over the side, taking the fore-topmast with it. The shifting of the cargo had also started one of the planks, which accounted for the schooner springing a leak and going down.

The wind, which had chopped round to the southward, had blown us to within half a mile of the shore. Hoisting our close-reefed lug, we steered for the small haven, which we reached in safety in a quarter of an hour, after having narrowly escaped being upset by the ugly ‘topping’ of a wave at the entrance between the two points of rock. We were received with shouts of joy from the villagers and some coastguardsmen, who, having perceived that the vessel was drifting in shore, had prepared the rocket apparatus in case of emergency.

Poor Herbert had to be lifted out of the boat and carried to our cottage on a stretcher. A surgeon was in immediate attendance, and we awaited with no little anxiety the result of his examination. Three ribs were found to be fractured; but the wound in his temple proved very slight. Suffice it to say that our friend was able to return to his studies in a few weeks.

Neither Sam nor myself suffered from our exposure; the former remaining all night in attendance on Herbert; I, taking a steaming glass of grog, turned in between the blankets.

The shipwrecked crew were well attended to by the landlord of the village inn, and were next morning sent on to Plymouth. Nothing was known about the man who was killed; he had shipped on board the schooner at Falmouth, but no one knew where he came from.

A week after this event we received a letter of thanks from the owners of the schooner, who also offered us a handsome acknowledgment for our timely assistance, which we declined with thanks.

The captain, who is now master of a much larger vessel, and whose wife it was we had saved, insists on repeating his expressions of gratitude whenever we meet; but his tone becomes very grave when we laugh and attempt to make light of the danger we encountered.

OUR HEDGEHOGS.

Who among us has not been amused and delighted by Frank Buckland’s most original accounts of the various animals, wild and tame, with which, at different periods of his career, he came in contact? Reading in his _Life_ the account of the hedgehog imported into the Deanery in the fond hope that it would devour the black beetles, has reminded us of some of our own experiences in connection with those animals. We were troubled with black beetles in our kitchen regions, and were informed that hedgehogs would eat them. It was long before the _Life of Frank Buckland_ appeared; we had not the benefit of his experience, or we might have known that, as he says, ‘they don’t act. A hedgehog cannot possibly hold more than a pint of beetles at a time, and in my kitchen there are gallons of them.’

When the first hedgehog arrived and was turned loose in the kitchen, we expected great things of it; but, to our surprise, the creature would not take the trouble to catch the beetles. They might swarm on every side, ‘beetles to right of him, beetles to left of him;’ they might run right before his eyes—he only regarded them with placid indifference. He may have performed prodigies of beetle-catching in the middle of the night when no one saw him; but so far as our observation went, the only way in which he could be induced to eat any was when they were caught for him—taken up in the fire-shovel and presented to him on that as on a dish. Certainly there was no perceptible diminution in the number of black beetles, and our regret was therefore the less when before long the hedgehog mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps the beetles ate him; perhaps he managed to slip out unobserved into the yard. At all events, no trace of him was ever discovered; not even his skeleton in the flue, as was the case with Frank Buckland’s hedgehog.

After this, I don’t suppose we expected much in the way of beetle-eating from his successor, known amongst us by the name of Hogatha; but she was less shy and more sociable than many hedgehogs, and amused us by her droll ways. She would of course roll herself into a prickly ball when touched, but would uncurl as I sat with her on my lap, and look about her with her bright little eyes. I think she would soon have become tame, and I should have made a pet of her, but for one unfortunate circumstance. If even the whale has his unmentionable parasite, it will not perhaps appear surprising when I mention that fleas in great number inhabited my little friend’s bristly coat. When she uncurled as she lay on my lap, they could be seen running in and out over her odd little head and face. Perhaps this is a favourite locality, being less bristly, and presumably more comfortable for the fleas than the more prickly portions of the body. But it was too much. Not even for the sake of cultivating the acquaintance of the charming Hogatha, could I face the prospect of restless nights and irritated skin, so our friendship waned.

It must have been this hedgehog which frightened me one night. I was not learned in natural history, and didn’t know that hedgehogs could run fast and mount stairs. It was late at night, and I was in bed, when I was startled by hearing strange noises in the passage outside my door. Sometimes they appeared distant, sometimes near; sometimes there came a kind of scraping at the door, which had a most uncanny sound. Is there such a thing as being physically superstitious, the mind having little or nothing to do with it? If so, I was physically superstitious; and the tendency which was in my blood, handed down perhaps from old Breton ancestors, was developed (parents and nurses, please take heed to my words!) by ghost stories told me in my childhood. At the time of which I am writing, though quite grown up, I well remember there was one story in particular I hardly dared recall, which, if it came back to my memory in the night, would cause the old feeling of terror to overwhelm me like a flood; wherefore it was with an effort that I got up and lit the gas; then, ‘taking my courage in both hands,’ I opened the door—and behold! there was Hogatha tearing up and down the long passage like an express train! I couldn’t consent to have her _and_ her fleas, and I couldn’t have her without, so I conveyed her down-stairs, and shut her in the kitchen.

Then there was the sweet little baby hedgehog, given me by a lad who found a nest in his garden. We didn’t mean to be cruel, either of us, but no doubt were so, for the poor little thing was too young to be taken from its mother. I could not induce it to eat or drink, and at last I gave it to the cat, which had kittens at the time, to see if she would adopt it. She received it graciously when I put it into her basket, as though it had been her own kitten. But it was all no use; the poor little thing pined and died.

We were by this time pretty well convinced that beetle-eating on the part of hedgehogs was chiefly theoretical, with just as much relation to the realities of life as many other theories, and no more. We desired, however, to keep our minds open to new impressions; and when told that they were useful in a garden because they would eat the snails and slugs, we believed our informant, and hailed with gratitude the arrival of two fresh hedgehogs. They were named Paul and Virginia, and were shut up in the summer-house, with the idea that when they had become well accustomed to that as their place of abode, they might not run away when allowed to go loose in the garden. But there must be some mistake about their fondness for snails and slugs. I took one to Paul (or Virginia, I am not sure which) one day; and, after some hesitation, he slowly ate it; but presently threw it out of his mouth. It didn’t seem encouraging when you remember that they were expected to help to clear the garden of such pests. However, Paul and Virginia were allowed, when supposed to be sufficiently at home, to take their walks abroad, and then they also disappeared, nor have I ever seen either of the queer creatures since.

HOW PAT DELANEY PAID HIS RENT.

I was born in County Blank, Ireland, educated in Dublin, and chose for profession—if profession it may be called—that of a tea-planter; but times were bad, health failed me, and after ten years spent in Assam, I returned to England with the intention of remaining, should a suitable appointment be procurable. No one knows, however, till he tries how difficult it is to find suitable employment on returning after a lapse of years to one’s old haunts; the true reason of it being that there is too large a proportion of the _genus homo_ collected together in this corner of the globe. My parents had died during my absence, and their property had passed into the hands of an elder brother with whom I was not on good terms, so I did not revisit the old place. Hearing, however, that my uncle, Sir Toby O’Bride, who owned considerable estates in another county, was having some trouble with his tenants, I thought I would cross over and see him.

My respected relative was in the act of shutting up house and beating a hasty retreat from the country. No rents had been forthcoming for some time, so he had lately changed his agent. The new one succeeded in bringing a few of the tenants to their senses and the rents to Sir Toby’s pocket, but two nights previous to my arrival the unfortunate man was shot when returning home through the park, after dining with Sir Toby. The police had some _suspects_ in charge; but as it proved, they had no hand in the affair, and the guilt was never brought home to the real perpetrator.

‘I don’t know,’ said my uncle, ‘what is to be done, but at present I intend going away for a time. They will shoot at me next, if I remain. This shocking affair has quite unnerved me.’ My uncle did indeed look shaken and ill.

‘I have a plan,’ said I, ‘if I may suggest it? Let me take the agent’s place, and see if I can improve matters. The people all know me more or less, and if any of them try to make holes in me, they will find me well prepared to retaliate. I mean this seriously, uncle. I am an idle man at present, and will be more than pleased if you let me have my way.’

He pooh-poohed my proposition at first, declaring it was simply suicidal to attempt such a thing; but he finally consented, and I was installed in the agent’s cosy cottage at a salary of four hundred pounds per annum. The first step was to purchase ostentatiously a pair of six-chambered revolvers, and erecting a target in the garden, I peppered away at it. Whenever any one came to my office, I took occasion to show what an excellent shot I was. The office window stood high from the ground, and was furnished with iron bars and a grating like that of a prison cell. When the tenantry came to pay their rent, they found me seated at the table with one of my faithful beauties on each side of me, and it was well known that I never left the house without them.

Whether it was owing to my knowledge of the character of the people with whom I had to deal, or whether it was their knowledge that I liked them sincerely, but knew them too well to be ‘done’ by them or to fear their threats, I cannot say; whichever way it was, no attempt was made on my life, and a larger proportion of the rents due passed through my hands in the course of the year than had through those of the agents for some time previously. Of course, there were some tenants who could not or would not pay their rent. Stories of bad harvests, cattle dying, pigs getting measles, and starving families at home, came eloquently from the glib tongues of the delinquents. Sometimes true, more or less, generally less, for there was very little bad land on the estate. Foremost amongst the last-named section was one named Delaney. He held a good farm, which had been tenanted for generations back by Delaneys, who had been counted good tenants in their day; but this Pat came under the influence of agitators, who perverted his ideas of honesty.

Pat Delaney was among the first to refuse to pay his rent, and the aggravating part of it was that I felt sure he had the money. He was the best judge of horses in the country-side, and attended all the fairs, doing a good deal of cattle-dealing in a quiet way, so that in spite of bad seasons, he was counted a well-to-do man among his fellows. But on rent-day not a shilling was forthcoming. The old story—failure of the potato crop, bad harvest, wife sick, a lot of mouths to fill, and ‘Wouldn’t I put in a word for him with the masther? Shure, the kind ould masther wouldn’t be hard on a poor man. He would pay up next rent-day for sartain.’

‘No, Pat,’ said I. ‘This is the second time you have brought me that story. You are far behindhand with your rent; and if you don’t pay up now, out you must go. The land is good and the rent low. If you can’t make it pay, we must find another tenant who will. It goes against my heart to turn you out, for Delaneys have been on the place for three generations now; and I am sure you _can_ pay, if you like. The Delaneys were never paupers before.’

Glancing sharply at him, I saw a flicker of indecision pass over his countenance, and his hand fidgeted with the edge of his jacket; but in a moment the former expression of doggedness came over his face like a cloud; he straightened himself, and said insolently: ‘Shure an’ wouldn’t I pay if I could? It isn’t dishonest ye’re thinkin’ I am?’

An idea struck me. Changing my tone, I remarked indifferently: ‘O no; the Delaneys were always honest. But if the money is not forthcoming, out you must go, and there’s an end of the matter.’

Gathering up the books, I returned them to the safe, locked it, and taking my hat, I turned to my companion and began confidentially: ‘I want to ask your opinion about something, Pat. They tell me you are a good judge of a nag; I want you to tell me what you think of one I have in the stable just now.’

At the word ‘nag,’ Pat was all attention.

‘She’s a beauty, and, I imagine, should fetch a good deal. She belongs to a friend of mine, who is hard up, and asked me if I could sell her for him, which will be easily done; but I want your opinion of her. There are two or three offers for her already. She was bought, I know, for one hundred and twenty pounds; but that is a little time ago; and my friend would take sixty pounds for her now, or even forty pounds, down.’

Pat’s eyes scintillated, and I saw his hand tremble with eagerness. By this time we had reached the stable where Black Bess, my beautiful hunter, stood. She had arrived a week before, a gift from my uncle, Sir Toby, and she looked her hundred and twenty guineas every inch, the beauty!

‘Cheap at forty pounds, eh, Pat? Look at her points, man. I wish I could buy her myself.’

‘She’s a purty crayture, sor,’ ejaculated Pat as he went over her points with keen appreciation. Looking at her teeth, patting the glossy, arched neck, and finally passing his hand down each leg, he raised his head, and said in a sheepish sort of way: ‘She’s worth her forty pounds, sor.’

‘Yes, I know that. Now, I thought you might know of some one wanting a horse. Perhaps one of your friends might like to deal; but I must have cash down.’

‘I know ov one man who moight take him, sor.’

‘Do you? Well, I’d be glad if you’d send him to me to-morrow; and if the mare is still here, he may have her; but he must take his chance, mind you. I have several offers, and “first come first served” is the rule for this business. Sir Thomas Clarke has an eye on her, and would probably give sixty pounds if I hung on a bit; but my friend wants the money at once. Emerson of Bogside was here this morning, and liked the looks of her; said he might look back in the afternoon and close the bargain; so your friend must take his chance.’

‘Shure, sor, and ye moight jest keep her till me frind sees her to-morrow. He’s sartain shure to take her, and cash down on the spot.’ Pat was most persuasive, and I saw by the gleam in his eye that he was safe on my hook. He knew as well as I did that he had only to take her to the first fair and he would get seventy or eighty pounds for her, if not more.

‘No, no. A bargain is a bargain. I told Emerson that it would be a case of first come first served. If Black Bess is here to-morrow, your friend can have her, and welcome; but I cannot keep her for any one.’

A heavy footstep tramped up the garden path, and we heard a loud voice asking for me.

‘Why, that must be Emerson back already!—Good-day, Pat; I don’t think I need ask you to trouble your friend, after all.’