University of Virginia Library

64. LXIV.

THE Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned,
and, as the times go, well officered. The captain,
indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for high emergencies;
but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage?
For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel
have sunk under the eastern horizon, the vessel is kept
every day upon her course, — her top-gallant and studding
sails all distent with the wind blowing freely from
over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly
breezes, with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is
overclouded by the drifting trade-mists. Zigzagging
on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz and flapping
canvas of the ship “in stays,” the good Meteor
pushes gradually westward.

Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy
grew up between Reuben and the lady voyager. It is
always agreeable to a young man to find a listening ear
in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any
flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly
welcome to his confidence. All that early life of his
he detailed to her with a particularity and a warmth

(himself unconscious of the warmth) which brought
the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the
mind of poor Madame Maverick. No wonder that she
gave a willing ear! no wonder that the glow of his language
kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a listener
does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds
his city career, and the bright promises that are
before him, — promises of business success, which (he
would make it appear) are all that fill his heart now.
In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent
himself as blasé in sentiment.

Madame Maverick has been taught, in these latter
years, a large amount of self-control; so she can listen
with a grave, nay, even a kindly face, to Reuben's sweeping
declarations. And if, at a hint from her, — which
he shrewdly counts Jesuitical, — his thought is turned
in the direction of his religious experiences, he has his
axioms, his common-sense formulas, his irreproachable
coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust, under
which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends
of that great tangled skein of thought within, which is
a weariness.

“If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!”
says Madame Maverick with half a sigh.

“I should like that of all things,” says Reuben, with
a touch of merriment. “I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow,
with rosy cheeks and full of humor. By Jove!

there go the beads again!” (He says this latter to
himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the
poor lady plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring
some catch of a prayer.)

Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly,
wondering how it can have grown up under the heathenisms
of her life; wondering perhaps, too, how his
own heathenism could have grown up under the roof
of a parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks,
for this woman, with the people of Ashfield, with the
Doctor, with Adèle.

There are gales, but the good ship rides them out
jauntily, with but a single reef in her topsails. Within
five weeks from the date of her leaving Marseilles she
is within a few days' sail of New York. A few days'
sail! It may mean over-much; for there are mists and
hazy weather, which forbid any observation. The last
was taken a hundred miles to the eastward of George's
Shoal. Under an easy off-shore wind the ship is beating
westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is
no opportunity for determining position. At last, one
evening, there is a little lift, and, for a moment only, a
bright light blazes over the starboard bow. The captain
counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the
Jersey shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing
in the eye of an easy westerly breeze) to give her a
couple of points more “northing;” and the yards and

sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on
more steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists
and coming night conceal all around them.

“What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?”
says the captain, addressing the mate.

“Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it
should be Fire Island, we 're in a bad course, sir.”

“That 's true enough,” said the captain, thoughtfully.
“Put a man in the chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us
the water.”

“I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain,”
said Reuben, who stood smoking leisurely near the
wheel. But the captain was preoccupied, and answered
nothing.

A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting
full and loud, “By the mark — nine!”

“This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley,” said the captain,
“Jersey shore or any other. Let all hands keep by to
put the ship about.”

A voice forward was heard to say something of a
roar that sounded like the beat of surf; at which the
mate stepped to the side of the ship and listened anxiously.

“It 's true, sir,” said he, coming aft. “Captain,
there 's something very like the beat of surf, here away
to the no'th'ard.”

A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention.

“It 's the wind slacking; there 's a bare capful,” said
the mate, “and I 'm afeard there 's mischief brewing
yonder.” He pointed as he spoke a little to the south
of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to
a luminous gray cloud of mist.

“And a half — six!” shouts again the man in the
chains.

The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays
clearly enough his anxiety. “There 's not a moment
to lose, Yardley; see all ready there! Keep her
a good full, my boy!” (to the man at the wheel.)

The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little
startled by the new aspect of affairs, still kept his place
upon the quarter-deck. He saw objects flitting across
the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils
flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There
was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures,
in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas
above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray streaming
away from either bow.

“Are you ready there?” says the captain.

“Ay, ay, sir,” responds the mate.

“Put your helm a-lee, my man! — Hard down!”

“Hard down it is, sir!”

The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain
shouts his order, “Mainsail haul!” the canvas
shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon its bearings;

there is a great whizzing of the cordage through
the blocks; but, in the midst of it all, — coming keenly
to the captain's ear, — a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims,
“By G—, she touches!”

The next moment proved it true. The good ship
minded her helm no more. The fore-yards are brought
round by the run and the mizzen, but the light wind —
growing lighter — hardly clears the flapping canvas
from the spars.

In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would
seem little; in so little depth of water they might warp
her off; but the darkness magnifies the danger; besides
which, an ominous sighing and murmur are coming
from that luminous misty mass to the southward.
Through all this, Reuben has continued smoking upon
the quarter-deck; a landsman under a light wind, and
with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth
such intimations as had been given of the near breaking
of the surf, and of the shoaling water. Even the
touch upon bottom, of which the grating evidence had
come home to his own perceptions, brought up more
the fate of his business venture than any sense of personal
peril. We can surely warp her off in the morning,
he thought; or, if the worst came, insurance was
full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.

“It 's lucky there 's no wind,” said he to Yardley.

“Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good

strong puff of your cigar, — here, upon the larboard
rail, sir,” and he took the lantern from the companion-way
that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a
moment it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished
away — shoreward. The first angry puffs of the southeaster
were coming.

The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice
said, “Mr. Yardley, clew up, fore and aft, — clew up
every thing; put all snug, and make ready the best
bower.”

“Mr. Johns,” said he, approaching Reuben, “we are
on a lee shore; it should be Long Island beach by the
soundings; with calm weather, and a kedge, we might
work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil
and all is in that puff from the sou'east.”

“Oh, well, we can anchor,” says Reuben.

“Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter
turns out the gale it promises, the best anchor
aboard won't be so good as a gridiron.”

“Do you advise taking to the boats, then?” asked
Reuben, a little nervously.

“I advise nothing. Mr. Johns. Do you hear the
murmur of the surf yonder? It 's bad landing under
such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in the dark,
where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might
be — hell!”

The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had

always contemplated death at a distance, toward which
easy and gradual approaches might be made: but here
it was, now, at a cable's length!

And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high;
no gale as yet; only an occasional grating thump of the
keel was a reminder that the good Meteor was not still
afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was
complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were
aloft — as in the sunniest of weather — stowing the
canvas,) and to the northward that groan and echo of
the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling
white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent
foam.

The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring
the ship's head to the wind. Those griping sands hold
her keel fast. The force of the rising gale strikes her
full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It is in
vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free;
the hulk lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands.
Every old seaman upon her deck knows that she is a
doomed ship.

From time to time, as the crashing spars or the
leaden thump upon the sands have startled those below,
Madame Maverick and her maid have made their appearance,
in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager
questions; (Reuben alone can understand them or answer
them;) but as the southeaster grows, as it does,

into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk reels vainly, and
is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madame
Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the
worst.

“Could I only clasp Adèle once more in these arms,
I would say, cheerfully, `Nunc dimittis.'”

Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness.
Not, indeed, that calmness was lacking in himself.
Great danger, in many instances, sublimates the
faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his
calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose, —
the repose of a fixed belief. If even then the breaking
waves had whelmed him in their mad career, he would
have made no wailing outcry, but would have clutched
— how eagerly! — at the merest shred of that faith
which, in other days and times, he had seen illuminate
the calm face of the father. Something to believe, —
on which to float upon such a sea!

But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs.
Prayers count nothing against that angry surge. Two
boats are already swept from the davits, and are gone
upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains,
is dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives
the orders. But, once afloat, there is a rush upon it,
and away it goes, — overcrowded, and within eyeshot
lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a moment,
— one with an oar, another with a thwart that

the waves have torn out, — and in the yeast of waters
they vanish.

One boat only remains, and it is launched with more
careful handling; three cling by the wreck; the rest
— save only Madame Maverick and Reuben — are
within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.

“There 's room!” cries some one; “jump quick!
for God's sake!”

And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse,
seizes upon Madame Maverick, and, before she can
rebel or resist, has dropped her over the rail. The
men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next
moment the little cockle of a boat is drifted yards
away.

The few who are left — the boatswain among them
— are toiling on the wet deck to give a last signal from
the little brass howitzer on the forecastle. As the
sharp crack breaks on the air, — a miniature sound in
that howl of the storm, — the red flash of the gun gives
Reuben, as the boat lurches toward the wreck again, a
last glance of Madame Maverick, — her hands clasped,
her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More than ever too
her face was like the face of Adèle, — such as the face
of Adèle must surely become, when years have sobered
her and her buoyant faith has ripened into calm. And
from that momentary glance of the serene countenance,
and that flashing associated memory of Adèle, a subtile,

mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly
transfused with the same trustful serenity which
just now he gazed upon with wonder. If indeed the
poor lady is already lost, — he thinks it for a moment,
— her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed.
Once more, as if some mysterious hand had brought
them to his reach, he grapples with those lost lines of
hope and trust which in that youthful year of his exuberant
emotional experience he had held and lost, —
once more, now, in hand, — once more he is elated
with that wonderful sense of a religious poise, that, it
would seem, no doubts or terrors could overbalance.
Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt
into a kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to
danger, to death.

The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It
must be from shore. There are helpers at work, then.
Some hope yet for this narrow tide of life, which just
seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond.
Life is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward
labors desperately to return an answering signal; but
the spray, the slanted deck, the overleaping waves, are
too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair
rule again.

The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale
is broken; but the waves are making deeper and more
desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained

fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the
great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew
upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe
and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack
and burst open with the strain.

Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy
lashed to the taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes
himself fast to it. He overhears the boatswain say,
yonder by the forecastle, “These thumpings will break
her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack.”

The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a
dim line of shore, on which parties are moving, dragging
some machine, with which they hope to cast a line
over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever,
the timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid
light from the dim shore-line, — a great boom of
sound, and a line goes spinning out like a spider's web
up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and
the line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and
fearful lift of the sea shatters the wreck, the fore part
of the ship still holding fast to the sands; but all abaft
the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over; with the
wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters,
Reuben goes down.