Flower of the Gorse

"And be swept by an occasional wave from stem to stern?"

"I've heard of such things," grinned Peridot.

"And very uncomfortable things they are too. Yvonne, you must decide. Shall we take the rough passage, or hire the hotel auto?"

Yvonne rounded her eyes at her father, and stepped on board the Hirondelle.

He laughed. "That settles it!" he cried. "'Of Christian souls more have been wrecked on shore than ever were lost at sea.' But I warn you, my merry adventuress. Before half an hour has passed you may be ready to cry with honest old Gonzalo in 'The Tempest,' 'Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything,' obviously having the coast of Finistère in his mind."

The behavior of the maritime folk of Le Pouldu showed that there was an element of risk in the voyage. Knots of fishermen watched Peridot's preparations with a professional eye, and spat approval when he cast loose a small jibsail. A few carried interest so far that they climbed the seaward cliff to watch the boat's progress across the Basse Persac and Basse an Hiss, the two nearest shallows on the homeward line across the Anse du Pouldu.

The Hirondelle passed the bar of the Laita quickly and safely. A sea that would have smothered her in churning water broke within a boat's length. After that escape she made a drier passage than her occupants expected. She was abreast of Douélan, and Yvonne was listening to the thunder of the Atlantic on the black reef that stretches from Kerlogal Mill to Les Cochons de Beg Morg, while her eyes were watching the changing bearings of the church spires of Moëlan and Clohars, when a shout from Peridot recalled her wandering thoughts.

"There's a steam yacht out there, making heavy weather," he said.

Ingersoll had evidently noted the other vessel already, because he had gone into the cabin – not the cubbyhole of a sardine boat, but the hold converted into a saloon fitted with a table screwed to the deck, and four comfortable bunks – and reappeared with a pair of binoculars. From that moment all eyes were fixed on the newcomer.

At a guess she might be coming from Brest to Lorient, because it was safe to assume that her Captain was not a fool, and he must have started the day's run before the change of wind. It must remembered that the very conditions that helped the five-ton Hirondelle were the worst possible for the sixty- or seventy-ton stranger, hard driven into a head sea whipped by a fierce wind. She had shaped a course outside l'Isle Verte, and was well clear of the Ar Gazek shallow when first sighted by those on board the Hirondelle. The tidal stream was running strongly there, and Yvonne with difficulty repressed a cry of dismay when the yacht's bare masts and white funnel vanished completely in a cloud of spray.

"If that fellow has any sense, he'll turn while he is able, and make for Concarneau," said Peridot, as the spume dissipated, and the stricken vessel's spars came into view again.

"Perhaps he doesn't know this coast. Can we signal him?" inquired the girl.

"He wouldn't take any notice of a fishing boat. The skipper of a ten-centime steam yacht thinks more of himself than the commander of an Atlantic liner. Of course he should make Lorient tonight – if he understands the lights."

The self-confident Peridot seldom qualified his words: now he had twice spoken with an if. Yvonne hauled herself forward, and joined her father and Tollemache.

"Peridot thinks that the vessel out there may get into difficulties," she said. "I suggested that we should signal her; but he says she would pay no heed."

"What sort of signal?"

"To turn back – Concarneau for choice."

"Let's try, anyhow. Lorry, you'll find a codebook in the chart locker, and flags in the one beneath. Look for 'Recommend change of course' or something of the sort, and the Concarneau code letters. Get the necessary flags, and we'll run 'em up."

Peridot, who missed nothing, understood Tollemache's quick descent into the cabin. His shout reached father and daughter clearly.

"They're signaling from the Brigneau station already. It'll do no harm if we give him a tip too."

During the next ten minutes the situation remained unchanged, save that yacht and fishing boat neared each other rapidly, the Hirondelle traveling three kilometers to the yacht's one, while lines of flags, each identical – whereat Tollemache winked at Yvonne and preened himself – fluttered from signal station and mast. The yacht disregarded these warnings, and pressed on.

Ingersoll was watching her through the glasses; but Yvonne's keen vision hardly needed such aid.

"They must have seen both signals," she said. "There are two men on the bridge. What a big man one of them is! Can you make out her name, Dad?"

"No. I've been trying to; but the seas pouring over the fore part render the letters indistinct. You have a look. Mind you brace yourself tight against that stay."

He handed her the binoculars, and Yvonne lost a few seconds in adjusting the focus.

"The first letter is an S," she announced. "There are six. The last one is an A. Oh, what a blow that sea must have given her! It pitched on board just beneath the bridge. Why, what's the matter? She is swinging round!"

The girl was sufficiently versed in the ways of the sea to realize that no shipmaster would change course in that manner, nor attempt such a maneuver at the instant his craft was battling against hundreds of tons of water in motion.

"Gars!" yelled Peridot excitedly. "She's broken down – shaft snapped, or propeller gone!"

At once the fierce and thrilling struggle had become a disaster. The yacht was drifting broadside on, utterly at the mercy of wind and tide. Unless a miracle happened, she would be ground to matchwood on that rock-bound coast within a few minutes. Unhappily she had gained considerable speed in the direction where destruction awaited her before her crew could let go the anchor. The agonized watchers from shore and boat knew when a fluke caught in some crevice of the rocks buried twelve fathoms deep, because the vessel's bows were brought up against the sea with a jerk. Then she fell away again. The cable couldn't stand the strain. It had parted.

"Good God!" groaned Ingersoll. "Every soul on board will be drowned before our eyes!"

Yvonne could not speak. Neither could she see. She was blinded with tears. The suddenness of the affair was appalling. At one instant she had been following a fascinating fight between man and the elements, a fight in which man was gaining ground yard by yard. Now by some trick of Fate man was delivered, bound and crippled, to become the sport of savage and relentless enemies. She heard her father shouting to Peridot:

"Bear a couple of points to port. They may lower a boat."

"No use," came the answer. "Better crack on. They'll strike on Les Verrés. We may pick up one or two in the channel if they wear life belts."

Tollemache had leaped down into the cabin. He was out on deck again now, bareheaded, having discarded oilskin coat and sou'wester. A cork jacket was strapped round his tall, alert body. If any life could be snatched back from the abyss, Tollemache might be trusted not to spare himself in the effort. In that moment of stress the cheery, devil-may-care American artist had become a calm, clear-headed man of action. He looked almost heroic, standing on the sloping deck forward, with one sinewy, brown-skinned hand clasping a mast-hoop, and the other thrust into a pocket of his Norfolk jacket. By a queer trick of memory Yvonne was reminded of her fright when she saw Lorry clinging to the rings of Sainte Barbe's tower. He had come through that ordeal unscathed.

Would he conquer in this far more dreadful test? There he could depend on his own taut muscles and iron nerve. Here he was at the mercy of circumstances. Still, it was helpful to see Lorry's fingers clenched on a ring. Somehow it seemed to offer good augury.

CHAPTER III

THE WRECK

There were brave hearts, too, on board the vessel now seemingly doomed to utter destruction. Each of her two masts carried canvas, and when the cable parted a ready command had evidently sent the crew racing to cast loose both sails from their lashings. But the very trimness and tautness of everything on board proved the yacht's final undoing. Knives were brought into play, and the foresail was hoisted within a few seconds. The yacht answered her helm promptly. There seemed to be a real chance that she might haul into the wind and clear the black fangs of Les Verrés, in which case she would either run into the small estuary at Brigneau, or at the worst beach herself on the strip of sand there.

At that moment the occupants of the Hirondelle saw her name, the Stella, and they were on the point of breaking into a frantic cheer of relief when the unlucky craft crashed into a submerged rock, swung broadside on, and was saved from turning turtle only by another rock which stove her in amidships.

"Ah, Les Verrés have caught her! I thought they would. God help those poor fellows!"

It was Peridot who spoke, and the mere fact that he had abandoned hope sounded the requiem of the Stella and all her company.

Then indeed her plight was like to have passed beyond human aid. She was lodged on the outer fringe of an unapproachable reef, whence a rapidly rising tide would lift her at any minute. Being built of steel, she would sink forthwith, because her bows were crushed and plates started below the load line. She carried four boats; but, with the ingenuity of malice that the sea often displays in its unbridled fury, the two to port were crushed to splinters when she heeled over, and those to starboard, swinging inward on their davits, filled instantly, since the waves poured in cascades over the hull, as though the mighty Atlantic was concentrating all its venom on that one tiny adversary.

The marvel was that no one was swept overboard. Nothing could have saved the men on deck had the Stella lurched on to her beam ends without warning; but the fleeting interval while she was being carried round on the pivot of her fore part enabled them to guard against the expected shock. Nine figures were visible, two standing on the port rails of the bridge, and the others on the deck rails, every man having braced his shoulders against the deck itself. Masts, funnel, and upper saloon were practically vertical with the plane of the sea, and the hull quivered and moved under the assault of each wave. Yet the very injuries that would swamp the vessel instantly when she rolled into deep water now gave her a brief lease of life. The rocks that pierced the hull held her fast. Her plight resembled that of some poor wretch stabbed mortally who breathes and groans in agony, only to die when the knife that causes his distress is withdrawn.

The horror of the sight brought a despairing cry to Yvonne's lips. "Peridot, Peridot, can nothing be done?" she shrieked, turning to the Breton sailor as though, at his prayer, the sky might open and Providence send relief.

The boat was now nearly abreast of the wreck, and running free before the wind. The girl's frantic appeal seemed to arouse the three men from a stupor of helplessness.

"Look out, everybody!" shouted Peridot. "We're going head on."

It was a dangerous maneuver in a heavy sea; but fortune favored the Hirondelle in so far that no mountainous wave struck her quarter as she veered round. All were equally alive to the possibility of disaster. Ingersoll, though he uttered no word till the boat had reversed her course, was almost moved to protest.

"We are powerless," he said, coming aft to make his voice audible. "Even if some of the yacht's people are swept clear of the reef, they will be smothered long before they drift in this direction. The thing was so unexpected that none of them has secured a cork jacket, or even a life belt."

"There is one chance in a hundred, Monsieur," said Peridot, speaking so that Ingersoll alone could hear. "The point is – will you take it? You and Monsieur Tollemache would agree, of course. Will you risk Mademoiselle's life as well?"

"A chance? What sort of chance?"

"I know every inch of Les Verrés. A little inlet, not much longer than the yacht, and perhaps forty feet wide, runs in from the south just where she lies. Her hull and the reef itself form a breakwater. We can make it, and get a line aboard."

"Then for the love of Heaven why wait?"

"One moment, Monsieur. We have yet a second or two for decision. You see how the wreck lifts each time a sea hits her. The tide is rising. If she shifts when we are in there, goodby to the Hirondelle!"

The eyes of the two met, and Ingersoll wavered, but only as a brave man takes breath before essaying some supreme test of hardihood.

"My daughter would never forgive me if she knew I chose the coward's path," he said. "Go ahead, Peridot! Tell us what we have to do, and it shall be done."

A cheerful chuckle was the Breton's answer as he thrust the tiller over to port and sent the boat reeling on the starboard tack. Once she was fairly balanced, he began to bellow instruction.

"Within a couple of minutes I'll put her head on again, and we'll drift alongside the ship yonder. Monsieur Ingersoll and Monsieur Tollemache will each take a sweep, and fend the after part off the rocks. Mademoiselle will remain for'ard, and be ready to drop the anchor as a last resource if I find the tide running too strong for the sweeps to hold us back. Leave the rest to me!"

It is a glorious heritage of the English-speaking race that the men of other nations regard sea valor as the birthright of its sons and daughters. Peridot had stated the case for and against the attempted rescue to Ingersoll as a father. When the die was cast, the decision made, he counted on ces Américains acting with the same cool heroism he would himself display.

The Hirondelle quickly reached the position from which the Breton judged it possible to drop into a natural dock, the existence of which he had learned when catching lobsters and crabs. Wind and tide carried the boat swiftly backward. At first it seemed that she was simply rushing to destruction, and every eye was bent on the swirling maelstrom toward which she was speeding rather than on the stricken yacht. Even Peridot's face paled beneath its bronze, and he had a hand uplifted as a warning to Yvonne to be ready instantly with the anchor, while Ingersoll and Tollemache were standing, each with a long oar couched like a knight's lance, when the Hirondelle swept past the bows of the wreck; only to be checked immediately by a backwash from the higher part of the reef.

"Dieu merci!" sighed Peridot, jubilant because his faith was justified. "Keep her steady now, mes amis, and with God's help we'll succeed!"

A tremendous sea dashed over the Stella, and for one appalling moment it appeared that she must roll bodily into deep water, and involve the Hirondelle in her own ruin. But she settled again, with a rending of her framework and inner fittings that was sweetest music in Peridot's ears, since it meant that she was becoming wedged more firmly on the teeth of the rock, and, owing to her construction, possessed no natural buoyancy to be affected by the rising tide.

Already he had a coil of rope in his right hand, and was yelling orders to the crew of the Stella. The noise of the seas pounding on Les Verrés was deafening; but a hoarse cry from one of the men on the bridge penetrated the din:

"No comprenez! Heave away!"

So they were English or Americans – which, none could tell. Even at a distance of fifteen feet or thereabouts it was hardly possible to distinguish nationality by facial traits owing to the torrents falling continuously over the rounded hull, the smoke pouring from the funnel, the flapping of the loosened sails, and the clouds of spray that lashed the Hirondelle. At any rate, Tollemache, deciding instantly, as was his way, sent back an answering shout:

"Haul in twenty feet of the rope when it reaches you, make fast, and throw back the loose end. You must get across as best you can. No time to rig a safer tackle."

"Ay, ay, Sir!" was the reply.

"Heave away, Peridot!"

Tollemache, though not neglecting his special duty, spared one glance over his shoulder; but the rope did not undertake its spiral flight at once. The resourceful Breton awaited a momentary lull in the wind. Then the heavy coil was flung, and fell into the hands of one of the men on the bridge. As he was securing it to a stanchion, his companion, he whose gigantic stature had first caught Yvonne's attention, climbed into the tiny wheelhouse, and reappeared almost immediately, carrying a woman in his arms.

The sight caused a fresh thrill on board the Hirondelle. Somehow it was totally unexpected.

"Fools!" said Tollemache, meaning, no doubt, that men might, if they chose, venture their lives in fair fight against the storm gods, but they had no right to subject a woman to the ordeal.

Ingersoll overheard, and understood. He even smiled. Lorry regarded Yvonne as a chum to be trusted in fair weather or foul. It did not occur to him that her father might reasonably have urged the same plea against attempting a seemingly mad and impracticable rescue.

Evidently some fierce dispute was being waged on the Stella. The other man on the bridge, who turned out to be the captain, had thrown back the rope to Peridot, and summoned all hands to gather near. Now he was urging the big man to intrust his inanimate burden to one of the sailors, but met with the most positive refusal. Every second was vital, and Peridot blazed into annoyance.

"Gars!" he roared. "If they waste time, I'll back out!"

The commander of the yacht, however, was well aware of the greatest peril which threatened now; so without more ado he steadied the giant while the latter raised the woman's body to his left shoulder, grasped the double rope in both hands, and lowered himself into the water.

The passage was not difficult. The ropes were fairly taut, and the distance between the two craft not more than sixteen feet. Indeed, such a Hercules in physique might well regard the task as a mere nothing, and he set out with quiet confidence, extending his left arm in each onward movement, and closing up with the right.

Yvonne, watching his progress, suddenly yielded to another memory of Tollemache swinging from the shepherds' hooks of Sainte Barbe's tower. Suppose the rope were to break – just as one of the rings had come away in Lorry's grip? Of course the notion was stupid. She knew that each strand of that particular rope was sound, that it might be trusted to hold the Hirondelle herself against the straining of wind and tide, let alone bear the dead weight of two people; but a woman's intuition is stronger than reason. And in this instance her foreboding came true, though from a cause that she had not foreseen.

All at once Peridot uttered a yell that degenerated into a semihysterical shriek; for temperament counts in such crises, and the Breton nature was being strung to a high pitch.

"Hold tight, all hands! Here's a tidal wave!" The monster whose coming the fisherman had feared all day was upon them before Tollemache could translate the warning. It broke against the Stella's hull, and literally dashed solid tons of water on the Hirondelle and the hapless pair now midway between the two vessels. During some seconds the stanch sardine boat seemed veritably to have foundered. Even in the convulsive and choking effort needed to cling with the strength of desperation to the nearest rope or stay, her occupants were aware that she sank appreciably beneath the sheer weight and fury of that tremendous sea.

Then their blinded eyes emerged into blessed daylight again, their lungs filled with air, the flood subsided, the Hirondelle rose, trembling like a living creature, and the wave boomed away across the half-mile of channel to tear at the rocks of Finistère in a last paroxysm.

Peridot, secure in the faith that one born with a caul could not drown, was perhaps the first to regain his senses. When he swept the water from his eyes he looked for the Stella; but that unfortunate little vessel had only been driven still more tightly into the jaws of the reef, though a great gap showed to starboard amidships. She was breaking in two.

"God be thanked for that, at any rate!" he muttered.

The concession was due to the strong commonsense of a Breton, which told him that signs and portents would prove of no avail against instant death if the Stella had rolled over. Then, having ascertained that his own people were safe, he looked for the colossus he had last seen clutching the ropes. The ropes were there; but man and woman had vanished. Something bobbed up among the spume and foam close to the Hirondelle's side. He leaned over and grabbed a huge arm. With one powerful tug he drew a body half out of the water. It was the man; but the woman had been reft from his close embrace at the moment when some chance of safety seemed to have come most surely within reach. His sou'wester cap had been wrenched off, and, even when hauling the limp body on board, Peridot knew that his quickness of eye and hand would avail naught.

He held a corpse in his grasp. The top of the unfortunate man's skull was visibly flattened, and the gray hair was already darkened by an ominous dye. In all likelihood the wave struck him when least prepared, tore his fingers from the ropes, and dashed him head foremost against the Hirondelle's timbers.

Peridot was no sentimentalist. He did not waste a needless sigh over the fate of one when the lives of many were trembling in the balance. Even when he was placing the body at Yvonne's feet, where it would be out of the way for the time, he peered up at her with a grim smile.

"Two gone, Ma'mselle," he said; "but with the help of the Madonna we'll save the rest!"

A shriek from the girl's lips, and an expression of terror in her eyes which assuredly was not there after the gallant Hirondelle had thrown off her mightiest and most vindictive assailant, told him that some worse tragedy was imminent. He turned, and saw Tollemache leaping into the frothing vortex that raged between the stern of the boat and the nearest rock. The Breton guessed instantly that the young American had seen the drowning woman. Leaving the Stella momentarily in charge of Ingersoll and Yvonne, he raced aft, and seized the sweep that Tollemache had dropped. Simultaneously his friend's head rose above the maelstrom; for the cork jacket bore Lorry bravely. He was clasping the woman's apparently lifeless form with one hand, and battling against the sea with the other when the long oar was thrust within reach, and he too was drawn to the side.

Meanwhile Ingersoll, exercising splendid self control, had not deserted his post. After the heavy backwash caused by the tidal wave, a sea had curled in from the open to fill the inlet again, and the Hirondelle was carried so near the reef that the stout oar bent under the strain of fending her off, and might conceivably have snapped had not some assistance been given by the ropes attached to the Stella. Another and more normal backwash came in the nick of time, and the boat retreated to her earlier position. Now, if the Fates were aught but merciless, there might be a breathing space.

Peridot's gray-green eyes sparkled as they met Tollemache's brown eyes, gazing up steadily from the swirl of waters.

"You all right?" he said, seizing the woman's arms.

"Why not?" said Tollemache. "Lift her aboard. Don't bother about me."

Ere Peridot had laid the dead or unconscious woman by the side of the man who had already given his life for her sake, Tollemache was on deck again, and lending a hand to the first sailor to cross by the ropes. The survivors followed rapidly, and the last to leave the Stella was her captain.

Ten men were rescued, – five sailors, including the master, two stokers, an engineer, a steward, and a passenger. The two last were in the saloon when the vessel struck, and had crawled on deck as best they could, the passenger having sustained a broken arm, and the steward a sprained ankle.

It was obvious, from the measures taken to safeguard the injured pair, that they were in urgent need of attention; but Peridot knew that the lives of all still trembled in the balance. So he bawled to Tollemache: