The Complete Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell
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Mary shivered, and her heart sank within her. Still now they evidently were making progress. Then the steersman pointed to a rippling line in the river only a little way off, and the men disturbed Mary, who was watching the ships that lay in what appeared to her the open sea, to get at their sails.
She gave a little start, and rose. Her patience, her grief, and perhaps her silence, had begun to win upon the men.
"Yon second to the norrard is the John Cropper. Wind's right now, and sails will soon carry us alongside of her."
He had forgotten (or perhaps he did not like to remind Mary) that the same wind which now bore their little craft along with easy, rapid motion, would also be favourable to the John Cropper.
But as they looked with straining eyes, as if to measure the decreasing distance that separated them from her, they saw her sails unfurled and flap in the breeze, till, catching the right point, they bellied forth into white roundness, and the ship began to plunge and heave, as if she were a living creature, impatient to be off.
"They're heaving anchor!" said one of the boatmen to the others, as the faint musical cry of the sailors came floating over the waters that still separated them.
Full of the spirit of the chase, though as yet ignorant of Mary's motives, the men sprang to hoist another sail. It was fully as much as the boat could bear, in the keen, gusty east wind which was now blowing, and she bent, and laboured, and ploughed, and creaked upbraidingly as if tasked beyond her strength; but she sped along with a gallant swiftness.
They drew nearer, and they heard the distant "ahoy" more clearly. It ceased. The anchor was up, and the ship was away.
Mary stood up, steadying herself by the mast, and stretched out her arms, imploring the flying vessel to stay its course by that mute action, while the tears streamed down her cheeks. The men caught up their oars and hoisted them in the air, and shouted to arrest attention.
They were seen by the men aboard the larger craft; but they were too busy with all the confusion prevalent in an outward-bound vessel to pay much attention. There were coils of ropes and seamen's chests to be stumbled over at every turn; there were animals, not properly secured, roaming bewildered about the deck, adding their pitiful lowings and bleatings to the aggregate of noises. There were carcases not cut up, looking like corpses of sheep and pigs rather than like mutton and pork; there were sailors running here and there and everywhere, having had no time to fall into method, and with their minds divided between thoughts of the land and the people they had left, and the present duties on board ship; while the captain strove hard to procure some kind of order by hasty commands given in a loud, impatient voice, to right and left, starboard and larboard, cabin and steerage.
As he paced the deck with a chafed step, vexed at one or two little mistakes on the part of the mate, and suffering himself from the pain of separation from wife and children, but showing his suffering only by his outward irritation, he heard a hail from the shabby little river-boat that was striving to overtake his winged ship. For the men fearing that, as the ship was now fairly over the bar, they should only increase the distance between them, and being now within shouting range, had asked of Mary her more particular desire.
Her throat was dry; all musical sound had gone out of her voice; but in a loud harsh whisper she told the men her errand of life and death, and they hailed the ship.
"We're come for one William Wilson, who is wanted to prove an alibi in Liverpool Assize Courts to-morrow. James Wilson is to be tried for a murder, done on Thursday night, when he was with William Wilson. Any thing more, missis?" asked the boat-man of Mary, in a lower voice, and taking his hands down from his mouth.
"Say I'm Mary Barton. Oh, the ship is going on! Oh, for the love of Heaven, ask them to stop."
The boatman was angry at the little regard paid to his summons, and called out again; repeating the message with the name of the young woman who sent it, and interlarding it with sailors' oaths.
The ship flew along—away,—the boat struggled after.
They could see the captain take his speaking-trumpet. And oh! and alas! they heard his words.
He swore a dreadful oath; he called Mary a disgraceful name; and he said he would not stop his ship for any one, nor could he part with a single hand, whoever swung for it.
The words came in unpitying clearness with their trumpet-sound. Mary sat down, looking like one who prays in the death-agony. For her eyes were turned up to that Heaven, where mercy dwelleth, while her blue lips quivered, though no sound came. Then she bowed her head and hid it in her hands.
"Hark! yon sailor hails us."
She looked up. And her heart stopped its beating to listen.
William Wilson stood as near the stern of the vessel as he could get; and unable to obtain the trumpet from the angry captain, made a tube of his own hands.
"So help me God, Mary Barton, I'll come back in the pilot-boat, time enough to save the life of the innocent."
"What does he say?" asked Mary wildly, as the voice died away in the increasing distance, while the boatmen cheered, in their kindled sympathy with their passenger.
"What does he say?" repeated she. "Tell me. I could not hear."
She had heard with her ears, but her brain refused to recognise the sense.
They repeated his speech, all three speaking at once, with many comments; while Mary looked at them and then at the vessel now far away.
"I don't rightly know about it," said she, sorrowfully. "What is the pilot-boat?"
They told her, and she gathered the meaning out of the sailors' slang which enveloped it. There was a hope still, although so slight and faint.
"How far does the pilot go with the ship?"
To different distances they said. Some pilots would go as far as Holyhead for the chance of the homeward-bound vessels; others only took the ships over the Banks. Some captains were more cautious than others, and the pilots had different ways. The wind was against the homeward bound vessels, so perhaps the pilot aboard the John Cropper would not care to go far out.
"How soon would he come back?"
There were three boatmen, and three opinions, varying from twelve hours to two days. Nay, the man who gave his vote for the longest time, on having his judgment disputed, grew stubborn, and doubled the time, and thought it might be the end of the week before the pilot-boat came home.
They began disputing, and urging reasons; and Mary tried to understand them; but independently of their nautical language, a veil seemed drawn over her mind, and she had no clear perception of any thing that passed. Her very words seemed not her own, and beyond her power of control, for she found herself speaking quite differently to what she meant.
One by one her hopes had fallen away, and left her desolate; and though a chance yet remained, she could no longer hope. She felt certain it, too, would fade and vanish. She sank into a kind of stupor. All outward objects harmonised with her despair.
The gloomy leaden sky,—the deep, dark waters below, of a still heavier shade of colour,—the cold, flat yellow shore in the distance, which no ray lightened up,—the nipping, cutting wind.
She shivered with her depression of mind and body.
The sails were taken down, of course, on the return to Liverpool, and the progress they made, rowing and tacking, was very slow. The men talked together, disputing about the pilots at first, and then about matters of local importance, in which Mary would have taken no interest at any time, and she gradually became drowsy; irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay couched on a rough heap of sails, rope, and tackle of various kinds.
The measured beat of the waters against the sides of the boat, and the musical boom of the more distant waves, were more lulling than silence, and she slept sound.
Once she opened her eyes heavily, and dimly saw the old gray,