href="#ulink_977193c5-e672-5a85-93b5-49e4d2de4b35">8. Vide Betterton's History of the Stage.
9. Rochefoucault.
10. Vide Cutter of Coleman street.
11. A fact, related to me by a person who was near committing suicide in a similar situation, to escape what he called 'the excruciating torture of giddiness.'
Chapter IV
Haste with your weapons, cut the shrouds and stay,
And hew at once the mizen-mast away.
FALCONER
The following evening Melmoth retired early. The restlessness of the preceding night inclined him to repose, and the gloom of the day left him nothing to wish for but its speedy conclusion. It was now the latter end of Autumn; heavy clouds had all day been passing laggingly and gloomily along the atmosphere, as the hours of such a day pass over the human mind and life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went portentously off, like ships of war after reconnoitering a strong fort, to return with added strength and fury. The threat was soon fulfilled; the evening came on, prematurely darkened by clouds that seemed surcharged with a deluge. Loud and sudden squalls of wind shook the house from time to time, and then as suddenly ceased. Towards night the storm came on in all its strength; Melmoth's bed was shaken so as to render it impossible to sleep. He 'liked the rocking of the battlements,' but by no means liked the expected fall of the chimneys, the crashing in of the roof, and the splinters of the broken windows that were already scattered about his room. He rose and went down to the kitchen, where he knew a fire was burning, and there the terrified servants were all assembled, all agreeing, as the blast came roaring down the chimney, they never had witnessed such a storm, and between the gusts, breathing shuddering prayers for those who were 'out at sea that night.' The vicinity of Melmoth's house to what seamen called an iron-bound coast, gave a dreadful sincerity to their prayers and their fears.
In a short time, however, Melmoth perceived that their minds were occupied with terrors beside those of the storm. The recent death of his uncle, and the supposed visit of that extraordinary being in whose existence they all firmly believed, were connected in their minds inseparably with the causes or consequences of this tempest, and they whispered their fearful suggestions to each other, till the sound reached Melmoth's ears at every step that he measured across the broken floor of the kitchen. Terror is very fond of associations; we love to connect the agitation of the elements with the agitated life of man; and never did a blast roar, or a gleam of lightning flash, that was not connected in the imagination of some one, with a calamity that was to be dreaded, deprecated, or endured,–with the fate of the living, or the destination of the dead. The tremendous storm that shook all England on the night of Cromwell's death, gave the hint to his puritanic chaplains to declare, that the Lord had caught him up in the whirlwind and chariot of fire, even thereafter, as he caught the prophet Elijah; while all the cavalier party, putting their own construction on the matter, proclaimed their confidence, that the Prince of the power of the air was vindicating his right, and carrying off the body of his victim (whose soul had long been his purchase) in a tempest, whose wild howl and triumphant ravage might have been variously, and with equal justice, interpreted by each party as giving testimony to their mutual denunciations. Just such a party (mutatis mutandis) were collected round the bickering fire and rocking chimney in Melmoth's kitchen. 'He is going in that blast,' said one of the hags, taking the pipe from her mouth, and trying vainly to rekindle it among the embers that the storm scattered about like dust; 'he is going in that blast.'–'He'll come again,' cried another Sybil, 'he'll come again,–he's not at rest! He roams and wails about till something is told that he never could tell in his life-time.–G-d save us!' she added, howling up the chimney, as if addressing the troubled spirit; 'tell us what you want, and stop the blast, will ye?'–The wind came like thunder down the chimney; the hag shuddered and retreated. 'If it's this you want–and this–and this,' cried a young female whom Melmoth had not noticed before, 'take them;' and she eagerly tore the papers out of her hair, and flung them into the fire. Then Melmoth recollected a ridiculous story told him the day before of this girl, who had had the 'bad luck,' as she called it, to curl her hair with some of the old and useless law-papers of the family, and who now imagined that they 'who kept this dreadful pudder o'er her head,' were particularly provoked by her still retaining about her whatever belonged to the deceased; and as she flung the fragments of paper into the fire, she cried aloud, 'There stop for the holy J–-s' sake, and let us have no more about it!–You have what you wanted, and will you have done?' The laugh that Melmoth could hardly resist, was checked by a sound which he heard distinctly amid the storm. 'Hush–silence! that was a signal gun!–there is a vessel in distress.' They all paused and listened. We have already mentioned the closeness of Melmoth's abode to the sea-shore. This had well accustomed its inmates to all the terrors of shipwrecked vessels and drowning passengers. To their honour be it spoken, they never heard those sounds but as a claim, a piteous, irresistible claim on their humanity. They knew nothing of the barbarous practice on the English coast, of fastening a lanthorn to the limbs of a spanselled horse, whose plungings were to misdirect the wrecked and sinking wretches, in the vain hope that the light they saw was a beacon, and thus to double the horrors of death by the baffled expectation of relief.
The party in the kitchen all watched Melmoth's countenance intently, as if its expression could have told them 'the secrets of the hoary deep.' The storm ceased for a moment, and there was a deep and dreary silence of fearful expectation. The sound was heard again,–it could not be mistaken. 'It is a gun,' cried Melmoth; 'there is a vessel in distress!' and he hurried out of the kitchen, calling on the men to follow him.
The men partook eagerly of the excitement of enterprise and danger. A storm without doors is, after all, better than a storm within; without we have something to struggle with, within we have only to suffer; and the severest storm, by exciting the energy of its victim, gives at once a stimulus to action, and a solace to pride, which those must want who sit shuddering between rocking walls, and almost driven to wish they had only to suffer, not to fear.
While the men were in search of a hundred coats, boots, and hats of their old master, to be sought for in every part of the house,–while one was dragging a great coat from the window, before which it had long hung as a blind, in total default of glass or shutters,–another was snatching a wig from the jack, where it had been suspended for a duster,–and a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of her accouchement,–Melmoth had gone up to the highest room in the house. The window was driven in;–had there been light, this window commanded a view of the sea and the coast. He leaned far out of it, and listened with fearful and breathless anxiety. The night was dark, but far off, his sight, sharpened by intense solicitude, descried a light at sea. The gust drove him from the window for a moment; at returning the next, he saw a faint flash, and then the report of a gun followed.
There needed no more; and in a few moments after, Melmoth was on the shore. Their way was short, and they walked with their utmost speed; but the violence of the storm made their progress very slow, and their anxiety made it seem still slower. From time to time they said to each other, in choaked and breathless accents, 'Call up the people in those cabins–there is a light in that house–they are all up–no wonder–who could sleep in such a night–hold the lanthorn low–it is impossible to keep footing on the strand.' 'Another gun!' they exclaimed, as the flash faintly broke through the darkness, and the heavy sound rolled round the shore, as if fired over the grave of the sufferers. 'Here's the rock, hold fast, and cling together.' They scaled it. 'Great God!' cried Melmoth, who was among the first, 'what a night! and what a spectacle!–Hold up your lanthorns–do you hear cries?–shout to them–tell them there is help and hope near them.–Stay,' he added, 'let me scramble up that crag–they will hear my voice from that.' He dashed desperately