This company of kind folks were all of the sort called evangelical, and they were bound on a strange errand, the like of which had brought one of the men out to sea many times before. The yacht was now chasing one of the great North Sea trawling fleets, and Fullerton's idea was to let the gallant young doctor see something of the wild work that goes on among the fishing-boats when the weather is ugly.
The dark, solemn young lady sat very still while the men talked, and her face had that air of intense attention which is so impressive when it is not simulated. I think she was a spiritual relative of Joan of Arc and Madame Roland. It seems dreadful to say so, but I am not sure that she would not have played Charlotte Corday's part had occasion arisen. In low, full tones she asked, "Did no one ever work among the fishers before Mr. Fullerton found them out?" "No one, except the fellows who sold vile spirits, my dear," said Blair.
"Not a single surgeon?"
"Not one. That's why we decided to kidnap Ferrier. We want to give him a proper school of surgery to practise in—genuine raw material, and plenty of it, and you must help us to keep him in order. Fancy his trying to convert us; he'll try to convert you next, if you don't mind!"
The girl paid no heed to the banter. She went on as if in a reverie.
"It is enough to bring a judgment on a nation, all the idle women and idle men. Mamma told me that a brewer's wife paid two thousand pounds for flowers in one month. Why cannot you speak to women?"
"We mustn't blame the poor ladies," said Fullerton: "how could they know? Plenty of people told them about Timbuctoo, and Jerusalem, and Madagascar, and North and South America, but this region's just a trifle out of the way. A lady may easily sign a cheque or pack a missionary's medicine-chest, but she could not come out here among dangers and filth and discomfort, and the men ashore are not much pluckier. No; in my experience of English people I've always found them lavish with their help, only you must let them know what to help. There's the point."
"And you've begun, dear Mr. Fullerton, have you not?"
"Yes; but the end is far off. We were so late—so late in beginning, and I must pass away, and my place will know me no more; and many and many another will pass away. Oh, yes! we shall travel from gulf to gulf; but I think, sometimes, that my soul will be here on the wild nights. I must be near my men—my poor men!—and I'll meet them when their voyage is over."
The enthusiast spoke solemnly, and his queer diction somehow was not unbecoming or grotesque. I suppose George Fox and Savonarola did not use quite the ordinary language of their day and generation.
The doctor listened with a kind look on his strong face, and when the dark young girl quietly whispered "Amen!" our professor quite simply repeated the word.
Tom Lennard had been going through a most complicated series of acrobatic movements, and he now broke in—
"Ah! Harry Fullerton, if you're not an angel, you're pretty near one. Ah! that eloquence is of the most—the most—a kind of—ah! fahscinating—oh-h-h! fahscinating! But I believe this vessel has a personal spite against me, or else the sea's rising."
"It is, indeed," said Mr. Blair, who had peeped out from the companion. "We're actually running up to the fleet, and the rocket has gone up for them to haul trawls. It looks very bad, very bad. You're not frightened, Mrs. Walton, I hope?"
The reserved, silent lady said—
"Oh, no! Marion and I seem to take kindly to bad weather. I believe if she could wear a sou'-wester she would hang on to the rigging. It's her combative instinct. But I do hope there is no danger for the poor fishermen?"
Mr. Blair very quietly said—
"If their vessels were like ours there would be no fear. We haven't an unsound rope or block, but many of the smacks are shockingly ill-found, and one rope or spar may cost a crew their lives if it's faulty. The glass has gone down badly, and we are in for a gale, and a heavy one. But my ship would be quite comfortable in the Bay of Biscay."
A trampling on deck sounded. "See if the ladies can look from the companion," said Tom Lennard. "The sight should be splendid. You and I must shove on oilskins, Blair and see if we can keep our legs."
This was almost the end of the night's conversation. Those good mission-folks, as has been seen, contrived to get on without saying either clever things or bitter things, and persons who possess the higher intellect may fancy that this was a sign of a poor spirit. Perhaps; and yet I have read somewhere that the poor in spirit may not fare so very badly in the long run.
CHAPTER II.
THE BREEZE.
The spectacle on deck was appalling, and the sounds were appalling also. The blast rushed by with a deep ground note which rose in pitch to a yell as the gust hurled itself through the cordage; each sea that came down seemed likely to be the last, but the sturdy yacht—no floating chisel was she—ran up the steep with a long, slow glide, and smashed into the black hollow with a sharp explosive sound. Marion Dearsley might have been pardoned had she shown tremors as the flying mountains towered over the vessel. Once a great black wall heaved up and doubled the intensity of the murky midnight by a sinister shade; there came a horrible silence, and then, with a loud bellow, the wall burst into ruin and crashed down on the ship in a torrent which seemed made up of a thousand conflicting streams. The skipper silently dashed aft, flung his arms round Tom Lennard, and pinned him to the mast; Mr. Blair hung on, though he was drifted aft with his feet off the deck until he hung like a totally new description of flying signal; the ladies were drenched by the deluge which rushed down below, and the steward, when he saw the water swashing about over his cabin floor, exclaimed with discreet bitterness on the folly of inviting ladies to witness such a spectacle as a North Sea gale.
Tom observed: "The grandeur is—ah! fahscinating, but it's rather damp grandeur. It's only grandeur fit for heroes. Give me all my grandeur dry, if you please."
"Yes, sir," said the streaming skipper, "that was a near thing for you and me when she shipped it. If I hadn't been on the right side of the mast, both on us must have gone." Dawn rose slowly; the sky became blotched with snaky tints of dull yellow and livid grey; the gale kept on, and the schooner was hove-to to meet a sea of terrifying speed and height. Two of the ladies were below, only craving to be left alone even by the stewardess; but the hideous fascination of the storm drew Marion Dearsley again and again, and she sheltered herself under the hatch, and looked with awe at the mad turmoil which could be seen astern. Here and there, far up on the rushing sides of the foaming mountains, stray smacks hung like specks; the schooner shipped very little water now, and Ferrier kept the deck with some difficulty. Events succeeded each other with the terrifying suddenness of shocking dreams, and when the skipper said, "Thank God for a good vessel under us, sir; many a good man has gone to meet his Maker this night," Ferrier had quite a new sensation, which I might almost say approached terror, were I not writing about an absolutely courageous fellow.
Still the series of moving accidents went on. A smack hove up under the stern of the schooner, and our skipper said gravely, "That Brixham man's mad to try sailing that vessel. If one puff comes any harder than the last, he'll be hove down." Then the skipper turned to look forward, and Ferrier followed him. A low, strangled moan made them both start and look down the companion. Marion Dearsley, pointing with convulsively rigid arm, exclaimed, "The vessel—oh, the poor men!"
"That smack was hove down"
That smack was hove down, and her