Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3. Blackmore Richard Doddridge
to the south–west gradually, blowing harder until it got there. The sea was not very heavy yet, when they went out to look at it; the rain had ceased altogether; there was not air enough to move the fur of a ladyʼs boa; but, out beyond the Atlantic offing, ridges like edges of knives were jumping, as if to look over the sky–line.
“Nulla in prospectu navis,” said John Rosedew, who always talked Latin, as a matter of course, when he met an Oxford man; “at least, so far as I can see with the aid of my long–rangers.”
“No,” replied Pell, “and Iʼm heartily glad that there is no ship in sight; for, unless Iʼm much mistaken – run, sir, run like lightning. Iʼve got no more dry clothes.”
They ran for it, and were just in time before the fury came down again. Bob Garnet was ready to slip away, for he knew that his father would be wild about him; he had taken his drenched hat from the firetongs, and was tugging at the latch of the door. But now there was no help for it.
“We are in for it now,” cried Mr. Rosedew; “I have not come down for nothing. It is, what I feared this morning, the heaviest storm that has broken upon us for at least a generation. And we are not yet in the worst of it. God grant there be no unfortunate ship making for the Needles. All our boats, you say, Pell, are in the Solent long ago. Bob, my boy, you must not expect to see your father to–night. I hope he will guess what has happened.”
The beach, or pebble bank of Hurst, is a long and narrow spit of land, growing narrower every year, which forms a natural breakwater to the frith of the Solent. It curves away to the south of east from the straighter and more lofty coast of Barton, Hordle, and Rushford. Hurst Castle, in which it terminates, is the eastern horn of Christchurch Bay, as Hengistbury Head is the western. The Isle of Wight and the Needle Rocks protect this bay from the east windʼs power, but a due south wind brings in the sea, and a south–west the Atlantic. Off this coast we see at times those strange floating or rising islands known by the name of the “Shingles;” which sometimes stay above water so long, that their surface is clad with the tender green of bladderwort and samphire; but more often they disappear after taking the air for a few short hours. For several years now they have taken no air; and a boatman told me the other day, that, from the rapid strides of the sea, he thought it impossible for the “Shingles” ever to top the waves again.
Up and down the Solent channel the tide pours at a furious speed; and the rush of the strong ebb down the narrows, flushed with the cross–tide from St. Helenʼs, combs and pants out into Christchurch Bay, above the floodmark of two hours since. This great eddy, or reflux, is called the “double–tide;” and an awkward power it has for any poor vessel to fall into.
All that night it blew and blew, harder and harder yet; the fishermenʼs boats on the beach were caught up, and flung against the gravel–cliff; the stout men, if they ventured out, were snatched up as a mother snatches a child from the wheels of a carriage; the oaks of the wood, after wailing and howling, as they had done to a thousand tempests, found that outcry go for nothing, and with it went themselves. Seven hundred towers of Natureʼs building showed their roots to the morning. The old moon expired at O·32; and many a gap the new moon found, where its mother threw playful shadows. The sons of Ytene are not swift–witted, nor deeply read in the calendar; yet they are apt to mark and heed the great convulsions of nature. The old men used to date their weddings from the terrible winter of 1787; the landmark of the young menʼs annals is the storm of 1859.
All that night, young Robert Garnet was strung by some strange tension. Of course he could not sleep, amid that fearful uproar, although he was plunged and lost from sight in Octavius Pellʼs great chair. The only luxury Pell possessed – and that somehow by accident – was a deep, and soft, and mighty chair, big enough for three people. After one of the windows came in, which it did, with a crash, about ten oʼclock, scattering Pellʼs tobacco–jars, and after they had made it good with books and boxes and a rug, so that the wind was filtered through it, John Rosedew and his curate sat on a couple of hard old Windsors, watching the castle of Hurst. Thence would come the signal flash, if any hapless bark should be seen driving over the waters. There they sat, John Rosedew talking, as he could talk to a younger man, when his great heart was moved to its depth, and the multitude of his mind in march, and his soul anticipating it: talking so that Octave Pell, following his silver tones, even through that turmoil, utterly forgot the tempest, and the lapse of hours, and let fall on his lap the pipe, which John had made him smoke.
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