Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [62]
We were only to see the Edura one more time and that was on the day that we departed for the coast. Our father had gone ahead and we were preparing to follow with our mother on the ox cart with all our possessions. As the cart began to move, the Edura emerged from the shadows and pressed something into our mother’s hands with an instruction that I could not overhear. She quickly hid whatever he had given her in a bag that she kept with her for the rest of the journey.
Five days later we boarded the barque Persephone and set sail for England. As the palm-fringed shores dropped away, I felt as Eve must have felt when the angel of the Lord drove her from the garden of Eden; I was losing my paradise, but I was not to know that this ill-omened ship was carrying us into Hell!
For us children, the passage home was long, the monotony of the many weeks at sea only broken occasionally by the sight of dolphins that came to leap and play about our ship. Some sixth sense seemed to tell my sister, Una, when the dolphins were coming and she would hurry us all on deck to watch them.
The weather was, on the whole, fair and, although we encountered large seas when rounding the Cape of Good Hope, there were no serious storms until we had crossed the Bay of Biscay. Then, as we approached the English coast, the skies darkened, the seas rose and the ship was struck by a sudden and violent squall. Our first sight of England was just before nightfall when a headland, that the ship’s master took to be Lizard Point, was briefly visible through the driving rain. As the sun set, the storm increased in ferocity. Now each black wave that rushed upon our ship was crowned with a crest of foaming white and towered like a toppling mountain above the deck. Each wave seemed certain to overwhelm us. The motion of the ship grew ever more extreme and the sound of the storm rose to a deafening crescendo.
Now the waves swept across the decks. The longboat was carried away into the blackness of the night together with the unfortunate crewmen who bravely threw themselves in its path in a desperate attempt to save it. With a terrible splintering crash a hatch cover was breached and a dark, freezing torrent cascaded into the cabin where we two girls clung to our mother, believing that every moment would be our last. All hands above ran to man the pumps while our father exalted us to fall to our knees and pray to the Lord for our deliverance. It was clear to all that if we could not reach shelter soon the ship would surely founder.
A shout went up, ‘Lights! Lights ashore! Lights off the port bow!’
‘God be praised!’ my father cried. ‘Salvation is at hand!’
Despite the ever-present danger of being washed overboard, all who were not too sick to stand clambered on deck. Only those who have been in such mortal peril could understand the comfort that we gained from those glimmers of light. To know that safety, warmth and comfort were within our reach; surely these lights were lit to guide poor mariners home!
‘’Tis Plymouth,’ the boatswain yelled, ‘’Tis Plymouth! I know the lights!’ And all believed him because that is what we all wished to believe – safe harbour and an easy entrance.
How cruelly we were deceived! Too late we heard the roar of breakers on the rocks. Too late we saw the plumes of spray that burst against the cliffs and leapt a hundred feet into the air. Too late the master saw the trap that had been set. In a panic he ordered the ship about and four seamen threw themselves upon the wheel, but she would not come round. The seas drove us on; the wind drove us on; the sails were blown to rags and tatters but still we were driven on. Then a great black wave rolled out of the night, lifted the ship like it were a toy, rushed with it on its shoulders and flung it down on the waiting reef. The ship’s back was broken; the mainmast snapped and crashed with its yardarms and tangled rigging to the deck; many were flung into the sea.
Our family, clinging to each other and to the stern rail, managed to keep from sliding