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.