Battles with the Sea, Robert Michael Ballantyne [ebook reader macos txt] 📗

moment as they observe the waving handkerchiefs and hats which tell that a hearty cheer has greeted the rescued sailor boy.

There is little tendency now to hesitation on the part of the women, and what remains is put to flight by certain ominous groans and creakings, that tell of the approaching dissolution of the ship.

One after another they are lifted tenderly into the lifebuoy, and drawn to land in safety, amid the congratulations and thanksgivings of many of those who have assembled to witness their deliverance. It is truly terrible work, this dragging of tender women through surf and thundering waves; but it is a matter of life or death, and even the most delicate of human beings become regardless of small matters in such circumstances.

But the crew have yet to be saved, and there are still two women on board--one of them with a baby! The mother--a thin, delicate woman-- positively refuses to go without her babe. The captain knows full well that, if he lets her take it, the child will be torn from her grasp to a certainty; he therefore adopts a seemingly harsh, but really merciful, course. He assists her into the buoy, takes a quick turn of a rope round her to keep her in, snatches the child from her arms, and gives the signal to haul away. With a terrible cry the mother holds out her arms as she is dragged from the bulwarks, then struggles to leap out, but in vain. Another wild shriek, with the arms tossed upwards, and she falls back as if in a fit.

"Poor thing!" mutters the captain, as he gazes pitifully at the retreating figure; "but you'll soon be happy again. Come, Dick, get ready to go wi' the child next trip."

Dick Shales is a huge hairy seaman, with the frame of an elephant, the skin of a walrus, and the tender heart of a woman! He glances uneasily round.

"There's another lady yet, sir."

"You obey orders," says the captain, sternly.

"I never disobeyed orders yet, sir, and I won't do it now," says Dick, taking the baby into his strong arms and buttoning it up tenderly in his capacious bosom.

As he speaks, the lifebuoy arrives again with a jovial sort of swing, as if it had been actually warmed into life by its glorious work, and had come out of its own accord.

"Now, then, lads; hold on steady!" says Dick, getting in, "for fear you hurt the babby. This is the first time that Dick Shales has appeared on any stage wotsomediver in the character of a woman!"

Dick smiles in a deprecating manner at his little joke as they haul him off the wreck. But Dick is wrong, and his mates feel this as they cheer him, for many a time before that had he appeared in woman's character when woman's work had to be done.

The captain was right when he muttered that the mother would be "soon happy again." When Dick placed the baby--wet, indeed, but well--in its mother's arms, she knew a kind of joy to which she had been a stranger before--akin to that joy which must have swelled the grateful heart of the widow of Nain when she received her son back from the dead.

The rest of the work is soon completed. After the last woman is drawn ashore the crew are quickly rescued--the captain, of course, like every true captain, last of all. Thus the battle is waged and won, and nothing is left but a shattered wreck for wind and waves to do their worst upon.

The rescued ones are hurried off to the nearest inn, where sympathetic Christian hearts and hands minister to their necessities. These are directed by the local agent for that admirable institution, the Shipwrecked Fishermen's and Mariners' Society--a society which cannot be too highly commended, and which, it is well to add, is supported by voluntary subscriptions.

Meanwhile the gallant men of the coastguard, rejoicing in the feeling that they have done their duty so well and so successfully, though wet and weary from long exposure and exertion, pack the rocket apparatus into its cart, run it back to its place of shelter, to be there made ready for the next call to action, and then saunter home, perchance to tell their wives and little ones the story of the wreck and rescue, before lying down to take much-needed and well-earned repose.

Let me say in conclusion that hundreds of lives are saved in this manner _every_ year. It is well that the reader should bear in remembrance what I stated at the outset, that the Great War is unceasing. Year by year it is waged. There is no prolonged period of rest. There is no time when we should forget this great work; but there are times when we should call it specially to remembrance, and bear it upon our hearts before Him whom the wind and sea obey.

When the wild storms of winter and spring are howling; when the frost is keen and the gales are laden with snowdrift; when the nights are dark and long, and the days are short and grey--then it is that our prayers should ascend and our hands be opened, for then it is that hundreds of human beings are in deadly peril on our shores, and then it is that our gallant lifeboat and rocket-men are risking life and limb while fighting their furious Battles with the Sea.

THE END.
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Publication Date: 07-02-2010

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