A LIFE POEM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4907, 24 March 1894, Page 2

A LIFE POEM.

!f BT HALL CAINE.] (Pall Mall Budget.) Charlie was the cox. of our Peel lifebest. We buried him to-day. A braver ' eailor never sailed the sea. Pour years ; ago, in a terrific gale, a ship from Norway, i the ' St George, came dead on for the : wildest part of pur coast, the fierce.head- | laud that lies back of the old Castle Rock. ! The sound-Bignal was fired, and Charlie t and his bfave comrades went ont "to her. She was reeling on the top of a trej mendous sea, and there was no: coming j near to her side. It was an awful task to i get the crew aboard the lifeboat, but j Charlie Hayed every soul and lost not a ■ hand of hia own. When the "traveller" was rigged and the "breeches" were reody, and the crew of the doomed ship i were at the bulwarks waiting to leave her, ] Charlie sang out over the clamour of the I sea, " How many are you ? " " Twenty- ' four," came back aa answer. Then Charlie : cried, "I can see only twenty -three." { " The other man is hurt. He's dying. No | use saving him," the Norseman shouted. I " You'll bring the dying man on deck I before a soul of yoa leaves the ship," oried Charlie. There was a woman among I them, and when the carpenter came scudding down the rope be had a canvas bag on his back. "No tools here," shouted j Charlie. " It's tho ohild," eaid the man. j Tho captain came next. He had left j everything else behind him— his money, i his instruments, his clothes, his sh_p,but j out of his pocket there peeped the head of < a baby's doll. Ifc was a thrilling rescue, J but to see it in all ita splendour you must have a drop of Manx blood in yon. Our forefathers were from Norway, our first Norse king was named Gorry. He landed on this island, not far from this spot. And now hia children's children rescue from the sea the children's children of the kinsmen be left at home. Most of our men had Norse namea. One of them was a Gorry — lineal descendant, beyoud doubt, of the old sea-king. The Norwegian Government felt the touch of great things in this incident. It was not merely that the bravery of the rescue fired tbeir gratitude. Something called to them from that deep place where blood answers to the cry of blood. Thoy sent medals for Charlie and his crew, and the governor of tho island distributed them inside the roofless walls of the old castle of the Black Dog. It was like grasping bands with the past across the space of a thousand years. anotAee brave besoue. The other day we had another great wind and another brave rescue. The sun had gone down overnight in a sullen red, very fierce and angry in his setting, and out of the black north-east the storm had cofna up while we Blept.' In the heavy gray of the dawn the sound-Bignal fired its double shot over the town. A Welsh schooner, which had run in for shelter during the dark hours, was riding to an anchor in the bay and flying her ensign for help. The sea was terrific— a elaty gray, streaked with white foam, like quartz veins. It was coming over the breakwater in sheets that hid it. Sometimes it waa flying in clouds to tbe top of the round tower of the castle. The white sea-fowl were like dark specks darting through it, bat no human ear could hear the cry of their thousand throats in the thunderous quake of tbe breakers on the cavernous rocks. A crowd of men answered the call, and there was no shortness of bands to man the lifeboat. The big slow-legged fellows who had been idling on the quay tha day before, when tbe sea wos calm, were struggling, chafing and quarrelling to go out on it now that it was in etorm, for the blood of the old Vikings is in them Btill. It was a Splendid rescue. The crew of the Welshman were brought ashore. Then the abandoned schooner rode three hours longer in the gale; and a hundred men stood and watcned her, talking of other winds and other wrecks, and of Peel boys who were out on the Bea. -At last the ship parted her cables, and went rolling like a blinded porpoise dead on for the jagged coast. Seven men took an open fishingboat and went after her, and we climbed the Head to watch them. The wind smote ub there like an invisible wing, sometimes swirling us out of our course, often bringing us to our knees, whipping our ears with our hair like rods. Sheets of Epray were coming up to us from below and running along tbe cliffs like driven rain. The sun, which had broken in fierce brilliance from a green rent in the sky, made rainbows in the flying foam. From the heights we watched the seven men and the open boat. They rose and fell, appeared and disappeared, but they overtook the Welshman before she bad drifted on to the coast, boarded her with difficulty, let go another anchor and made her tight. There waa nothing elee to do, j for she was disabled, and her sails wera j torn to shreds. Tho new anchor held the ! ship an hour longer, and then there wbb no holp left for her. Sho was within a hundred feet of the rocks, and she fell on them with the gcoan of a living creature. The instant her head wa3 down the white lions of the eea leapt over her, the water | swirled through her bulwarks and plunged | down ber batch; her helm was unshipped, I her sails were torn from their gaskets, j and the floating homo wherein men had j sailed .and sung acd slept, and laughed and je3ted, was a broken wreck, in the heavy wallo wings of the waves. " WASN'T HE COX. ?" When it was over, and we were coming back drenched through and green with the drift of the eea-foam caked thick on our faces, some of us began to think of j Charlie. He had not been there that day. I A year or more ago, in the prime of a j splendid manhood, he was otricken by • heart disease. He kept a good heart, ! nevertheless, and by indomitable will held on for some timo. Fir3t a little work, then no work at all, only a sail now and then if the sea wa3 calm, butof late hardly ever well enough to take the open air. : The old hulk of his poor body was anchored i deep, but she was parting her cables at last. Charlie lay dying while this Becond rescue was being made. He had not answered tbe signal for the lifeboat, but he ; had hoard it in the first light of morning, and tbey could not keep him in bed. The ! soul of the old eea- dog leapt to the call, '■ but his ailing body held hipi down. He i wanted to go .out. Wasn't he cox. ? Had ; the boat ever gone out without him? I They had difficulty to keep bim from j tue attempt. His house is one of the little ! places like children's Noah's Arks which I dot the line of this hungry shore. He could hear everything and see a good deal. Often ho could hardly keep himself from crying and shouting aloud. In spirit he was out oa tbo boiling . Burf, dipping, rising, stooping, going over, righting again, clambering back, exalting, glorying, getting nearer the ohip, standing off her, rigging tbe " traveller," and fetching the men aboard in the " breeches." And then away from the rolling hulk, aud sing ho ! my lads, and haul through the white waves for home. But his poor dying body was down on the bed and his face was aickly-scarlot. Charlie's volcanic soul did not go off to the deep of deeps on the big breakers and through the wild noises of the Btorm. He died later. After the great wind there cams a great calm. The air was quiet and full of odour of seaweed ; banks of seaweed were on tho shore, and the broken Bchooner was covered with brown wrack,

i like any rock :of the ccaßt; the sky mi ] round as tho intido of a ehell, and p*_!«j pink like the shadow cf flame ; tha water wa9 smooth, and land and Bea lay like a sleeping child. In tbis broad and steady weather our little town was startled by the ; double shot again.' We Vent to the win- ■ dows in surprise, and saw the red flag over | the rocket-houee, which i 3 the signal'' for 1 the lifeboat. Charlie was dead. He had ! just breathed his last, and hia rngged i comrades—who know nothing of poetry, but are poeta, nevertheless, to the deepest | grain of them — had ran up the flag mast* j high (not half-mast) as signal to tho Great Cox. of all that here was a soul in the troubled waters of death waiting for the everlasting lifeboat to bear him to tbe eternal shore. THE ENEMY OF THB SEA. The sea takes some of our bravest and best. Charlie it did not take. Not so Bnreisit that he who liveß by the eword will perish by the sword, aa that he who baulks the Bea, the sea will surely hare for itß prey. Charlie had battled, with tha giant time and again, but he has gone to sleep on the Jand* We buried him in the little, cemetery looking on ."to the gray water that was more than half his element. The funeral was beautiful ih its old eimI plicity. Firat.a.hymn at the door of the house in the little alley byj the beach, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," with the coffin on the ground and all standing | round ; the sea quiet, hardly a breeze as soft as human breath moving its tranquil Burface, the deadly rival in its everlasting coming and going making no triumphant clamour now the sea-warrior was down. Then the companions of his dangers, the crew of his boat, a group of "stalwart fellows who have never known what it is to be afraid, carrying him up the hill, shoulder high, each in hia red stocking-cap and his lifebelt, emblems of how they had fought the eea and beaten it. There were some of us whose eyes were wet, but if these brave boys wept at all it was only for the h'elplesß little ones left behind. Por Charlie they did not weep. His spirit is not dead for them, it cannot die. When brave deeds bave to be done they will ccc its light, like a beacon that does not fail, over the mountains of the fiercest storm; they will hear its voice above the thunder of the loudest waves. A full moon is shining to-night on the place of Charlie's rest, and if the old Norse story iB true, that while the body lies Jin Bight of the 'sea the spirit Uyeß in the winds above it, Charlie is not done with hiß old enemy yet. He will come baok to this sea-bound land in warning whispers of tbe mighty and mysterious power that lurta men to itself.