CHAPTER I.
PORTLAND BILL.
An obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over the mainland ofEurope, and yet more roughly over England, during all the month ofDecember, 1689, and all the month of January, 1690. Hence the disastrouscold weather, which caused that winter to be noted as "memorable to thepoor," on the margin of the old Bible in the Presbyterian chapel of theNonjurors in London. Thanks to the lasting qualities of the oldmonarchical parchment employed in official registers, long lists of poorpersons, found dead of famine and cold, are still legible in many localrepositories, particularly in the archives of the Liberty of the Clink,in the borough of Southwark, of Pie Powder Court (which signifies DustyFeet Court), and in those of Whitechapel Court, held in the village ofStepney by the bailiff of the Lord of the Manor. The Thames was frozenover--a thing which does not happen once in a century, as the ice formson it with difficulty owing to the action of the sea. Coaches rolledover the frozen river, and a fair was held with booths, bear-baiting,and bull-baiting. An ox was roasted whole on the ice. This thick icelasted two months. The hard year 1690 surpassed in severity even thefamous winters at the beginning of the seventeenth century, so minutelyobserved by Dr. Gideon Delane--the same who was, in his quality ofapothecary to King James, honoured by the city of London with a bust anda pedestal.
One evening, towards the close of one of the most bitter days of themonth of January, 1690, something unusual was going on in one of thenumerous inhospitable bights of the bay of Portland, which caused thesea-gulls and wild geese to scream and circle round its mouth, notdaring to re-enter.
In this creek, the most dangerous of all which line the bay during thecontinuance of certain winds, and consequently the mostlonely--convenient, by reason of its very danger, for ships in hiding--alittle vessel, almost touching the cliff, so deep was the water, wasmoored to a point of rock. We are wrong in saying, The night falls; weshould say the night rises, for it is from the earth that obscuritycomes. It was already night at the bottom of the cliff; it was still dayat top. Any one approaching the vessel's moorings would have recognizeda Biscayan hooker.
The sun, concealed all day by the mist, had just set. There wasbeginning to be felt that deep and sombrous melancholy which might becalled anxiety for the absent sun. With no wind from the sea, the waterof the creek was calm.
This was, especially in winter, a lucky exception. Almost all thePortland creeks have sand-bars; and in heavy weather the sea becomesvery rough, and, to pass in safety, much skill and practice arenecessary. These little ports (ports more in appearance than fact) areof small advantage. They are hazardous to enter, fearful to leave. Onthis evening, for a wonder, there was no danger.
The Biscay hooker is of an ancient model, now fallen into disuse. Thiskind of hooker, which has done service even in the navy, was stoutlybuilt in its hull--a boat in size, a ship in strength. It figured in theArmada. Sometimes the war-hooker attained to a high tonnage; thus theGreat Griffin, bearing a captain's flag, and commanded by Lopez deMedina, measured six hundred and fifty good tons, and carried fortyguns. But the merchant and contraband hookers were very feeblespecimens. Sea-folk held them at their true value, and esteemed themodel a very sorry one, The rigging of the hooker was made of hemp,sometimes with wire inside, which was probably intended as a means,however unscientific, of obtaining indications, in the case of magnetictension. The lightness of this rigging did not exclude the use of heavytackle, the cabrias of the Spanish galleon, and the cameli of the Romantriremes. The helm was very long, which gives the advantage of a longarm of leverage, but the disadvantage of a small arc of effort. Twowheels in two pulleys at the end of the rudder corrected this defect,and compensated, to some extent, for the loss of strength. The compasswas well housed in a case perfectly square, and well balanced by its twocopper frames placed horizontally, one in the other, on little bolts, asin Cardan's lamps. There was science and cunning in the construction ofthe hooker, but it was ignorant science and barbarous cunning. Thehooker was primitive, just like the praam and the canoe; was kindred tothe praam in stability, and to the canoe in swiftness; and, like allvessels born of the instinct of the pirate and fisherman, it hadremarkable sea qualities: it was equally well suited to landlocked andto open waters. Its system of sails, complicated in stays, and verypeculiar, allowed of its navigating trimly in the close bays of Asturias(which are little more than enclosed basins, as Pasages, for instance),and also freely out at sea. It could sail round a lake, and sail roundthe world--a strange craft with two objects, good for a pond and goodfor a storm. The hooker is among vessels what the wagtail is amongbirds--one of the smallest and one of the boldest. The wagtail perchingon a reed scarcely bends it, and, flying away, crosses the ocean.
These Biscay hookers, even to the poorest, were gilt and painted.Tattooing is part of the genius of those charming people, savages tosome degree. The sublime colouring of their mountains, variegated bysnows and meadows, reveals to them the rugged spell which ornamentpossesses in itself. They are poverty-stricken and magnificent; they putcoats-of-arms on their cottages; they have huge asses, which theybedizen with bells, and huge oxen, on which they put head-dresses offeathers. Their coaches, which you can hear grinding the wheels twoleagues off, are illuminated, carved, and hung with ribbons. A cobblerhas a bas-relief on his door: it is only St. Crispin and an old shoe,but it is in stone. They trim their leathern jackets with lace. They donot mend their rags, but they embroider them. Vivacity profound andsuperb! The Basques are, like the Greeks, children of the sun; while theValencian drapes himself, bare and sad, in his russet woollen rug, witha hole to pass his head through, the natives of Galicia and Biscay havethe delight of fine linen shirts, bleached in the dew. Their thresholdsand their windows teem with faces fair and fresh, laughing undergarlands of maize; a joyous and proud serenity shines out in theiringenious arts, in their trades, in their customs, in the dress of theirmaidens, in their songs. The mountain, that colossal ruin, is all aglowin Biscay: the sun's rays go in and out of every break. The wildJaizquivel is full of idylls. Biscay is Pyrenean grace as Savoy isAlpine grace. The dangerous bays--the neighbours of St. Sebastian, Leso,and Fontarabia--with storms, with clouds, with spray flying over thecapes, with the rages of the waves and the winds, with terror, withuproar, mingle boat-women crowned with roses. He who has seen the Basquecountry wishes to see it again. It is the blessed land. Two harvests ayear; villages resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all Sunday the soundof guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making; houses clean and bright;storks in the belfries.
Let us return to Portland--that rugged mountain in the sea.
The peninsula of Portland, looked at geometrically, presents theappearance of a bird's head, of which the bill is turned towards theocean, the back of the head towards Weymouth; the isthmus is its neck.
Portland, greatly to the sacrifice of its wildness, exists now but fortrade. The coasts of Portland were discovered by quarrymen andplasterers towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Since thatperiod what is called Roman cement has been made of the Portlandstone--a useful industry, enriching the district, and disfiguring thebay. Two hundred years ago these coasts were eaten away as a cliff;to-day, as a quarry. The pick bites meanly, the wave grandly; hence adiminution of beauty. To the magnificent ravages of the ocean havesucceeded the measured strokes of men. These measured strokes haveworked away the creek where the Biscay hooker was moored. To find anyvestige of the little anchorage, now destroyed, the eastern side of thepeninsula should be searched, towards the point beyond Folly Pier andDirdle Pier, beyond Wakeham even, between the place called Church Hopeand the place called Southwell.
The creek, walled in on all sides by precipices higher than its width,was minute by minute becoming more overshadowed by evening. The mistygloom, usual at twilight, became thicker; it was like a growth ofdarkness at the bottom of a well. The opening of the creek seaward, anarrow passage, traced on the almost night-black interior a pallid riftwhere the waves were moving. You must have been quite clo
se to perceivethe hooker moored to the rocks, and, as it were, hidden by the greatcloaks of shadow. A plank thrown from on board on to a low and levelprojection of the cliff, the only point on which a landing could bemade, placed the vessel in communication with the land. Dark figureswere crossing and recrossing each other on this tottering gangway, andin the shadow some people were embarking.
It was less cold in the creek than out at sea, thanks to the screen ofrock rising over the north of the basin, which did not, however, preventthe people from shivering. They were hurrying. The effect of thetwilight defined the forms as though they had been punched out with atool. Certain indentations in their clothes were visible, and showedthat they belonged to the class called in England the ragged.
The twisting of the pathway could be distinguished vaguely in the reliefof the cliff. A girl who lets her stay-lace hang down trailing over theback of an armchair, describes, without being conscious of it, most ofthe paths of cliffs and mountains. The pathway of this creek, full ofknots and angles, almost perpendicular, and better adapted for goatsthan men, terminated on the platform where the plank was placed. Thepathways of cliffs ordinarily imply a not very inviting declivity; theyoffer themselves less as a road than as a fall; they sink rather thanincline. This one--probably some ramification of a road on the plainabove--was disagreeable to look at, so vertical was it. From underneathyou saw it gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it passedout through deep passages on to the high plateau by a cutting in therock; and the passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creekmust have come by this path.
Excepting the movement of embarkation which was being made in the creek,a movement visibly scared and uneasy, all around was solitude; no step,no noise, no breath was heard. At the other side of the roads, at theentrance of Ringstead Bay, you could just perceive a flotilla ofshark-fishing boats, which were evidently out of their reckoning. Thesepolar boats had been driven from Danish into English waters by the whimsof the sea. Northerly winds play these tricks on fishermen. They hadjust taken refuge in the anchorage of Portland--a sign of bad weatherexpected and danger out at sea. They were engaged in casting anchor: thechief boat, placed in front after the old manner of Norwegian flotillas,all her rigging standing out in black, above the white level of the sea;and in front might be perceived the hook-iron, loaded with all kinds ofhooks and harpoons, destined for the Greenland shark, the dogfish, andthe spinous shark, as well as the nets to pick up the sunfish.
Except a few other craft, all swept into the same corner, the eye metnothing living on the vast horizon of Portland--not a house, not a ship.The coast in those days was not inhabited, and the roads, at thatseason, were not safe.
Whatever may have been the appearance of the weather, the beings whowere going to sail away in the Biscayan urca pressed on the hour ofdeparture all the same. They formed a busy and confused group, in rapidmovement on the shore. To distinguish one from another was difficult;impossible to tell whether they were old or young. The indistinctness ofevening intermixed and blurred them; the mask of shadow was over theirfaces. They were sketches in the night. There were eight of them, andthere were seemingly among them one or two women, hard to recognizeunder the rags and tatters in which the group was attired--clothes whichwere no longer man's or woman's. Rags have no sex.
A smaller shadow, flitting to and fro among the larger ones, indicatedeither a dwarf or a child.
It was a child.