The True Story Book

As I descended the Bruach-gharbh, Dreadnought stopped and looked up into a pine, then approaching the tree, searched it all round with his nose. I scanned the branches, but could see nothing except an old hawk's nest, which had been disused long ago; and if it had not, I do not understand how it should be interesting to a hound. The dog, however, continued to investigate the stump and stem of the fir, gaze into the branches, turning his head from side to side, and setting up his ears like a cocked-hat. I laid down the buck, and unslung my double gun, and threw a stick at the nest, when out shot a large pine-martin, and, like a squirrel, sprung along the branches from tree to tree, till I brought him to the ground. Dreadnought examined him with a sort of wrinkle in his whiskers, and turned away, and sat down in dignified abstraction; while I remounted the buck, and braced the martin to his feet with the little 'ial-chas,' or foot-straps used for trussing the legs of the roe. We then resumed our path for the ford.

As I descended through the Boat-Shaw, I heard a heavy sound from the water, but when I came out from the birches upon the green bank on its brink, I saw that the river had come down, and was just lipping with the top of the stone, the sight of whose head was the mark for the last possibility of crossing. As I looked upon its contracting ring, I perceived that the stream was still growing; there was no time to be lost, for the alternative now was to go round by the bridge of Daltulich, a circuit of four miles; and I knew that, before I reached the next good ford, the water would be a continuous rapid, probably six feet deep: I decided, therefore, upon trying the chance where I was. Dreadnought, who had gone about thirty yards up the stream to take the deep water in the pool of Craig-Darach, had observed my hesitation with one leg out and one in the water, and was standing on the point of the rock waiting the result. As soon as I made another step he plunged into the river, and in a few moments was rolling on the bank of silver sand thrown up by the back-water upon the opposite side of the river. As I advanced through the stream, he looked at me occasionally, and I at him, and the beautiful smooth sand and green bank upon his side – for by that time I began to wish I was there too. I was then in pretty deep water for a ford, but still some distance from the deepest part; my kilt was floating round me in the boiling water, and the strong eddy, formed by the stream running against my legs, gulped and gushed with increasing weight. I moved slowly and carefully, for the whole ford was filled with large round slippery stones from the size of a sixty-pound shot to a two-hundredweight shell. I stopped to rest, and looked back to the ford mark: it was wholly gone, and I saw only the broad smooth wave of water which slipped over its head. Ten paces more, and I should be through the deepest part. I stepped steadily and rigidly, but I wanted the use of my balancing limbs and the freedom of my breath; for the barrels of the double gun and rifle, which were slung at my back, were passed under my arms to keep them out of the water; and I was also obliged to hold the legs of the buck, which, loaded with the 'wood-cat,' were crossed upon my breast. At every step the round and slidering stones endangered my footing, rendered still more unsteady by the upward pressure of the water. In this struggle the current gave a great gulp, and a wave splashed up over my guns. I staggered downwards with the stream, and could not recover a sure footing for several yards. At last I secured my hold against a large fixed stone, and paused to rest. After a little I made another effort to proceed.

The water was now running above my belt, and at the first step which I made from the stone I found that it deepened abruptly before me. I felt that in six inches more that strong stream would lift me off my legs; and with great difficulty I gained about two yards up the current to ascertain if the depth was continuous, but the bottom still shelved before me, and, as I persisted in attempting it, I was turned round by the stream, the waves were leaping through the deep channel before me, and having no arms to balance my steps, I began to think of the bonnie banks on either side the river. In this jeopardy poor Dreadnought had not been unconcerned; at the first moment of my struggle he had gone down the great stony beach which lay before me, and, sitting down by the water, watched me with great anxiety, and at last began to whine, and whimper, and tremble with agitation. But when he saw me stagger down the stream, he rose, went in up to his knees, howled, pawed the water, and lapped the waves with impatience. Meanwhile I was obliged to come to a rest, with my left foot planted strongly against a stone, for the mere resistance to the pressure of water, which, rushing with a white foam from my side, was sufficient exertion without the weight of the buck and the two guns, which amounted to more than seventy pounds.

After a few moments' pause I made a last effort to reach the east bank; but it was now impossible, and I turned to make an attempt to regain the Tarnaway side. I was at least thirty yards lower down than when I entered the stream, and the water was rushing and foaming all round me; another stagger nearly carried me off my feet, and, in the exertion to keep them, a thick transpiration rose upon my forehead, my ears began to sing, and my head to swim, while, disordered in their balance, the buck and the guns almost strangled me, I looked down the channel; the water was running in a white, broken rapid into the black pool below, and swept with a wide, foaming back-water under the steep rock which turned its force. The soft green bank before me was sleeping beneath the shade of the weeping birches, where bluebells and primroses grew thick in the short smooth turf, and, though they had long shed their blossoms, the bright patches of their clusters were yet visible among the tall foxgloves, which still retained the purple bells upon their tops. The bank looked softer, and greener, and more inviting than ever it had done before; but my eyes grew dim and my limbs faint with that last struggle. I felt for my dirk knife, for a desperate rolling swim for life seemed now inevitable, and, steadying myself in the stream, I cut loose the straps of the buck and the slings of the guns, and retaining them only with my hands, held them ready to let go as soon as I should be taken off my legs. When they were free, I dipped my hand in the water, and laved it over my brow and face. The singing of my ears ceased, and my sight came clear, and I discovered that I had lost my bonnet in the struggle, and distinguished the white cockade dancing like a little 'cailleach' of foam in the vortex of the pool below.

Being now morally relieved from the weight of the roe and guns – though resolved to preserve them to the last – I resumed my attempt for the west bank; but when I reached a similar distance to that which I had gained for the other, I found an equally deep channel before me, and that the diminished water by which I had been encouraged was only the shoaling of a long bank which extended with the stream. I now saw that before I joined my bonnet, which still danced and circled in the pool below, there was only one effort left – to struggle up the stream, and reach the point from which I had taken the water. But this was a desperate attempt; for at every step I had to find a safe footing at the upper side of some stone, and then with all my strength to force myself against the current. But often the stones gave way, and, loosening from their bed, went rolling and rumbling down the rapid, and I was driven back several feet, to recommence the same struggle. The river also was still increasing, and the flat sand, which was dry when I left it, was now a sheet of water. While I was thus wrestling with the stream, I saw Dreadnought enter, not at his usual place in the pool, but at the tail, just above the run of the stream in which I was struggling. He came whimpering over, and crossed about a yard or two above me; but instead of making for the bank, he turned in the water, and swam towards me. The stream, however, was too strong for him, and carried him down. I called and waved to the forest, and he turned and steered for its bank, but did not reach the shelving sand till he was well tumbled in the top of the rapid, out of which he only emerged in time to catch a little back-water, which helped him on to the shore. The attempt of the dog to reach me had passed while I rested: and when he gained the bank, I resumed my effort to make the shallower water.

Dreadnought's eye was turned towards me as he came dripping up the bank, and seeing me move forward, he ran before me to the water's edge, at the right entrance of the ford, whining, and howling, and baying, as if he knew as well as I that it was the place to make for. In a few steps the stones became less slippery, and the bottom more even, and I began to think that I might gain it, when, at the rocky point above, I saw a white mass of foam, loaded with brushwood, sticks, and rubbish, borne along by a ridge of yellow curdling water, at least two feet higher than the stream. I gathered all my strength, and made a struggle for the bank opposite to where I was. The water was already above my belt, and rushing between my arms as I bore up the guns. I felt myself lifted off my legs; again I held the ground. The green bank was only a few yards distant, but the deep water was close below, and the yellow foaming flood above. As I staggered on, I heard it coming down, crumpling up and crackling the dead boughs which it bore along. I stumbled upon a round stone, and nearly fell backward, but it was against the stream which forced me forward. I felt the spray splash over my head: I was nearly blind and deaf. I made a desperate effort with the last strength which I had left, and threw myself gasping on the bank.

Dreadnought sprang forward, jumped over and over me, whined, and kissed my face and hands, and tried to turn me over with his snout, and scratched and pawed me to make me speak; but I could not yet, and gasped, and choked, and felt as if my heart would burst. I lay, dripping and panting, with my arms stretched out on the grass, unable to move, except with the convulsive efforts of my breath. At last I sat up, but I could scarcely see: a thin gauzy cloud was over my eyes, a heavy pressure rung in my ears, my feet still hung in the water, which was now sweeping a wide white torrent from bank to bank, and running with a fierce current through both the pools below. The back-water, where my bonnet had danced, no longer remained; all was carried clear out in one long rush down to the Cluag. 'Benedictum sit nomen Domini!' I thought, as I crossed myself. I stretched out my hand, and plucked the nearest flowers, and smelled their sweet greenwood scent with inexpressible delight. I never thought that flowers looked so beautiful, or had half so much perfume, though they were only the pale wild blossoms of the fading year. I placed them in my breast, and have them still, and never look upon them without repeating —

'DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI AD TE, DOMINE!'

Such were the hazards on the fords of the Findhorn; but even by boat the struggle was sometimes no less arduous, though it enabled us to cross the water at a height otherwise impassable, of which the following passage is an example: —

One evening I was returning with the piper, and the old hound which had accompanied me at the ford. As we descended towards the pool of Cluag, where I had left the coble quietly moored in the morning, Dreadnought frequently turned and looked at me with hanging ears and a heavy cheerless eye; and when we came to the path which led down to the river he stopped, and dropped behind, and followed at my heel, though usually he trotted on before, and instead of waiting for the boat, took the water, which he preferred to the coble. When we came out from the trees upon the steep bank above the river, I understood his altered manner. From rock to rock the stream was running a white, furious, rushing torrent, and the little boat tugging and jibbing on her chain, and swinging and bobbing upon the top of the froth, like the leaves which danced upon the eddy. Dreadnought had heard the sound of the river, and knew what there was at work before us. The boat was moored near the throat of the pool, in the back-water of a little bay, now entirely filled with froth and foam up to the gunwale of the coble, which was defended by a sharp point of rock, from whose breakwater the stream was thrown off in a wild shooting torrent. Within the bay the reaction of the tide formed a quick back-water, which raised the stream without nearly two feet higher than the level within, and at times sucked the boat on to the point, where she was struck in the stem by the gushing stream and sent spinning round at the full swing of her 'tether.'

Donald looked at me. There was no alternative but the bridge of Daltullich, more than four miles about, with two bucks to carry, and ourselves well run since four o'clock in the morning. I stood for some moments considering the chances, and the manifest probability of going down the stream. Immediately after emerging from the little mooring bay there was a terrific rush of water discharged through the narrow throat of the pool, and raised to the centre in a white fierce tumbling ridge, for which the shortness of the pool afforded no allowance for working, while the little back-water, which, in ordinary cases, caught us on the opposite side, and took us into the bank, was lost in a flood, which ran right through the basin like a mill-lead. 'Can you swim, Donald?' said I mechanically. 'Swim, Sir!' said he, who knew how often I had seen him tumbled by the waves both in salt water and fresh. 'Oh yes, I know you can. But I was thinking of that stream.' 'Ougudearbh!' replied Donald: 'But it was myself that never tried it yon way!' 'And what do you think of her?' 'Faith, Thighearna, you know best – but if you try it, I shall not stay behind.'

We had often ridden the water together by day and night, in flood and fair; and, narrow as the pool was, I thought we could get through it. We threw in a broken branch to prove the speed of the current, but it leaped through the plunging water like a greyhound, and was away in a moment down to the fierce white battling vortex of the Scuddach, where there was no salvation for thing alive; a few moments it disappeared in the wild turmoil, and then came up beyond – white and barked, and shivered like a splintered bone. Donald, however, saw that I was going to try the venture, and he was already up the bank unlocking the chain without a word. The bucks were deposited in the stern of the boat, the guns laid softly across them, covered with a plaid, and Dreadnought followed slowly and sternly, and laid himself down with an air as if, like Don Alphonso of Castile, 'the body trembled at the dangers into which the soul was going to carry it.' I took the oars – there were no directions to be given – Donald knew how to cross the pool, and every other where we were used to ferry.

The boat's head was brought round to the stream, for it was necessary to run her into it with the impulse of the back-water to shoot her forward, or she would have been drawn back, stern foremost, into the eddy, where the jaw of the water, over the point of the rock, would have swamped us in an instant. Donald knelt at the bows, and held fast by a light painter till I cried 'Ready!' when the little shallop sprung from the rope, tilted away like a sea-bird, and glided towards the roaring torrent. I looked over my shoulder; Donald was gripping the bows, his teeth set fast, but a gleam of light was in his eye as we plunged headlong into the bursting stream. A blow like the stroke of a mighty wooden hammer lifted the boat into the surf; there was a crack as if her bows were stove in, and she shot shivering through the pool, filled with water to our knees, and sending the spray over us like a sheet. The rocks and trees seemed to fly away; the roaring water spouted and boiled, as it lifted up the boat, which spun round like a leaf, with her starboard gunwale lipping with the waves; but a few seconds swept us through the pool, and we were flying into the mad tumbling thunder of the rapid below. I kept the larboard bow to the stream, and pulled with all my might; but I thought she did not move, the eddy of the great mid-stream seemed to fix her in the ridge of the torrent, and take her along with it; the oars bent like willows to the strain, a boiling gush from below lifted her bows, and threw her gunwale under the froth. I thought we were gone, but I redoubled the last desperate strokes, and we shot out of the foaming ridge towards the opposite bank, rolling, and leaping, and plunging into the throat of the rapid. Donald sat like a tiger ready for the spring, and as we neared the shore, bounded on the grass with the chain. This checked the speed of the boat; I unshipped the oars, and sprung out just as the coble came crash alongside the bank, then swirling round, her head flew out to the stream, dragging Donald along the grass after her. I jumped into the water, and caught hold of the bow; for two minutes the struggle was doubtful and she continued to drag us along: at last Donald reached the stump of a tree, and, running round it, made a turn of the chain and brought her up.

We sat down, and wiped our faces, and looked at each other in silence. The incredibly short space of time which had elapsed since we stood on the 'other side,' with the mysterious future before us, and now to be sitting on 'this,' and call it the past, was like a dream. The tumult, the flying shoot, the concussion at parting and arriving, seemed like an explosion, as if we had been blown up and thrown over. 'I don't think that boat will ever go back again, Thighearna,' said Donald. 'Why not?' 'Did you not feel her twist, and hear her split, when we came into the burst of the stream?' replied Donald. 'I don't know,' said I; 'I felt and heard a great many things, but there was no time to think what they were.' 'Oh, it was not thinking that I was,' answered Donald; 'but the water came squirting up in my face through her ribs, and I held on by both bows, expecting at every stroke to see them open and let me through.' We got up and examined the boat's bottom; there was a yawning rent from the stem to the centre, and part of the torn planks lapped one over the other by the twist, the bows being only held together by the iron band which bound the gunwale.

THE STORY OF GRACE DARLING

A CAREFUL reader of the 'Times' on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 1838, might have found, if he cared to look, a certain paragraph in an obscure corner headed 'The Wreck of the "Forfarshire."' It is printed in the small type of that period; the story is four days old, for in those days news was not flashed from one end of the country to the other; and, moreover, the story is very incomplete.

On the evening of Wednesday, September 5, the steamship 'Forfarshire' left Hull for Dundee, carrying a cargo of iron, and having some forty passengers on board. The ship was only eight years old; the master, John Humble, was an experienced seaman; and the crew, including firemen and engineers, was complete. But even before the vessel left the dock one passenger at least had felt uneasily that something was wrong – that there was an unusual commotion among officials and sailors. Still, no alarm was given, and at dusk the vessel steamed prosperously down the Humber.

The next day (Thursday, the 6th) the weather changed, the wind blowing N.N.W., and increasing towards midnight to a perfect gale. On the morning of Friday, the 7th, a sloop from Montrose, making for South Shields, saw a small boat labouring hard in the trough of the sea. The Montrose vessel bore down on it, and in spite of the state of the weather managed to get the boat's crew on board.

They were nine men in all, the sole survivors, as they believed themselves to be, of the crew and passengers of the 'Forfarshire,' which was then lying a total wreck on Longstone, one of the outermost of the Farne Islands.

It was a wretched story they had to tell of lives thrown away through carelessness and negligence, unredeemed, as far as their story went, by any heroism or unselfish courage.

While still in the Humber, and not twenty miles from Hull, it was found that one of the boilers leaked, but the captain refused to put about. The pumps were set to work to fill the boiler, and the vessel kept on her way, though slowly, not passing between the Farne Islands and the mainland till Thursday evening. It was eight o'clock when they entered Berwick Bay; the wind freshened and was soon blowing hard from the N.N.W. The motion of the vessel increased the leakage, and it was now found that there were holes in all the three boilers. Two men were set to work the pumps, one or two of the passengers also assisting, but as fast as the water was pumped into the boilers it poured out again. The bilge was so full of steam and boiling water that the firemen could not get to the fires. Still the steamer struggled on, labouring heavily, for the sea was running very high. At midnight they were off St. Abbs Head, when the engineers reported that the case was hopeless; the engines had entirely ceased to work. The ship rolled helplessly in the waves, and the rocky coast was at no great distance. They ran up the sails fore and aft to try and keep her off the rocks, and put her round so that she might run before the wind, and as the tide was setting southward she drifted fast with wind and tide. Torrents of rain were falling, and in spite of the wind there was a thick fog. Some of the passengers were below, others were on deck with crew and captain, knowing well their danger.

About three the noise of breakers was distinctly heard a little way ahead, and at the same time a light was seen away to the left, glimmering faintly through the darkness. It came home to the anxious crew with sickening certainty that they were being driven on the Farne Islands. [Now these islands form a group of desolate whinstone rocks lying off the Northumbrian coast. They are twenty in number, some only uncovered at low tide, and all offering a rugged iron wall to any ill-fated boat that may be driven upon them. Even in calm weather and by daylight seamen are glad to give them a wide berth.]

The master of the 'Forfarshire' in this desperate strait attempted to make for the channel which runs between the Islands and the mainland. It was at best a forlorn chance; it was hopeless here; the vessel refused to answer her helm! On she drove in the darkness, nearer and nearer came the sound of the breakers; the fear and agitation on board the boat grew frantic. Women wailed and shrieked; the captain's wife clung to him, weeping; the crew lost all instinct of discipline, and thought of nothing but saving their skins.

Between three and four the shock came – a hideous grinding noise, a strain and shiver of the whole ship, and she struck violently against a great rock. In the awful moment which followed five of the crew succeeded in lowering the larboard quarter-boat and pushed off in her. The mate swung himself over the side, and also reached her; and a passenger rushing at this moment up from the cabin and seeing the boat already three yards from the ship, cleared the space with a bound and landed safely in her, though nearly upsetting her by his weight. She righted, and the crew pulled off with the desperate energy of men rowing for their lives. The sight of agonised faces, the shrieks of the drowning were lost in the darkness and in the howling winds, and the boat with the seven men on board was swept along by the rapidly-flowing tide.

Such was the story the exhausted boat's crew told next morning to their rescuers on board the Montrose sloop. And the rest of the ship's company – what of them? Had they all gone down by the island crag with never a hand stretched out to help them?

Hardly had the boat escaped from the stranded vessel when a great wave struck her on the quarter, lifted her up bodily, and dashed her back on the rock. She struck midships on the sharp edge and broke at once into two pieces. The after part was washed clean away with about twenty passengers clinging to it, the captain and his wife being among them. A group of people, about nine in number, were huddled together near the bow; they, with the whole fore part of the ship, were lifted right on to the rock. In the fore cabin was a poor woman, Mrs. Dawson, with a child on each arm. When the vessel was stranded on the rock the waves rushed into the exposed cabin, but she managed to keep her position, cowering in a corner. First one and then the other child died from cold and exhaustion, and falling from the fainting mother were swept from her sight by the waves, but the poor soul herself survived all the horrors of the night.