Luttrell Of Arran. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ not a finer craft in the King’s navy,” said a very old man, who had once been a pilot. “I’d not be afeerd to go to ‘Quaybeck’ in her.”

      “Come up and taste a dhrop of sperits this wet day,” whispered Molly in his ear, for his words were a balm to her aching heart.

      At first from the window of his lonely room, and then, when the boat had rounded the point of land, and could be no more seen, from a little loopholed slit in the tower above him, Luttrell watched her course. Even with his naked eye he could mark the sheets of spray as they broke over the bow and flew across her, and see how the strong mast bent like a whip, although she was reduced to her very shortest sail, and was standing under a double-reefed mainsail, and a small storm-jib. Not another boat, not another sail of any kind was to be seen; and there seemed something heroically daring in that little barque, that one dark speck, as it rose and plunged, seen and lost alternately in the rolling sea.

      It was only when he tried to look through the telescope, and found that his hand shook so much that he could not fix the object, that he himself knew how agitated he was. He drew his hand across his brow and found it clammy, with a profuse and cold perspiration. By this time it was so dark that he had to grope his way down the narrow stairs to his room below. He called for Molly. “Who was that you were talking to? I heard a strange roice without there.”

      “Old Moriarty, the pilot, your honour; I brought him in out of the wet to dry himself.”

      “Send him in here to me,” said Luttrell, who, throwing a root of oak on the fire, sat down with his back to the door, and where no light should fall upon his face.

      “It’s blowing fresh, Moriarty,” said he, with an affected ease of manner, as the old man entered and stood nigh the door.

      “More than fresh, your honour. It’s blowin’ hard.”

      “You say that, because you haven’t been at sea these five-and-twenty years; but it’s not blowing as it blew the night I came up from Clew, no, nor the day that we rounded Tory Island.”

      “Maybe not; but it’s not at its worst yet,” said the old fellow, who was ill-pleased at the sneer at his seamanship.

      “I don’t know what the fellows here think of such weather, but a crew of Norway fishermen – ay, or a set of Deal boatmen – would laugh at it.”

      “Listen to that now, then,” said the other, “and it’s no laughing matter;” and as he spoke a fierce gust of wind tore past, carrying the spray in great sheets, and striking against the walls and windows with a clap like thunder. “That was a squall to try any boat!”

      “Not a boat like the large yawl!”

      “If it didn’t throw two tons of water aboard of her, my name isn’t Moriarty.”

      “Master Harry is enjoying it, I’m certain,” said Luttrell, trying to seem at ease.

      “Well! It’s too much for a child,” said the old man, sorrowfully.

      “What do you mean by a child? He’s no child, he’s a well-grown boy, and if he’s eyer to have a man’s heart in him, ought to begin to feel it now.”

      “It was no night to send him out, anyhow; and I say it, though it was your honour did it!”

      “Because you’re an old fool, and you think you can presume upon your white head and your tottering limbs. Look here; answer me this – ”

      A fearful thunder roll, followed by a rattling crash like small-arms, drowned his words. “It is a severe night,” said he, “and if she wasn’t a fine sea-boat, with a good crew on board her, I’d not feel so easy!”

      “Good as she is, it will thry her.”

      “What a faint-hearted old dog you are, and you were a pilot once.”

      “I was, Sir. I took Sir George Bowyer up the Chesapeak, and Commodore Warren could tell you whether I know the Baltic Sea.”

      “And you are frightened by a night like this!”

      “I’m not frightened, Sir; but I’d not send a child out in it, just for – ” He stopped, and tried to fall back behind the door.

      “Just for what?” said Luttrell, with a calm and even gentle voice – “just for what?”

      “How do I know, your honour. I was saying more than I could tell.”

      “Yes; but let me hear it. What was the reason that you supposed – why do you think I did it?”

      Deceived and even lured on to frankness by the insinuating softness of his manner, the old man answered: “Well, it was just your honour’s pride, the ould Luttrell pride, that said, ‘We’ll never send a man where we won’t go ourselves,’ and it was out of that you’d risk your child’s life!”

      “I accused you of being half a coward a minute ago,” said Luttrell, in a low deep voice, that vibrated with intense passion, “but I tell you, you’re a brave man, a very brave man, to dare to speak such words as these to me! Away with you; be off; and never cross this threshold again.” He banged the door loudly after the old man, and walked up and down the narrow room with impatient steps. Hour after hour he strode up and down with the restless activity of a wild animal in a cage, and as though by mere motion he could counteract the fever that was consuming him. He went to the outer door, but he did not dare to open it, such was the force of the storm; but he listened to the wild sounds of the hurricane – the thundering roar of the sea, as it mingled with the hissing crash, as the waves were broken on the rocks. Some old tree, that had resisted many a gale, seemed at last to have yielded, for the rustling crash of broken timber could be heard, and the rattling of the smaller branches as they were carried along by the swooping wind. “What a night I what a terrible night!” he muttered to himself. There was a faint light seen through the chinks of the kitchen door; he drew nigh and peeped in. It was poor Molly on her knees, before a little earthenware image of the Virgin, to whom she was offering a candle, while she poured out her heart in prayer. He looked at her, as, with hands firmly clasped before her, she rocked to and fro in the agony of her affliction, and noiselessly he stole away and entered his room.

      He opened a map upon the table, and tried to trace out the course the boat might have taken. There were three distant headlands to clear before she could reach the open sea. One of these, the Turk’s Head, was a noted spot for disasters, and dreaded by fishermen even in moderately fresh, weather. He could not take his eyes from the spot; that little speck so full of fate to him. To have effaced it from the earth’s surface at that moment, he would have given all that remained to him in the world! “Oh, what a destiny!” he cried in his bitterness, “and what race! Every misfortune, every curse that has fallen upon us, of our own doing! Nothing worse, nothing so bad, have we ever met in life as our own stubborn pride, our own vindictive natures.” It required some actual emergency, some one deeply momentous’ crisis, to bring this proud and stubborn spirit down to self-accusation; but when the moment did come, when the dam was opened, the stream rushed forth like the long pent-up waters of a cataract.

      All that he had ever done in life, all the fierce provocations he had given, all the insults he had uttered, his short-comings too, his reluctance to make amends when in the wrong, passed spectre-like before him, and in the misery of his deep humiliation he felt how all his struggle in life had been with himself.

      That long night – and how long it was! – was spent thus. Every wild gust that shook the window-frames, every thunder-clap that seemed to make СКАЧАТЬ