The Bondman: A New Saga. Hall Sir Caine
air had freshened, the swell of the sea had risen, and a sharp breeze was coming up from the east. Stephen Orry stepped to his mast, hoisted mainsail and mizzen, and stood out to sea. He had scarcely got clear away when he heard the brig weigh its anchor and beat down behind him. They were making towards the Point of Ayre, and when they came by the light Stephen Orry slackened off, and watched the ship go by him in the darkness.
He felt as if that were the last he was ever to see of his son in this world. And he loved him with all the strength of his great broken, bleeding heart. At that thought the outcast man laid his head in his hands, where he sat crouching at the tiller, and sobbed. There were none to hear him there; he was alone; and the low moan of the sea came up through the night from where his son was sailing away.
How long he sat there he did not know; he was thinking of his past, of his bad life in Iceland, and his long expiation in the Isle of Man. In the multitude of his sensations it seemed impossible to his dazed mind to know which of these two had been the worst, or the most foolish. Together they had left him a wreck. In the one he had thrown away the wife who loved him, in the other he had given up the son whom he loved. What was left to him? Nothing. He was a waif, despised and downtrodden. He thought of what might have happened to him if the chances of life had been different, and in that first hour of his last bereavement all the softening influences of nineteen years, the uplooking and upworking, and the struggle towards atonement, were as much gone from him as if they had never been. Then he thought of the money, and told himself that it was not now that he lost his son for the first time; he had lost him fourteen years ago, when he parted with him to the Governor. Since then their relations had been reversed. His little Sunlocks was his little Sunlocks no longer. He felt humiliated, he felt hardened, and by a strange impulse, whereof he understood but little, he cursed in his heart his sufferings more than his sins. They had been useless, they had been wasted, and he had been a fool not to live for himself. But in that moment, when the devil seemed to make havoc of good and evil together, God himself was not doing nothing.
Stephen Orry was drifting with the tide, when all at once he became conscious of the lapping of the water on stones near at hand, and of a bright light shed over the sea. Then he saw that he had drifted close to low ground off the Point of Ayre. He bore hard aport and beat out to sea again. Very soon the white water way was behind him; nothing was visible save the dark hull of the vessel going off towards the north, and nothing audible save the cry of a few gulls that were fishing by the light of the flare. It had been the work of three minutes only, but in that time one vivid impression had fixed itself on Stephen's preoccupied mind. The end of the old sandstone pier had been battered down by a recent storm; the box that once held the light had gone down with it, a pole had been thrust out at an angle from the overthrown stones, and from the end of this pole the light swung by a rope. No idea connected itself with this impression, which lay low down behind other thoughts.
The fog had lifted, but the night was still very dark. Not a star was shining and no moon appeared. Yet Stephen's eye – the eye of a sailor accustomed to the darkness of the sea at night – could descry something that lay to the north. The Irish brig had disappeared. Yes, her sails were now gone. But out at sea – far out, half a league away – what black thing was there? Oh, it must be a cloud, that was all; and no doubt a storm was brewing. Yet no, it was looming larger and larger, and coming nearer and nearer. It was a sail. Stephen could see it plainly enough now against the leaden sky. It was a schooner; he could make out its two masts, with fore and aft sails. It was an Irish schooner; he could recognize its heavy hull and hollowed cutwater. It was tacking against wind and tide from the northeast; it was a Dublin schooner and was homeward bound from Iceland, having called at Whitehaven and now putting in at Ramsey.
Stephen Orry had been in the act of putting about when this object caught his eye, but now a strange thing occurred. All at once his late troubles lay back in his mind, and by a sort of unconscious mechanical habit of intellect he began to put familiar ideas together. This schooner that was coming from Iceland would be heavy laden; it would have whalebone, and eider down, and tallow. If it ran ashore and was wrecked some of this cargo might be taken by some one and sold for something to a French smuggler that lay outside the Chicken Rocks. That flare on the Point of Ayre was the only sea-light on this north coast of the island, and it hung by a rope from a pole. The land lay low about it, there was not a house on that sandy headland for miles on miles, and the night was very dark. All this came up to Stephen Orry's mind by no effort of will; he looked out of his dull eyes on the dull stretch of sea and sky, and the thoughts were there of themselves.
What power outside himself was at work with him? Did anything tell him that this was the great moment of his life – that his destiny hung on it – that the ordeal he had just gone through was as nothing to the ordeal that was yet before him? As he sat in his boat, peering into the darkness at the black shadow on the horizon, did any voice whisper in his ear: – "Stephen Orry, on the ship that is yonder there is one who hates you and has sworn to slay you? He is coming, he is coming, and he is flesh of your flesh? He is your own son, and Rachel's!"
Stephen Orry fetched his boat away to leeward, and in two minutes more he had run down the light on the Point of Ayre. The light fell into the water, and then all was dark. Stephen Orry steered on over the freshening sea, and then slackened off to wait and watch. All this time he had been sitting at the tiller, never having risen from it since he stepped his mast by the side of the brig. Now he got on his feet to shorten sail, for the wind was rising and he meant to drift by the mizzen. As he rose something fell with a clank to the boat's bottom from his lap or his pocket. It was the bag of money, which Michael Sunlocks had returned to him.
Stephen Orry stooped down to pick it up; and having it in his hand he dropped back like a man who has been dealt a blow. Then, indeed, a voice rang in his ears; he could hear it over the wind that was rising, the plash of the white breakers on the beach, and the low boom of the deep sea outside. "Remember your promise, father. I have bought every hour of your life that's left."
His heart seemed to stand still. He looked around in the dull agony of a fear that was new to him, turning his eyes first to the headland that showed faintly against the heavy sky, then to the pier where no light now shone, and then to the black cloud of sail that grew larger every instant. One minute passed – two – three. Meantime the black cloud of sail was drawing closer. There were living men aboard of that ship, and they were running on to their death. Yes, they were men, living men – men with wives who loved them, and children who climbed to their knees. But perhaps they had seen the light when it went down. Merciful heaven, let it be so – let it be so!
The soul of Stephen Orry was awake at length. Another minute he waited, another and another, and the black shadow came yet nearer. At her next tack the ship would run on the land, and already Stephen seemed to hear the grating of her keel over the rocks below the beach. He could bear the suspense no longer, and hoisted sail to bear down on the schooner and warn her. But the wind was strong by this time, driving hard off the sea and the tide ran faster than before.
Stephen Orry was now some thirty fathoms space to the north of the broken pier, and at that point the current from across Maughold Head meets the current going across the Mull of Galloway. Laboring in the heavy sea he could barely fetch about, but when at last he got head out to sea he began to drive down on the schooner at a furious speed. He tried to run close along by her on the weather side, but before he came within a hundred fathoms he saw that he was in the full race of the north current, and strong seaman though he was, he could not get near. Then he shouted, but the wind carried away his voice. He shouted again, but the schooner gave no sign. In the darkness the dark vessel scudded past him.
He was now like a man possessed. Fetching about he ran in before the wind, thinking to pass the schooner on her tack. He passed her indeed: he was shot far beyond her, shouting as he went, but again his voice was drowned in the roar of the sea. He was almost atop of the breakers now, yet he fetched about once more, and shouted again and again and again. But the ship came on and on, and no one heard the wild voice, that rang out between the dark sea and sky like the cry of a strong swimmer in his last agony.
CHAPTER IX.
The Coming of Jason
The schooner was the Peveril, homeward bound from Reykjavik to Dublin, with a hundred tons