"There it is again! Fly swift and sure," cries Elsley, "thou fiery
angel of mercy, bearing the saviour-line! It may not be too late yet."
Full and true the rocket went across her; and "three cheers for the
Lieutenant!" rose above the storm.
"Silence, lads! Not so bad, though;" says he, rubbing his wet hands.
"Hold on by the line, and watch for a bite, Brown."
Five minutes pass. Brown has the line in his hand, waiting for any
signal touch from the ship: but the line sways limp in the surge.
Ten minutes. The Lieutenant lights a fresh cigar, and paces up and
down, smoking fiercely.
A quarter of an hour; and yet no response. The moon is shining clearly
now. They can see her hatchways, the stumps of her masts, great
tangles of rigging swaying and lashing down across her deck; but that
delicate upper curve is becoming more ragged after every wave; and the
tide is rising fast.
"There's a pull!" shouts Brown.... "No, there ain't ... God have
mercy, sir! She's going!"
The black curve boils up, as if a mine had been sprung on board, leaps
into arches, jagged peaks, black bars crossed and tangled; and then
all melts away into the white seething waste; while the line floats
home helplessly, as if disappointed; and the billows plunge more
sullenly and sadly towards the shore, as if in remorse for their dark
and reckless deed.
All is over. What shall we do now? Go home, and pray that God may have
mercy on all drowning souls? Or think what a picturesque and tragical
scene it was, and what a beautiful poem it will make, when we have
thrown it into an artistic form, and bedizened it with conceits and
analogies stolen from all heaven and earth by our own self-willed
fancy?
Elsley Vavasour--through whose spectacles, rather than with my own
eyes, I have been looking at the wreck, and to whose account, not
to mine, the metaphors and similes of the last two pages must be
laid--took the latter course; not that he was not awed, calmed, and
even humbled, as he felt how poor and petty his own troubles
were, compared with that great tragedy: but in his fatal habit of
considering all matters in heaven and earth as bricks and mortar for
the poet to build with, he considered that he had "seen enough;" as if
men were sent into the world to see and not to act; and going home too
excited to sleep, much more to go and kiss forgiveness to his sleeping
wife, sat up all night, writing "The Wreck," which may be (as the
reviewer in "The Parthenon" asserts) an exquisite poem; but I cannot
say that it is of much importance.
Pages:
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112