Read Ebook: Alone on a Wide Wide Sea Vol. 1 (of 3) by Russell William Clark

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Ebook has 721 lines and 48054 words, and 15 pages

What with having to change here, and to get out there, and to wait somewhere else, the journey was a tedious one, and when we arrived it was raining hard and blowing very strong, and I remember as we drove from the railway station catching sight through the streaming window glass of the white waves of the sea rushing like bodies of snow out of the pale haze of the rain and the spray, and I also remember that I heard a strange low voice of thunder in the air, made by the huge breakers as they tumbled in hills of water upon the beach and rushed backwards into the sea in sheets of froth.

It was so cold that we were very glad to find a cheerful fire in the parlour, that was rendered yet more hospitable to the sight by the table being equipped for a two o'clock dinner. The house was small, but very strongly built, with thick plate-glass windows in the lower rooms, against which the wind and the rain were hissing as though an engine were letting off steam close by. A couple of maid-servants had been left in the house. Never could I have imagined that servants would be willing to sleep as those two did in one small bed, in a tiny garret where all the light they had fell through a skylight window about the size of a book. But I have noticed in the country, that is to say, in rural parts and quiet towns such as Piertown, servants are grateful and dutiful for such food and lodging as would cause them to be incessantly grumbling and changing their places in cities like Bath.

Baby and little Johnny were taken upstairs by the nurse, and my husband and Mary and I went to the window and stood gazing at the sea. We had a very clear view of it. The house stood within a few yards of the edge of the cliff, and the extremity of the garden between was bounded by a dwarf wall of flint which left the prospect open.

'What do you think of that sight, Agnes?' said my husband. 'Would sailing be heavenly to-day, do you think?'

'You should have married a sailor,' said my husband dryly.

'What have you been reading lately, Agnes, to put this sudden love of the sea into your head?' said Mary. 'You used not to care for the water.'

'I have been reading nothing to make me love the sea,' I answered; 'but when I look at such a sight as that I feel that if I were a man I should consider that the earth was formed of something more than land, and that the best part of it is not where trees grow and where houses are built.'

And for some time after my husband and Mary had withdrawn from the window I stood gazing at the bleared and throbbing scene of ocean, hoping and longing to see a ship go by, little suspecting that my wishes were as wicked as though they were those of a wrecker, for had any ship been close enough in to the coast to enable me to see her amid the thickness that was upon the face of the streaming and rushing waters, nothing could have saved her from being driven ashore, where in all probability her crew would have perished.

But in the afternoon the weather cleared; it continued to blow a strong wind right upon the land, but the sky opened into many blue lakes, and changed into a magnificent picture of immense bodies of stately sailing cream-coloured cloud, upon which the setting sun shone, colouring their skirts with a dark rich gold, and the horizon expanded to as far as the eye could pierce, with one staggering and leaning shaft of white upon the very rim of the sea.

'Let us go and look at the town,' said my husband; and Mary and I put on our hats and jackets and the three of us sallied forth.

We had to walk some distance to reach the little town, and when we arrived there was not very much to see. The three streets were neither spacious nor splendid; on the contrary, they struck me as rather mean and weather-beaten. But then people do not leave cities in order to view the shops and streets of little seaside towns. Piertown lay in a sort of chasm. It was as though a party of fishermen in ancient days, wandering along the coast in search of a good site for the erection of their cottages, and falling in with this great split in the cliff, as though an earthquake had not long before happened, had exclaimed, 'Let us settle here.' There was a peculiar smell of salt in the streets, and the roadways and pavements presented a sort of faint sparkling surface, as though a great deal of brine had fallen upon them and dried up. There was also a smell of kippered herring in the strong wind, and it seemed to proceed from every shop door that we passed.

Very few people were to be seen. We were much stared at by the shopmen through their windows, and here and there a little knot of lounging men dressed as boatmen hushed their hoarse voices to intently gaze at us.

'This is what I like,' said my husband. 'Here is all the privacy that we could desire, and the most delightful primitiveness also. A professional man when he takes a holiday ought to give crowded places a very wide berth, and put himself as close to nature--to nature, rugged, homely and roaring, after this pattern,' said he with a sweep of his hand, 'as his requirements of eating and drinking and sleeping will permit.'

'It seems a very dull place,' said I when, having reached the top of one of the three steep streets, we turned to retrace our steps. 'If the weather does not allow me to have plenty of boating I shall soon wish myself home again.'

'You will not find a circulating library here,' said Mary, looking around her. 'I should not suppose that many people belonging to Piertown are able to read.'

'The place is made up of grocers' shops,' said my husband. 'What a queer smell of bloaters!'

I amused myself by counting no less than five grocers' shops in one street, and I did not see a single person resembling a customer in any one of them. I pulled my husband's arm to stop him opposite a shop in whose windows I believed I saw three men hanging by the neck. They proved to be complete suits of oilskins, each surmounted by one of those nautical helmets called sou'-westers, and at a little distance, as they dangled in the twilight within the windows, they exactly resembled three mariners who had committed suicide.

We now walked down to the pier, and there the great plain of the ocean stretched before us without the dimmest break of land anywhere along its confines, and the white surf boiled within the toss of a pebble from us. The pier projected from a short esplanade; along this esplanade ran a terrace of mean stunted structures, eight in all; and my husband, after looking and counting, exclaimed: 'Five of them are public-houses. Yes! this is the seaside.'

The pier forked straight out for a short distance, then rounded sharply to the right, thus forming a little harbour, in the shelter of which lay a cluster of boats of several kinds. The massive piles and supports of the pier broke the weight of the seas, which rushed hissing white as milk amongst the black timbers; but the water within was considerably agitated nevertheless, and the boats hopped and plunged and jumped and rubbed their sides one against another, straining at the ropes which held them, as though they were timid living creatures like sheep, terrified by the noise and appearance of the waters, and desperately struggling at their tethers in their desire to get on shore.

We stood looking, inhaling deeply and with delight the salt sweetness of the strong ocean breeze. The land soared on either hand from the little town, and ran away in dark masses of towering cliff, and far as the eye could follow went the white line of the surf, with a broad platform of grey hard sand betwixt it and the base of the cliff. Here and there in one or another of the public-house windows glimmered a face whose eyes surveyed us steadfastly. We might make sure by the manner in which we were looked at, that Piertown was not greatly troubled by visitors.

There was a wooden post near the entrance of the pier, and upon it leaned the figure of a man clad in trousers of a stuff resembling blanket, a rusty coat buttoned up to his neck, around which was a large shawl, and upon his head he wore a yellow sou'-wester. He might have been carved out of wood, so motionless was his posture and so intent his gaze at the horizon, where there was nothing to be seen but water, though I strained my sight in the hope of perceiving the object which appeared to fascinate him. A short clay pipe, of the colour of soot, projected from his lips. He seemed to hold it thus as one might wear an ornament, for no smoke issued from it.

We drew close, and my husband said: 'Good afternoon.'

The man looked slowly round, surveyed us one after another, then readjusting himself upon his post and fastening his eyes afresh upon the horizon, he responded in a deep voice: 'Good arternoon.'

'Is there anything in sight?' said my husband.

'No,' answered the man.

'Then what are you looking at?'

'I ain't looking,' answered the man; 'I'm a-thinking.'

'And what are you thinking of?'

'Why,' said the man, 'I'm a-thinking that I han't tasted a drop o' beer for two days.'

'This, indeed, is being at the seaside,' said my husband cheerfully, and putting his hand in his pocket he produced a sixpence, which he gave to the man.

The effect was remarkable; the man instantly stood upright, and went round to the other side of the post to lean over it, so that he might confront us. And it was remarkable in other ways; for no sooner had my husband given the man the sixpence than the doors of two or three of the public-houses opposite opened, and several figures dressed like this man emerged and approached us very slowly, halting often and looking much at the weather, and then approaching us by another step, and all in a manner as though they were acting unconsciously, and without the least idea whatever that my husband had given the man some money.

He was a man of about forty-five or fifty years of age, with a very honest cast of countenance, the expression of which slightly inclined towards surliness. You will wonder that I should take such particular notice of a mere lounging boatman; and yet this same plain, common-looking sailor, was to become the most memorable of all the persons I had ever met with in my life.

A BOATING TRIP

It was not yet evening, but the sun was very low in the west on our right hand; a large moon would be rising a little while before eight; the breeze continued to blow strong, and the ocean rolled into the land in tall dark-green lines of waves, melting as they charged in endless succession into wide spaces of foam, orange coloured by the sunset.

'Do you hear that echo of thunder in the cliff I told you about?' said my husband.

I listened and said 'Yes.'

'It is like a distant firing of guns,' said Mary.

'You have some good boats down there dancing beside the pier,' said my husband to the boatman.

'Ay,' answered the boatman, 'you'll need to sail a long way round the coast to find better boats than them.'

'That is a pretty boat, Mary,' said I, pointing to one with two masts--a tall mast in the fore-part and a short mast at the stern; she was painted green and red, and she was very clean and white inside, and she appeared in my eyes the prettiest of all the boats as she dived and tumbled and leaped buoyantly and not without grace upon the sharp edges of the broken water.

'That's my boat, lady,' said the sailor.

'What is her name?' inquired Mary.

'Yes,' answered my husband, 'we are here for a month.'

'And when might ye have arrived?' inquired the boatman.

'To-day,' replied my husband.

'When I want a boat I will ask for Billitchens,' said my husband, glancing at me with a smile in his eye. 'This lady--my wife--is fonder of the sea than I am. I dare say she will sometimes take a cruise with you. But the weather must be fine when she does so.'

'What are your charges?' said my husband.

'Wan and sixpence an hour,' answered the boatman cheerfully, 'but if you'd like to engage my boat by the week ye shall have her at your own price, giving me so much every time ye takes me along.'

'Lord love ye!' he cried, gazing at his boat with a sour smile of wonder at the question. 'A hinfant could send her spinning. 'Sides,' he added, 'I'll take care to ship a pair o' light oars for you, lady, what's called sculls, nigh as light as this here baccay-pipe.'

'Well, good afternoon, Mr. Hitchens,' said my husband, and we strolled in the direction of our home, for the shadow of the evening was now upon the sea, and the strong wind seemed to have grown very cold on a sudden.

However, before we retired to rest the night fell silent, the sea stretched in a dark sheet, and from our windows, so high seated was the house, the ocean looked to slope steep into the sky, as though, indeed, it were the side of a mighty hill. The moon rode over it, and under the orb lay a column of glorious silver which stirred like the coils of a moving serpent as the swell or the heave of the water ran through it. The dark body of a ship passed through that brilliant path of light as we stood looking, and the sight was beautiful.

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