55. CHARLES DICKENS: DAVID COPPERFIELD: TEMPEST

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it.  In these pages, I have seen it growing larger and larger, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its shadow even on my childhood days.

For years it haunted me, in my dreams.  Its fury seemed raging wherever I go; in the still night, in the stormy wind, or on a sea shore.  I am not recalling it; I am seeing it happen again before me.

The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of emigrant ship, my old nurse, Peggoty came up to London, as also her brother and Micawbers.

One evening I was alone with Peggoty and her brother.  Our conversation turned on Ham.  She described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how manfully and quietly he had borne his misfortune.  It was a subject of which she was not tired; and our interest in them never diminishing.

My aunt and I were at that time vacating two cottages at Highgate: I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover.  We had a temporary lodging in Convent Garden.  As I walked home to it, after this evening's conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter to Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on the board of the ship, and thought it would be better to write to her now.  She might desire, after receiving my letter, to send some parting word to me to her unhappy lover.  I ought to give her the opportunity.

I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me to tell her what I have already written in its place in these sheets.  I faithfully repeated it. I have no need to enlarge upon it.  I left it out, to be sent round in the morning; with a line to Mr Peggoty, requesting to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.

I was weaker than I knew then; and not falling asleep until the sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day.  I was roused by the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside.  I felt it in my sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.

"Trot, my dear," she said, when I opened my eyes, "I couldn't make up my mind to disturb you. Mr Peggoty is here; shall he come up?"

I replied yes and he soon appeared.

"Masr Davy," he said when we had shaken hands, "I give Em'ly your letter, sir, and she writ this, heer; and begged fur to ask you read it, and if you see no hurt in it, be so kind to read it."

I opened the letter, and read as follows:

'I have got your message.  Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your kindness to me! 

'I have put your words close to my heart.  I shall keep them till I die.  They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort.  I have prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much.  When I find what you are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.

'Goodbye for ever.  Now, my dear, my friend, goodbye for ever.  In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come to you.  All thanks and blessings.  Farewell even more.'

This, bottled with tears, was the letter.

"May I tell her as you don't see no hurt in it, you will be so kind as take charge on it, Masr Davy?" said Mr Peggoty, when I had read it.

"Unquestionably," said I - but I am thinking -"

"Yes, Masr Davy?"

"I am thinking," said I, "that I will go down again to Yarmouth.  There is time spare for me to go and come back before the ship sails.  My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude, to put this letter of her in his hand, and enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them.  I solemnly accepted his commission, and have to discharge it.  The journey is nothing to me.  I am restless till it is discharged.  I will go down tonight."

Though he dissuaded me, I saw that he was of my mind.  He went round the coach office, and took the box seat for me in the mail.  In the evening I started down the road I had traversed under so many difficulties.

The sky was unusual.  "Don't you think," I asked the coachman, when we were out of London, "a very remarkable sky, I don't remember to have seen one like that."

"Nor I, not equal to it." replied the coachman.  "That's wind, sir.  There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long."

Flying clouds in heaps having the colour of smoke from damp fuel, cast a dim shadow on the streets, and on the buildings on its sides. The moonlight is shy of coming through streaks and holes in clouds gleamed on treetops.  There had been a wind all day, and it was rising with an extraordinary sound. It has increased much with an extraordinary sound.  In another hour, it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.

As the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder and harder.  It increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. It was September and the nights were not short.  The leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop, and we were in apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping guts of rain came up like showers of steel before the storm, and at those times when there was any shelter of tree or lee wall, we were fain to stop, in sheer impossibility of continuing the journey.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder.  I had been in Yarmouth when the seaman said it blew great guns, [1] but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it.  We came to Ipswich [2] very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys.  Some of them, congregating about the inn-yard, while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up.  Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen great trees torn out of earth, and the whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields.  Still there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.

As we struggled on nearer and nearer to the sea from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific.  Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us.  The water was out, over miles and miles of flat the country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us.  When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.  When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that has come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles, and holding people I met, at angry corners.  Coming near the beach, I saw, not only boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind the buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea.

Joining these group I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats.  There was fear, and uncertainty in their eyes. What might happen to those boats? When would their husbands return? Sailors with streaks of gray hair were among the people.  Shaking their head as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners excited and uneasy; children, huddling together and peering into old faces, overstout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from behind some shutter, as if they were surveying an enemy.  The tremendous sea stood before me.  The blinding wind.  The sweeping waves brought sand mixed with gravels to the shore.  The high watery walls came rolling in and tumbled into surf.  They looked as if they would engulf the town.  The receding waves swept back with a hoarse roar.  It seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach.  Some white headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached shore.  Everything seemed to possess the wrath of nature.  Hills of waves change into valleys and valleys are lifted up to hills.  The water shivered and shook the beach.

Not finding Ham among the cluster of people, I made my way to his house.  It was shut.  No-one answered to my knocks.  I went to the yard where he worked.  But he has gone to Lowestoft [3] to attend an immediate work in which he is an expert.  He would be back tomorrow morning, I was informed.

I went back to the inn. I tried to have a nap.  But, in vain.  It was five o'clock in the afternoon.  I sat by the coffee-room fire. Five minutes passed.  The waiter coming to stir the fire told me that some ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads.  Two colliers had gone down with all the hands, a few minutes back, to save it.  Mercy on them and all the sailors, said the water.

The waiter's dismal intelligence brought to me an uneasiness about Ham.  Is he coming back from Lowestoft by sea and lost? I thought.  This grew so strong within me.  I went again to the yard. The boat builder, with his lantern in his hand was locking the yard-gate.  He laughed at my apprehension.  No, sensible person, least of all, Ham Peggotty, would come by sea in such a gale of wind.

I was ashamed, and went back to the inn.  I think the wind was rising.  The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning.  Besides there was a great darkness.  

I could not eat, I could not sit still.  I could not stick to anything.  Something within me tossed up the depth of my memory and made a tumult in them.  Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering sea, Ham were always in the foreground.

My dinner went away almost untasted and I tried to refresh myself with a glass of wine, but in vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire, without losing my consciousness.  When I awoke, I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to awful noises: looked at faces, scenes and figures in the fire.  At last, the ticking of the clock on the wall disturbed me, and I went to my bed.

Some of the servants in the inn had decided to sit up until morning.  Exceedingly weary and heavy was I when I went to bed. But on my bed, my sleep vanished, and I was broad awake. 

I lay there, listening to the wind and water.  I imagined that I heard shrieks out at sea; now that I heard firing of signal guns, and now the fall of houses.  I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing, except the reflections

 in the window-panes of the faint candle, I had left burning.

At length, to escape my restlessness, I hurried on my clothes and went downstairs.  In the large kitchen, the waiters were clustered together, about a table near the door.  A pretty girl who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit, but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their company.  I remained there for some time, and I found their jokes about the colliers who went for rescue operation not palatable. 

I opened the yard gate, and looked into the empty street.  The sand, the sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by, and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again.

There was dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when at length I returned to it.  I was tired now, and getting into bed again, fell into the depths of sleep, and into a dream.  I was engaged with two dear friends at the siege of a town in a rage of connonading.  The thunder of cannons was so loud and incessant, I cannot hear anything until I made a great exertion and awoke.  It was a broad day; eight or nine o'clock; the storm raging; and someone knocking and calling at my door.

"What's the matter?" I cried.

"A wreck! close by!"

I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?"

"A schooner, from Spain or Portugal laden with fruit and wine.  Make haste, sir, if you want to see her!  It's thought, down on the beach, she will go to pieces any moment."

The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes, as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.

Crowds were there before me, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

The wind by this time have lulled a little, but no more sensibly than the connonading I had dreamd of.  The sea was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last.  It swelled, and the height to which the breakers rose, and looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.

In the difficulty of hearing anything, but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and in the utter confusion, and my effort to stand against the weather, I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing, but the foaming heads of waves.  A half dressed boatman, standing next to me, pointed with his bare arm to the left.  O great heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat - which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable - beat the side as it would stave it in.  Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for as the ship, which was broad side on, turned towards us in her rolling.  I plainly caught sight of her people at work with axes, especially one active figure, with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest.  But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water rose from the shore at this moment; the sea sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys into the boiling surge.

The second mast was standing, with the rags of the rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro.  The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again.  I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long.  As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost the active figure with the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind.  Again we lost her, and again she rose.  Two men were gone.  The agony on the shore increased.  Men groaned and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces.  Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be.  I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let lost creatures perish before our eyes.

They were making out to me, in an agitated way - I don't know how, the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to understand - that the lifeboat have been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore; there was nothing left to try.

A new sensation moved the people on the shore, and they part, and Ham came breaking through them to the front.  I ran to him to repeat my appeal for help.  But I saw a terrible determination on his face.  It was the same that I saw on his face the morning after Emily's flight.  And my request to the crowd was not let him stir from where he stands.

Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph the active figure left alone upon the mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind.  "Masr Davy," Ham said, cheerily grasping me by the hands, "if my time is come, it's come.  If it's not, I'll bide it.  Lord above bless you, and bless all!  Mates, make me ready!  I am a-going off!"

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay.  I saw a hurry on the beach, and the men running with ropes, and penetrating into a circle that hid him from me.  Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trousers: a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist; another round his body; and several of the best men holding, at a little distance.

The wreck was breaking up.  She was parting in the middle, and the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread.  Still he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on, not a sailor's cap, but of a finer colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction, and his death knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave it.  His action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to the land.  They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt, blood on his face, he seemed hurriedly to give them some instructions for leaving him more free and was gone as before.

And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam, borne in towards the shore, born on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly.  The distance was nothing, but the power of water and wind made the strife deadly.  At length he neared the wreck.  He was so near, that with one more vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it, - when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken in running to the spot where they were hauling.

The consternation was in every face.  They drew him to my very feet - insensible - dead.  He was carried to the nearest house; and no one preventing me now.  I remained near him.  Every means of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.

"Sir," said he, with tears starting to his weather beaten face, which with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, "will you come over yonder?"

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look.  I asked him, terror stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me:

"Has a body come ashore?"

He said, "yes."

"Do I know it?"

He answered nothing.

But he led me to the shore.  And that part of it where she and I had looked for shells - on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, among the scattered ruins of the home he had wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him at school.

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1. Blow great gun = of the wind, blow very strongly and violently.

2. Ipswich: A port town 82 miles north east of London. Yarmouth is again 53 miles northeast of Ipswich.

Dover is 82 miles east of London. Canterbury is 67 miles east of London. Highgate and Adelphi are within London.

3. Lowestoft: Nine miles south of Yarmouth. 129 miles northeast of London.

End of the chapter.