Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (christmas read aloud .txt) 📕

The functionary answered with a shrug, and turned up the collar of his rough frock, as the first drops flew stinging round his ears. Another minute and the squall burst full upon them, in rain, which cut like hail—hail which lashed the sea into froth, and wind which whirled off the heads of the surges, and swept the waters into one white seething waste. And above them, and behind them and before them, the lightning leapt and ran, dazzling and blinding, while the deep roar of the thunder was changed to sharp ear-piercing cracks.

“Get the arms and ammunition under cover, and then below with you all,” shouted Amyas from the helm.

“And heat the pokers in the galley fire,” said Yeo, “to be ready if the rain puts our linstocks out. I hope you’ll let me stay on deck, sir, in case—”

“I must have some one, and who better than you? Can you see the chase?”

No; she was wrapped in the gray whirlwind. She might be within half a mile of them, for aught they could have seen of her.

And now Amyas and his old liegeman were alone. Neither spoke; each knew the other’s thoughts, and knew that they were his own. The squall blew fiercer and fiercer, the rain poured heavier and heavier. Where was the Spaniard?

“If he has laid-to, we may overshoot him, sir!”

“If he has tried to lay-to, he will not have a sail left in the bolt-ropes, or perhaps a mast on deck. I know the stiffneckedness of those Spanish tubs. Hurrah! there he is, right on our larboard bow!”

There she was indeed, two musket-shots’ off, staggering away with canvas split and flying.

“He has been trying to hull, sir, and caught a buffet,” said Yeo, rubbing his hands. “What shall we do now?”

“Range alongside, if it blow live imps and witches, and try our luck once more. Pah! how this lightning dazzles!”

On they swept, gaining fast on the Spaniard. “Call the men up, and to quarters; the rain will be over in ten minutes.”

Yeo ran forward to the gangway; and sprang back again, with a face white and wild—

“Land right ahead! Port your helm, sir! For the love of God, port your helm!”

Amyas, with the strength of a bull, jammed the helm down, while Yeo shouted to the men below.

She swung round. The masts bent like whips; crack went the foresail like a cannon. What matter? Within two hundred yards of them was the Spaniard; in front of her, and above her, a huge dark bank rose through the dense hail, and mingled with the clouds; and at its foot, plainer every moment, pillars and spouts of leaping foam.

“What is it, Morte? Hartland?”

It might be anything for thirty miles.

“Lundy!” said Yeo. “The south end! I see the head of the Shutter in the breakers! Hard a-port yet, and get her closehauled as you can, and the Lord may have mercy on us still! Look at the Spaniard!”

Yes, look at the Spaniard!

On their left hand, as they broached-to, the wall of granite sloped down from the clouds toward an isolated peak of rock, some two hundred feet in height. Then a hundred yards of roaring breaker upon a sunken shelf, across which the race of the tide poured like a cataract; then, amid a column of salt smoke, the Shutter, like a huge black fang, rose waiting for its prey; and between the Shutter and the land, the great galleon loomed dimly through the storm.

He, too, had seen his danger, and tried to broach-to. But his clumsy mass refused to obey the helm; he struggled a moment, half hid in foam; fell away again, and rushed upon his doom.

“Lost! lost! lost!” cried Amyas madly, and throwing up his hands, let go the tiller. Yeo caught it just in time.

“Sir! sir! What are you at? We shall clear the rock yet.”

“Yes!” shouted Amyas, in his frenzy; “but he will not!”

Another minute. The galleon gave a sudden jar, and stopped. Then one long heave and bound, as if to free herself. And then her bows lighted clean upon the Shutter.

An awful silence fell on every English soul. They heard not the roaring of wind and surge; they saw not the blinding flashes of the lightning; but they heard one long ear-piercing wail to every saint in heaven rise from five hundred human throats; they saw the mighty ship heel over from the wind, and sweep headlong down the cataract of the race, plunging her yards into the foam, and showing her whole black side even to her keel, till she rolled clean over, and vanished for ever and ever.

“Shame!” cried Amyas, hurling his sword far into the sea, “to lose my right, my right! when it was in my very grasp! Unmerciful!”

A crack which rent the sky, and made the granite ring and quiver; a bright world of flame, and then a blank of utter darkness, against which stood out, glowing red-hot every mast, and sail, and rock, and Salvation Yeo as he stood just in front of Amyas, the tiller in his hand. All red-hot, transfigured into fire; and behind, the black, black night.

… … .

A whisper, a rustling close beside him, and Brimblecombe’s voice said softly:

“Give him more wine, Will; his eyes are opening.”

“Hey day?” said Amyas, faintly, “not past the Shutter yet! How long she hangs in the wind!”

“We are long past the Shutter, Sir Amyas,” said Brimblecombe.

“Are you mad? Cannot I trust my own eyes?”

There was no answer for awhile.

“We are past the Shutter, indeed,” said Cary, very gently, “and lying in the cove at Lundy.”

“Will you tell me that that is not the Shutter, and that the Devil’s-limekiln, and that the cliff—that villain Spaniard only gone—and that Yeo is not standing here by me, and Cary there forward, and—why, by the by, where are you, Jack Brimblecombe, who were talking to me this minute?”

“Oh, Sir Amyas Leigh, dear Sir Amyas Leigh, blubbered poor Jack, “put out your hand, and feel where you are, and pray the Lord to forgive you for your wilfulness!”

A great trembling fell upon Amyas Leigh; half fearfully he put out his hand; he felt that he was in his hammock, with the deck beams close above his head. The vision which had been left upon his eyeballs vanished like a dream.

“What is this? I must be asleep? What has happened? Where am I?”

“In your cabin, Amyas,” said Cary.

“What? And where is Yeo?”

“Yeo is gone where he longed to go, and as he longed to go. The same flash which struck you down, struck him dead.”

“Dead? Lightning? Any more hurt? I must go and see. Why, what is this?” and Amyas passed his hand across his eyes. “It is all dark—dark, as I live!” And he passed his hand over his eyes again.

There was another dead silence. Amyas broke it.

“Oh, God!” shrieked the great proud sea-captain, “Oh, God, I am blind! blind! blind!” And writhing in his great horror, he called to Cary to kill him and put him out of his misery, and then wailed for his mother to come and help him, as if he had been a boy once more; while Brimblecombe and Cary, and the sailors who crowded round the cabin-door, wept as if they too had been boys once more.

Soon his fit of frenzy passed off, and he sank back exhausted.

They lifted him into their remaining boat, rowed him ashore, carried him painfully up the hill to the old castle, and made a bed for him on the floor, in the very room in which Don Guzman and Rose Salterne had plighted their troth to each other, five wild years before.

Three miserable days were passed within that lonely tower. Amyas, utterly unnerved by the horror of his misfortune, and by the over-excitement of the last few weeks, was incessantly delirious; while Cary, and Brimblecombe, and the men nursed him by turns, as sailors and wives only can nurse; and listened with awe to his piteous self-reproaches and entreaties to Heaven to remove that woe, which, as he shrieked again and again, was a just judgment on him for his wilfulness and ferocity. The surgeon talked, of course, learnedly about melancholic humors, and his liver’s being “adust by the over-pungency of the animal spirits,” and then fell back on the universal panacea of blood-letting, which he effected with fear and trembling during a short interval of prostration; encouraged by which he attempted to administer a large bolus of aloes, was knocked down for his pains, and then thought it better to leave Nature to her own work. In the meanwhile, Cary had sent off one of the island skiffs to Clovelly, with letters to his father, and to Mrs. Leigh, entreating the latter to come off to the island: but the heavy westerly winds made that as impossible as it was to move Amyas on board, and the men had to do their best, and did it well enough.

On the fourth day his raving ceased: but he was still too weak to be moved. Toward noon, however, he called for food, ate a little, and seemed revived.

“Will,” he said, after awhile, “this room is as stifling as it is dark. I feel as if I should be a sound man once more if I could but get one snuff of the sea-breeze.”

The surgeon shook his head at the notion of moving him: but Amyas was peremptory.

“I am captain still, Tom Surgeon, and will sail for the Indies, if I choose. Will Cary, Jack Brimblecombe, will you obey a blind general?”

“What you will in reason,” said they both at once.

“Then lead me out, my masters, and over the down to the south end. To the point at the south end I must go; there is no other place will suit.”

And he rose firmly to his feet, and held out his hands for theirs.

“Let him have his humor,” whispered Cary. “It may be the working off of his madness.”

“This sudden strength is a note of fresh fever, Mr. Lieutenant,” said the surgeon, “and the rules of the art prescribe rather a fresh blood-letting.”

Amyas overheard the last word, and broke out:

“Thou pig-sticking Philistine, wilt thou make sport with blind Samson? Come near me to let blood from my arm, and see if I do not let blood from thy coxcomb. Catch him, Will, and bring him me here!”

The surgeon vanished as the blind giant made a step forward; and they set forth, Amyas walking slowly, but firmly, between his two friends.

“Whither?” asked Cary.

“To the south end. The crag above the Devil’s-limekiln. No other place will suit.”

Jack gave a murmur, and half-stopped, as a frightful suspicion crossed him.

“That is a dangerous place!”

“What of that?” said Amyas, who caught his meaning in his tone. “Dost think I am going to leap over cliff? I have not heart enough for that. On, lads, and set me safe among the rocks.”

So slowly, and painfully, they went on, while Amyas murmured to himself:

“No, no other place will suit; I can see all thence.”

So on they went to the point, where the cyclopean wall of granite cliff which forms the western side of Lundy, ends sheer in a precipice of some three hundred feet, topped by a pile of snow-white rock, bespangled with golden lichens. As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost stone, black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sank down the abysses of the cliff, as if he scented the corpses underneath