The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter. Hazel Gaynor
sighs, his hands dropping back onto the eiderdown. “Then it’s of no use, Grace. I will be shipwrecked myself if I attempt to set out in those seas. Even if I could get to Harker’s Rock I would never be able to row back against the turn of the tide. I wouldn’t make it across Craford’s Gut with the wind against me.”
Of course he is right. Even as I’d rushed to him, I’d heard him speak those very words.
I grasp his hands in mine and sink to my knees at the side of his bed. “But if we both rowed, Father? If I came with you, we could manage it, couldn’t we? We can take the longer route to avail of the shelter from the islands. Those we rescue can assist in rowing back, if they’re able.” I press all my determination into my voice, into my eyes, into his hands. “Come to the window to assure me I’m not imagining things.” I pull on his hands to help him up, passing him the telescope as another strong gust rattles the shutters, sending the rafters creaking above our heads.
My assumptions are quickly confirmed. A small group of human forms can now clearly be seen at the base of the rock, the battered remains of their vessel balanced precariously between them and the violent sea. “Do you see?” I ask.
“Yes, Grace. I see.”
I place my hand on Father’s arm as he folds the telescope and rests his palms against the windowsill. “The North Sunderland lifeboat won’t be able to put out in those seas,” I say, reading his thoughts. “We are their last hope of being rescued. And the Lord will protect us,” I add, as much to reassure myself as my father.
He understands that I am responding to the instinct to help, an instinct that has been instilled in me since I was a child on his knee, listening to accounts of lost fishing vessels and the brave men who rescued the survivors. I feel the drop of his shoulders and know my exertions have prevailed.
“Very well,” he says. “We will make an attempt. Just one, mind. If we can’t reach them …”
“I understand. But we must hurry.”
The decision made, all is action and purpose. We dress quickly and rush to the boathouse. The wind snatches my breath away, almost blowing me sideways as I step outside, my hair whipping wildly about my face. I falter for a moment, wishing my brother were here to help, but he isn’t. We must do this alone, Father and I, or not at all.
Mam helps to launch the boat, each of us taking our role in the procedure as we have done many times before. Words are useless, tossed aside by the wind, so that nobody quite knows what question was asked, or what reply given. I struggle to stand upright against the incessant gusts.
Finally, the boat is in the water. Stepping in, I pick up an oar and sit down.
“Grace! What are you doing?” Mam turns to my father. “William! She can’t go. This is madness.”
“He can’t go alone, Mam,” I shout. “I’m going with him.”
Father steps into the boat beside me. “She is like this storm, Thomasin. She won’t be silenced ’til she’s said her piece. I’ll take care of her.”
I urge Mam not to worry. “Prepare dry clothes and blankets. And have hot drinks ready.”
She nods her understanding and begins to untie the ropes that secure us to the landing wall, her fingers fumbling in the wet and the cold. She says something as we push away, but I can’t hear her above the wind. The storm and the sea are the only ones left to converse with now.
Once beyond the immediate shelter afforded by the base of Longstone Island, it becomes immediately apparent that the sea conditions are far worse than we’d imagined. The swell carries us high one moment before plunging us down into a deep trough the next, a wall of water surrounding us on either side. We are entirely at the mercy of the elements.
Father calls out to me, shouting above the wind, to explain that we will take a route through Craford’s Gut, the channel which separates Longstone Island from Blue Caps. I nod my understanding, locking eyes with him as we both pull hard against the oars. I draw courage from the light cast upon the water by Longstone’s lamps as Father instructs me to pull to the left or the right, keeping us on course around the lee side of the little knot of islands that offer a brief respite from the worst of the wind. As we round the spur of the last island and head out again into the open seas, Father looks at me with real fear in his eyes. Our little coble, just twenty-one foot by six inches, is all we have to protect us. In such wild seas, we know it isn’t nearly protection enough.
Harker’s Rock, Outer Farnes. 7th September, 1838
LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT. Dark.
In the thick black that surrounds her, the beam of light in the distance is especially bright to Sarah Dawson. Every thirty seconds it turns its pale eye on the figures huddled on the rock. Sarah fixes her gaze on its source: a lighthouse. A warning light to stay away. Her only hope of rescue.
Her body convulses violently, as if she is no longer part of it. Only her arms, which grasp James and Matilda tight against her chest, seem to belong to her. She doesn’t know how long it is since the ship went down—moments? hours?—too exhausted and numb to notice anything apart from the shape of her children’s stiff little bodies against hers and the relentless screech of the wind. Behind her, the wrecked bow of the Forfarshire cracks and groans as it smashes against the rocks, breaking up like tinder beneath the force of the waves, the masthead looming from the swell like a sea monster from an old mariner’s tale. The other half of the steamer is gone, taking everyone and everything down with it. She thinks of George waiting for her in Dundee. She thinks of his letter in her pocket, his sketches of lighthouses. She stares at the flashing light in the distance. Why does nobody come?
A man beside Sarah moans. It is a sound like nothing she has ever heard. His leg is badly injured and she knows she should help him, but she can’t leave her children. The desperate groans of other survivors clinging to the slippery rock beside her mingle with the rip and roar of the wind and waves. She wishes they would all be quiet. If only they would be quiet.
The storm rages on.
The rain beats relentlessly against Sarah’s head, like small painful stones. Rocking James and Matilda in her arms, she shelters them from the worst of it, singing to them of lavenders blue and lavenders green. “They’ll be here soon, my loves. Look, the sky is brightening and the herring fleet will be coming in. You remember how the scales look like diamonds among the cobbles. We’ll look for jewels together, when the sun is up.”
Their silence is unbearable.
Unable to suppress her anguish any longer, Sarah tips her head back and screams for help, but all that emerges is a pathetic rasping whisper that melts away into gut-wrenching sobs as another angry wave slams hard against the rock, sweeping the injured man away with it.
Sarah turns her head and wraps her arms tighter around her children, gripping them with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, determined that the sea will not take them from her.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Why does nobody come?
MINUTES COME AND go until time and the sea become inseparable. The light turns tauntingly in the distance. Still nobody comes.
James’s little hand is too stiff and cold in Sarah’s. Matilda’s sweet little face is too still and pale, her hands empty, her beloved rag doll snatched away by the water. Sarah strokes Matilda’s cheek and tells her how sorry she is that she couldn’t tell her how the lighthouse worked.