CHAPTER 55 - TEMPEST

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so

bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it,

in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have

seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower

in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents

of my childish days.

For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started

up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging

in my quiet room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes,

though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have

an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest

mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is

conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to

write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens

again before me.

The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship,

my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met)

came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and

the Micawbers (they being very much together); but Emily I never

saw.

One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with

Peggotty and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She

described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how

manfully and quietly he had borne himself. Most of all, of late,

when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the

affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the

many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate,

was equal to hers in relating them.

MY aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at

Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house

at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I

walked home to it, after this evening's conversation, reflecting on

what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth,

I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter

for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship,

and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might

desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some

parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the

opportunity.

I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to

her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me

to tell her what I have already written in its place in these

sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon

it, if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were

not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out, to be sent

round in the morning; with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him

to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.

I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the

sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by

the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my

sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.

'Trot, my dear,' she said, when I opened my eyes, 'I couldn't make

up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come

up?'

I replied yes, and he soon appeared.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, when we had shaken hands, 'I giv Em'ly your

letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask

you to read it, and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take

charge on't.'

'Have you read it?' said I.

He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:

'I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for

your good and blessed kindness to me!

'I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I

die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have

prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you

are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to

him.

'Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in

this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child

and come to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.'

This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

'May I tell her as you doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so

kind as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?' said Mr. Peggotty, when I

had read it.

'Unquestionably,' said I - 'but I am thinking -'

'Yes, Mas'r Davy?'

'I am thinking,' said I, 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth.

There's time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the

ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude;

to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to

enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got

it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his

commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too

completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless, and

shall be better in motion. I'll go down tonight.'

Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was

of my mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my

intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach

office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail.

In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had

traversed under so many vicissitudes.

'Don't you think that,' I asked the coachman, in the first stage

out of London, 'a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have

seen one like it.'

'Nor I - not equal to it,' he replied. 'That's wind, sir.

There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.'

It was a murky confusion - here and there blotted with a colour

like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel - of flying clouds,

tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in

the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the

deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to

plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of

nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been

a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great

sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more

overcast, and blew hard.

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely

over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow,

harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could

scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night

(it was then late in September, when the nights were not short),

the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often

in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over.

Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of

steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or

lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility

of continuing the struggle.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in

Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never

known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to

Ipswich - very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since

we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in

the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night,

fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the

inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead

having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a

by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of

country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen

great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered

about the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the

storm, but it blew harder.

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this

mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and

more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our

lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over

miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every

sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little

breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of

the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the

rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and

buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out

to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a

wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea;

staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and

seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling

slates and tiles; and holding by people I met, at angry corners.

Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the

people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then

braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer

out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were

away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to

think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for

safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their

heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one

another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling

together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners,

disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from

behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to

look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying

stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high

watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into

surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the

receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out

deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the

earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed

themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment

of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath,

rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster.

Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with

a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted

up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a

booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made,

to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place

away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and

buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed

to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.

Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind - for it

is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow

upon that coast - had brought together, I made my way to his house.

It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back

ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there,

that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of

ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would

be back tomorrow morning, in good time.

I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and

tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon.

I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the

waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that

two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and

that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads,

and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore. Mercy on them,

and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the

last!

I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an

uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the

occasion. I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by

late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused

me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections, that

I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I

had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I

think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London. So

to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my

mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place

naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and vivid.

In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships

immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition,

with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an

apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being

lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to

the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he

thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely? If he gave

me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and

prevent it by bringing him with me.

I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none

too soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was

locking the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the

question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out

of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham

Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.

So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of

doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the

inn. If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl

and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in

the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered

me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in

the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that

invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.

I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue

steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to

the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a

tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running

with the thundering sea, - the storm, and my uneasiness regarding

Ham were always in the fore-ground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself

with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber

before the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the

uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became

overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke - or

rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair- my

whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to

the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire.

At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall

tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the

inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went

to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all

such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake,

with every sense refined.

For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining,

now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard

the firing of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town.

I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing,

except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had

left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the

black void.

At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried

on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I

dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the

watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a

table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought

near the door. A pretty girl, who had her ears stopped with her

apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared,

supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of

mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man,

referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether

I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down, were

out in the storm?

I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the

yard-gate, and looked into the empty street. The sand, the

sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by; and I was

obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again,

and make it fast against the wind.

There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length

returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again,

fell - off a tower and down a precipice - into the depths of sleep.

I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of

being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing

in my dream. At length, I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and

was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know,

at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.

The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could

not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great

exertion and awoke. It was broad day - eight or nine o'clock; the

storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and

calling at my door.

'What is the matter?' I cried.

'A wreck! Close by!'

I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?

'A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine.

Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought, down on the

beach, she'll go to pieces every moment.'

The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I

wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into

the street.

Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one

direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good

many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more

sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been

diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds.

But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole

night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last.

Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of

being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and,

looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in

interminable hosts, was most appalling.

In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in

the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless

efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I

looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming

heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next

me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow on it, pointing in

the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it,

close in upon us!

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and

lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all

that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat - which she did without a

moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable - beat the

side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being

made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship,

which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly

descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure

with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great

cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the

shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck,

made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks,

bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and

a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship

had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then

lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was

parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling

and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long.

As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach;

four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the

rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with

the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like

a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of

her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now

nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards

the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy

men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and

again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on the shore

increased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked,

and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the

beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one

of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not

to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.

They were making out to me, in an agitated way - I don't know how,

for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to

understand - that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago,

and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as

to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication

with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that

some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them

part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

I ran to him - as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help.

But, distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible,

the determination in his face, and his look out to sea - exactly

the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after

Emily's flight - awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him

back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been

speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him

stir from off that sand!

Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the

cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men,

and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the

mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the

calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the

people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, 'if my

time is come, 'tis come. If 'tan't, I'll bide it. Lord above

bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a-going off!'

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the

people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived,

that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should

endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with

whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they

rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes

from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of

figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw him standing alone, in

a seaman's frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his

wrist: another round his body: and several of the best men holding,

at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself,

slack upon the shore, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that

she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary

man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had

a singular red cap on, - not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer

colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction

rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was

seen by all of us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and thought I

was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to

my mind of a once dear friend.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended

breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great

retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the

rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and

in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills,

falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again

to land. They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he

took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some

directions for leaving him more free - or so I judged from the

motion of his arm - and was gone as before.

And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with

the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the

shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The

distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the

strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near,

that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to

it, - when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on

shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with

a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been

broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in.

Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet -

insensible - dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no

one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means

of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the

great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done,

a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and

ever since, whispered my name at the door.

'Sir,' said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face,

which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, 'will you come over

yonder?'

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look.

I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to

support me:

'Has a body come ashore?'

He said, 'Yes.'

'Do I know it?' I asked then.

He answered nothing.

But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and

I had looked for shells, two children - on that part of it where

some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had

been scattered by the wind - among the ruins of the home he had

wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had

often seen him lie at school.

Read next: CHAPTER 56 - THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD

Read previous: CHAPTER 54 - Mr. MICAWBER'S TRANSACTIONS

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