Demelza

by Winston Graham

  At the same moment the vanguard of the St. Ann’s and Illogan miners streamed onto the beach.

  Chapter Fifty

  Pride of Madras, an East India man homeward bound with a full cargo of silks, tea, and spices, had suddenly appeared, a flying wraith in the fog of the storm, off Sennen in the forenoon of that day.

  She had seemed certain to strike Gurnard’s Head, but the lull in the gale had just given her sea room. Then she had been seen off Godrevy, and a little later the miners of Illogan and St. Ann’s, with news of the Queen Charlotte wreck in their ears, had heard that a finer prize was due any minute at Gwithian or Basset’s Cove.

  So they had been pulled two ways and, instead of marching for Nampara, had flocked into the gin shops and kiddlywinks of St. Ann’s while scouts kept watch on the cliffs.

  She had slipped right under St. Ann’s Beacon unseen in the mist, and it was not until just before dusk that she had been picked up again ducking across the mouth of Sawle Cove. She must have come ashore within a few miles, and the miners had followed along the cliffs and down the lanes, so that their leaders reached Hendrawna Beach at the same time as the ship.

  What followed would not have been pretty in the sun of a summer afternoon. Happening as it did through a winter’s night, starlit in a gale, it was full of the shadowed horror and shrill cadences of another world.

  She came in so swiftly that only half a dozen of the locals knew of her until she lit the flare. Then when she struck, everyone began to run toward her. They and the newcomers converged together. Rivalry flared up in a second.

  To begin they could not get near her, but the tide had still another two hours to ebb and very soon the venturesome, reckless with rum and gin, plunged through the surf. There was still one light on the ship though the waves were breaking right over her, and two sailors were able to swim ashore, one with a rope. But they could get no one interested enough to hold it, and a third sailor, washed ashore half conscious, was set upon and stripped of his shirt and breeches and left groaning naked on the sand.

  Great numbers of miners were coming, and soon the gray of the sands was black in a huge semicircle before the ship. Ross played no part in it, either in wreck or rescue. He had edged a little away to watch, but those who saw his face saw no disapproval on it. It was as if the goad of the pain in him would leave him no respite for judgment and sanity.

  Others of the crew had gotten ashore, but it was the common thing to seize anything they carried, and those who resisted were stripped and roughly handled and left to crawl away as best they could. Two who drew knives were knocked unconscious.

  By seven the ship was dry, and by then there were three thousand people on the beach. Barrels in which the pilchards had come ashore were set alight, and those, thick with oil, flared and smoked like giant torches. The ship was a carcass on which myriad ants crawled. Men were everywhere, hacking with knives and axes, dragging out from the bowels of the ship the riches of the Indies. Dozens lay about the beach, drunk or senseless from a fight. The crew and eight passengers—saved at the last by Zacky Martin and Pally Rogers and a few others—broke up into two parties, the larger, led by the mate, going off into the country in search of help, the rest huddling in a group some distance from the ship, while the captain stood guard over them with a drawn sword.

  With rich goods seized and fine brandy drunk, fights broke out everywhere. Smoldering feuds between one hamlet and another, one mine and the next, had come to flame. Empty bellies and empty pockets reacted alike to the temptations of the night. To the shipwrecked people it seemed that they had been cast upon the shore of a wild and savage foreign land where thousands of dark-faced men and women talking an uncouth tongue were waiting to tear them to pieces for the clothes they wore.

  As the tide began to creep around the ship again, Ross went aboard, swarming up by a rope that hung from her bows. He found an orgy of destruction. Men lay drunk about the deck, others fought for a roll of cloth or curtains or cases of tea, often tearing or spilling what they quarreled over. But the saner men, aware like Ross that time was short, were laboring to clear the ship while she was still intact. Like Queen Charlotte, Pride of Madras lay beam on, and another tide might break her up. Lanterns were in the hold, and dozens of men were below passing up goods in a chain to the door where they were carried to the side and thrown or lowered to others waiting on the sand. They were all St. Ann’s men, and farther forward the Illogan men were doing the same.

  Aft he found some from Grambler and Sawle tearing out the panelling in the captain’s cabin. Among all the hammering and the shrill squeaks of wood, Paul Daniel slept peacefully in a corner. Ross hauled him to his feet by the collar of his jacket, but Paul only smiled and sank down again.

  Jack Cobbledick nodded. “Tes all right, sur. We’ll see to ’ee when we leave.”

  “Another half hour is all you can take.”

  Ross went on deck again. The high wind was pure and cold. He took a deep breath. Above and behind all the shouts, the laughter, the distant singing, the hammering, the scuffles, and the groans, was another sound, that of the surf coming in. It made a noise like hundreds of carts rumbling over wooden bridges.

  He avoided two men fighting in the scuppers, went forward and tried to rouse some of the drunks. He spoke of the tide to some of those who were working, had bare nods in exchange.

  He stared over the beach. The funnels of fire and smoke from the barrels were still scattering sparks over the sand. Sections of the crowd were lit in umber and orange. Milling faces and black smoke around a dozen funeral pyres. A pagan rite. Back in the sand hills the volcanoes spumed.

  He slid over the side, hand by hand down the rope. In water up to his knees.

  He pushed his way through the crowd. It seemed as if normal feelings were coming to him. Circulation to a dead limb.

  He looked about for the survivors. They were still huddled together just beyond the thickest of the crowd.

  As he came near, two of the sailors drew knives and the captain half lifted his sword.

  “Keep your distance, man! Keep clear! We’ll fight.”

  Ross eyed them over. A score of shivering exhausted wretches; if they had no attention several might die before morning.

  “I was about to offer you shelter,” he said.

  At the sound of his more cultured voice the captain lowered his sword. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “My name is Poldark. I have a house near here.”

  There was a whispered consultation. “And you offer us shelter?”

  “Such as I have. A fire. Blankets. Something hot to drink.”

  Even then there was hesitation; they had been so used that they were afraid of treachery. And the captain had some idea of staying the night to be able to bear his full witness to the courts. But the eight passengers overruled him.

  “Very well, sir,” said the captain, keeping his sword unsheathed. “If you will lead the way.”

  Ross inclined his head and moved off slowly across the beach. The captain fell into step beside him, the two armed sailors followed close behind, and the rest straggled after.

  They passed several dozen people dancing around a fire and drinking fresh-brewed tea (ex Pride of Madras) laced with brandy (ex Pride of Madras). They overtook six mules laden so heavy with rolls of cloth that their feet sank inches in the sand at every step. They skirted forty or fifty men fighting in a pack for four gold ingots.

  The captain said in a voice trembling with indignation, “Have you any control over these—these savages?”

  “None whatever,” Ross said.

  “Is there no law in this land?”

  “None that will stand before a thousand miners.”

  “It—it is a disgrace. A crying disgrace. Two years ago I was shipwrecked off Patagonia—and treated less barbarously.”

  “Perhaps the natives were better fed
than we in this district.”

  “Fed? Food—oh, if it were food we carried and these men were starving—”

  “Many have been near it for months.”

  “—then there might be some excuse. But it is not food. To pillage the ship, and we ourselves barely escaped with our lives! I never thought such a day could be! It is monstrous!”

  “There is much in this world that is monstrous,” Ross said. “Let us be thankful they were content with your shirts.”

  The captain glanced at him. A passing lantern showed up the taut, lean, overstrained face, the pale scar, the half-lidded eyes. The captain said no more.

  As they climbed the wall at the end of the beach they saw a group of men coming toward them from Nampara House. Ross stopped and stared. Then he caught the creak of leather.

  “Here is the law you were invoking.”

  The men came up. A dozen dismounted troopers in the charge of a sergeant. Captain McNeil and his men had been moved some months before, and those were strangers. They had marched out from Truro on hearing of the wreck of the Queen Charlotte.

  That much the sergeant was explaining when the captain burst in with an angry flood of complaint, and soon he was surrounded by the passengers and crew, demanding summary justice. The sergeant plucked at his lip and stared across at the beach, which stirred and quickened with a wild and sinister life of its own.

  “You go down there at your own risk, Sergeant,” Ross said. There was a sudden silence, followed by another babel of threat and complaint from the shipwrecked people.

  “All right,” said the sergeant. “Go easy. Go easy now. We’ll put a stop to the looting, never you fear. We’ll see no more is carried away. We’ll put a stop to it.”

  “You would be advised to delay until daylight,” Ross said. “The night will have cooled tempers. Remember the two customs officers who were killed at Gwithian last year.”

  “I have me orders, sir.” The sergeant glanced uneasily at his small band and then again at the struggling smoky mass on the beach. “We’ll see all this is put a stop to.” He patted his musket.

  “I warn you,” Ross said. “Half of them are in drink and many fighting among themselves. If you interfere they’ll stop their quarreling and turn on you. And so far it has been fists and a few sticks. But if you fire into them not half of you will come out of it alive.”

  The sergeant hesitated again. “Ye’d advise me to wait until first light?”

  “It is your only hope.”

  The captain burst out again, but some of the passengers, shivering and half dead from exposure, cut him short and pleaded to be led to shelter.

  Ross went on to the house, leaving the troopers still hesitant on the edge of the maelstrom. At the door of the house he stopped again.

  “You’ll pardon me, gentlemen, but may I ask you for quietness. My wife is just recovering from a grave illness and I do not wish to disturb her.”

  The chattering and muttering slowly died away to silence.

  He led the way in.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Ross woke at the first light. He had slept heavily for seven hours. The inescapable pain was still there, but some emotional purging of the night had deadened its old power. It was the first time for a week he had undressed, the first full sleep he had had. He had gone up to his old room, for Demelza had seemed better the previous night, and Jane Gimlett said she would sleep in the chair before the fire.

  He dressed quickly, stiffly, but was quiet about it. Below him in the parlor and in the next two rooms twenty-two men were sleeping. Let them lie. All the strain of the night before had brought the stiffness of the French musket wound back, and it was with a sharp limp that he went to the window. The wind was stiff high and the glass thick with salt. He opened the window and stared out on Hendrawna Beach.

  Dawn had just broken, and in a clear sky seven black clouds were following each other across the lightening east like seven ill-begotten sons of the storm. The tide was nearly out and both wrecks were dry. The Queen Charlotte, lying almost deserted, might have been an old whale cast up by the sea. Around and about the Pride of Madras people still milled and crawled. The sands were patchy with people, and at first he thought Leisure Cliff and those east of it had been decorated by some whim of the revellers. Then he saw that the wind had been the only reveller, and costly silks had been blown from the wreck and hung in inaccessible places all along the beach and cliffs. Goods and stores were still scattered on the sand hills and just above high-water mark, but a large part was already gone.

  There had been bloodshed in the night.

  Jack Cobbledick, calling in just before midnight, had told him that the troopers had gone down to the beach and tried to stand guard over the wreck. But the tide had driven them off and the wreckers had gone on with salvaging their prizes as if the solders had not existed. The sergeant, trying to get his way by peaceful measures, was roughly handled, and some of the soldiers fired into the air to scare the crowd. Then they had been forced off the beach step-by-step with a thousand angry men following them.

  A little later an Illogan miner had been caught molesting a St. Ann’s woman, and a huge fight had developed, which had only been broken by the inrush of the sea threatening to carry off the booty, and not before a hundred or more men were stretched out on the beach.

  Ross did not know whether the troopers had again tried to take over the wreck when the tide went back, but he thought not. It was more likely that they still kept discreet watch in the sand hills while the sergeant sent for reinforcements.

  But in another six hours the ships would be nothing but hulks, every plank and stick carried away, the bones picked clean.

  He closed the window, and as the rimed glass shut out the view, the pang of his own personal loss returned. He had planned so much for Julia, had watched her grow from a scarcely separable entity, seen her nature unfold, the very beginning of traits and characteristics make their quaint showing. It was hardly believable that they would never develop, that all that potential sweetness should dry up at its fount and turn to dust. Hardly believable and hardly bearable.

  He slowly put on his coat and waistcoat and limped downstairs.

  In the bedroom Jane Gimlett slept soundly before a fire that had gone out. Demelza was awake.

  He sat beside the bed and she slipped her hand into his. It was thin and weak, but there was a returning firmness underneath.

  “How are you?”

  “Much, much better. I slept all the night through. Oh, Ross. Oh, my dear, I can feel the strength returning to me. In a few days more I shall be up.”

  “Not yet awhile.”

  “And did you sleep?”

  “Like the—” He changed his simile. “Like one drugged.”

  She squeezed his hand. “An’ all the folk from the ship?”

  “I have not been to see.”

  She said, “I have never seen a real shipwreck, not in daytime. Not a proper one.”

  “Soon I’ll carry you up to our old bedroom and you can see it all through the spyglass.”

  “This morning?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “I wish it was not this time o’ year,” she said. “I seem to be tired for the summer.”

  “It will come.”

  There was a pause.

  “I believe tomorrow will be too late to see the best of the wreck.”

  “Hush, or you’ll wake Jane.”

  “Well, you could wrap me in blankets an’ I should come to no harm.”

  He sighed and put her hand against his cheek. It was not a disconsolate sigh, for her returning life was a tonic to his soul. Whatever she suffered, whatever loss came to her, she would throw it off, for it was not in her nature to go under. Although she was the woman and he a fierce and sometimes arrogant man, hers was the stronger nature because the mor
e pliant. That did not mean that she did not feel Julia’s death as deeply and as bitterly, but he saw that she would recover first. It might be because he had had all the other failures and disappointments. But chiefly it was because some element had put it in her nature to be happy. She was born so and could not change. He thanked God for it. Wherever she went and however long she lived she would be the same, lavishing interest on the things she loved and contriving for their betterment, working for and bringing up her children…

  Ah, there was the rub.

  He found she was looking at him.

  “Have you heard of them at Trenwith?” she asked.

  “Not since I told you before.” He looked at her and saw that despite her loss there was no trace of bitterness in her thoughts of Elizabeth and Francis. It made him ashamed of his own.

  “Did they say there was any loss among those who were in the Pride of Madras?”

  “None of the passengers. Some of the crew.”

  She sighed. “Ross, I b’lieve the miners, the Illogan and St. Ann’s miners, have made a rare mess of the garden. I heard ’em trampling over it all last evening, and Jane said they had mules and donkeys with them.”

  “If anything is damaged it can be put to right,” Ross said.

  “Was Father amongst them, did you see?”

  “I saw nothing of him.”

  “Maybe he is reformed in that way too. Though I doubt there must have been many Methodies among those who came. I wonder what—what he will say about this.”

  Ross knew she was not referring to the wreck.

  “Nothing that can make any difference, my dear. Nothing could have made any difference.”

  She nodded. “I know. Sometimes I wonder if she ever really stood any chance.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Ross. She seemed to have it so bad from the start. And she was so young…”

  There was a long silence.

  At length Ross got up and pulled the curtain back. Even that did not wake Jane Gimlett. The sun had risen and was gilding the waving treetops in the valley.