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In a short space, although to the anxious onlookers it seemed hours, the efforts of the Captain and coastguardsmen were rewarded by Bob drawing a deep breath, which, it must be confessed, was sadly impregnated with the odour of tobacco from the air which Hellyer had puffed into his lungs to induce respiration!
Hundreds of ships, great and small, were wrecked on the coasts of Britain during that memorable gale. The little ship to which I refer was one of the many in regard to which the newspapers said, "she was dashed to pieces, and all hands perished." But in this particular case all hands had not perished: two lives had been spared, unknown to journalists and coastguardsmen.
Nevertheless, all through that table d'hôte dinner, Nan kept to her self-imposed task, and was busying herself about the wages of the coastguardsmen, and the probable cost of mackerel, and the chances of Sal's having to face a westerly squall of wind and rain when she was breasting the steep hill rising from Newhaven. Was Sal singing that night before the Old Ship?
The lodging-houses were all desolate and deserted. The boats were all drawn high and dry up on the jetty. The bathing-machines stood dismally in the field behind the town. Not a soul sat in an arm-chair on the sands from morning to night. No one walked along the cliffs except the coastguardsmen.
I wish they hadn't boarded it up, so that a fellow can't see where they used to hide the cargoes of silk and lace and kegs of brandy the French luggers brought across from Saint Malo wasn't that where they ran them from, Captain?" "Aye," replied the old sailor. "They don't now, though, my boy. Our coastguardsmen are too sharp for that, and the mounseers have to find another market for their goods!
Not a bit of it no more drowned than you are!" repeated the Captain, somewhat snappishly, his anxiety and excitement preventing him from speaking calmly, as he turned and bent over the inanimate bodies. "Help me, men, to rouse them back to life." The coastguardsmen bent down, too, and lifting the boys up were proceeding to lay them down again on their faces, when the Captain stopped them.
But the gallant coastguardsmen had other work cut out for them that night. Besides saving life, it was their duty to protect property. The cargo was a tempting one to many roughs who had assembled. When the tide receded, these attempted to get on board the wreck and regale themselves.
When things had arrived at this happy stage, the Captain, who had been put in a fidget by the crowd clustering round `a pack of star-gazing fools' as he whispered pretty audibly to Mrs Gilmour thought it was time to make a move. "Hellyer, you and your shipmate had better call round at my house in the morning," he said to his old coxswain, the elder of the two coastguardsmen.
Then as she went on again, she discovered whence the sound proceeded from a little wooden hut facing the sea, which had probably been erected there as a shelter for the coastguardsmen. As she drew nearer, she recognised the staccato twanging of a guitar; so she made sure this was Singing Sal.
And then she would steal away like a guilty thing on one of her long land cruises along the coast; and she would patiently talk to the old shepherds on the downs, and wait for their laconic answers; and she would make observations to the coastguardsmen about the weather; and always her eyes, which were very clear and long-sighted, were on the outlook for Singing Sal.
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