The Last Man
beach, and with the timidity characteristic of passionate and
exaggerated feeling was by degrees bringing the conversation to the
desired point, when she could communicate her fears to him, when the
messenger who bore my letter announcing our temporary return to
Windsor, came riding down to them. He gave some oral account of how he
had left us, and added, that notwithstanding the cheerfulness and good
courage of Lady Idris, he was afraid that she would hardly reach
Windsor alive. “True,” said the Countess, “your fears are just, she is
about to expire!”
As she spoke, her eyes were fixed on a tomblike hollow of the cliff,
and she saw, she averred the same to me with solemnity, Idris pacing
slowly towards this cave. She was turned from her, her head was bent
down, her white dress was such as she was accustomed to wear, except
that a thin crape-like veil covered her golden tresses, and concealed
her as a dim transparent mist. She looked dejected, as docilely
yielding to a commanding power; she submissively entered, and was lost
in the dark recess.
“Were I subject to visionary moods,” said the venerable lady, as she
continued her narrative, “I might doubt my eyes, and condemn my
credulity; but reality is the world I live in, and what I saw I doubt
not had existence beyond myself. From that moment I could not rest; it
was worth my existence to see her once again before she died; I knew
that I should not accomplish this, yet I must endeavour. I immediately
departed for Windsor; and, though I was assured that we travelled
speedily, it seemed to me that our progress was snail-like, and that
delays were created solely for my annoyance. Still I accused you, and
heaped on your head the fiery ashes of my burning impatience. It was no
disappointment, though an agonizing pang, when you pointed to her last
abode; and words would ill express the abhorrence I that moment felt
towards you, the triumphant impediment to my dearest wishes. I saw her,
and anger, and hate, and injustice died at her bier, giving place at
their departure to a remorse (Great God, that I should feel it!) which
must last while memory and feeling endure.”
To medicine such remorse, to prevent awakening love and new-born
mildness from producing the same bitter fruit that hate and harshness
had done, I devoted all my endeavours to soothe the venerable penitent.
Our party was a melancholy one; each was possessed by regret for what
was remediless; for the absence of his mother shadowed even the infant
gaiety of Evelyn. Added to this was the prospect of the uncertain
future. Before the final accomplishment of any great voluntary change
the mind vacillates, now soothing itself by fervent expectation, now
recoiling from obstacles which seem never to have presented themselves
before with so frightful an aspect. An involuntary tremor ran through
me when I thought that in another day we might have crossed the watery
barrier, and have set forward on that hopeless, interminable, sad
wandering, which but a short time before I regarded as the only relief
to sorrow that our situation afforded.
Our approach to Dover was announced by the loud roarings of the wintry
sea. They were borne miles inland by the sound-laden blast, and by
their unaccustomed uproar, imparted a feeling of insecurity and peril
to our stable abode. At first we hardly permitted ourselves to think
that any unusual eruption of nature caused this tremendous war of air
and water, but rather fancied that we merely listened to what we had
heard a thousand times before, when we had watched the flocks of
fleece-crowned waves, driven by the winds, come to lament and die on
the barren sands and pointed rocks. But we found upon advancing
farther, that Dover was overflowed— many of the houses were overthrown
by the surges which filled the streets, and with hideous brawlings
sometimes retreated leaving the pavement of the town bare, till again
hurried forward by the influx of ocean, they returned with
thunder-sound to their usurped station.
Hardly less disturbed than the tempestuous world of waters was the
assembly of human beings, that from the cliff fearfully watched its
ravings. On the morning of the arrival of the emigrants under the
conduct of Adrian, the sea had been serene and glassy, the slight
ripples refracted the sunbeams, which shed their radiance through the
clear blue frosty air. This placid appearance of nature was hailed as a
good augury for the voyage, and the chief immediately repaired to the
harbour to examine two steamboats which were moored there. On the
following midnight, when all were at rest, a frightful storm of wind
and clattering rain and hail first disturbed them, and the voice of one
shrieking in the streets, that the sleepers must awake or they would be
drowned; and when they rushed out, half clothed, to discover the
meaning of this alarm, they found that the tide, rising above every
mark, was rushing into the town. They ascended the cliff, but the
darkness permitted only the white crest of waves to be seen, while the
roaring wind mingled its howlings in dire accord with the wild surges.
The awful hour of night, the utter inexperience of many who had never
seen the sea before, the wailing of women and cries of children added
to the horror of the tumult. All the following day the same scene
continued. When the tide ebbed, the town was left dry; but on its flow,
it rose even higher than on the preceding night. The vast ships that
lay rotting in the roads were whirled from their anchorage, and driven
and jammed against the cliff, the vessels in the harbour were flung on
land like sea-weed, and there battered to pieces by the breakers. The
waves dashed against the cliff, which if in any place it had been
before loosened, now gave way, and the affrighted crowd saw vast
fragments of the near earth fall with crash and roar into the deep.
This sight operated differently on different persons. The greater part
thought it a judgment of God, to prevent or punish our emigration from
our native land. Many were doubly eager to quit a nook of ground now
become their prison, which appeared unable to resist the inroads of
ocean’s giant waves.
When we arrived at Dover, after a fatiguing day’s journey, we all
required rest and sleep; but the scene acting around us soon drove away
such ideas. We were drawn, along with the greater part of our
companions, to the edge of the cliff, there to listen to and make a
thousand conjectures. A fog narrowed our horizon to about a quarter of
a mile, and the misty veil, cold and dense, enveloped sky and sea in
equal obscurity. What added to our inquietude was the circumstance that
two-thirds of our original number were now waiting for us in Paris, and
clinging, as we now did most painfully, to any addition to our
melancholy remnant, this division, with the tameless impassable ocean
between, struck us with affright. At length, after loitering for
several hours on the cliff, we retired to Dover Castle, whose roof
sheltered all who breathed the English air, and sought the sleep
necessary to restore strength and courage to our worn frames and
languid spirits.
Early in the morning Adrian brought me the welcome intelligence that
the wind had changed: it had been south-west; it was now north-east.
The sky was stripped bare of clouds by the increasing gale, while the
tide at its ebb seceded entirely from the town. The change of wind
rather increased the fury of the sea, but it altered its late dusky hue
to a bright green; and in spite of its unmitigated clamour, its more
cheerful appearance instilled hope and pleasure. All day we watched the
ranging of the mountainous waves, and towards sunset a desire to
decypher the promise for the morrow at its setting, made us all gather
with one accord on the edge of the cliff. When the mighty luminary
approached within a few degrees of the tempest-tossed horizon,
suddenly, a wonder! three other suns, alike burning and brilliant,
rushed from various quarters of the heavens towards the great orb; they
whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to our dazzled eyes;
the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a
furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The
horses broke loose from their stalls in terror—a herd of cattle, panic
struck, raced down to the brink of the cliff, and blinded by light,
plunged down with frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied
by the apparition of these meteors was comparatively short; suddenly
the three mock suns united in one, and plunged into the sea. A few
seconds afterwards, a deafening watery sound came up with awful peal
from the spot where they had disappeared.
Meanwhile the sun, disencumbered from his strange satellites, paced
with its accustomed majesty towards its western home. When—we dared not
trust our eyes late dazzled, but it seemed that—the sea rose to meet
it—it mounted higher and higher, till the fiery globe was obscured, and
the wall of water still ascended the horizon; it appeared as if
suddenly the motion of earth was revealed to us—as if no longer we were
ruled by ancient laws, but were turned adrift in an unknown region of
space. Many cried aloud, that these were no meteors, but globes of
burning matter, which had set fire to the earth, and caused the vast
cauldron at our feet to bubble up with its measureless waves; the day
of judgment was come they averred, and a few moments would transport us
before the awful countenance of the omnipotent judge; while those less
given to visionary terrors, declared that two conflicting gales had
occasioned the last phaenomenon. In support of this opinion they
pointed out the fact that the east wind died away, while the rushing of
the coming west mingled its wild howl with the roar of the advancing
waters. Would the cliff resist this new battery? Was not the giant wave
far higher than the precipice? Would not our little island be deluged
by its approach? The crowd of spectators fled. They were dispersed over
the fields, stopping now and then, and looking back in terror. A
sublime sense of awe calmed the swift pulsations of my heart—I awaited
the approach of the destruction menaced, with that solemn resignation
which an unavoidable necessity instils. The ocean every moment assumed
a more terrific aspect, while the twilight was dimmed by the rack which
the west wind spread over the sky. By slow degrees however, as the wave
advanced, it took a more mild appearance; some under current of air, or
obstruction in the bed of the waters, checked its progress, and it sank
gradually; while the surface of the sea became uniformly higher as it
dissolved into it. This change took from us the fear of an immediate
catastrophe, although we were still anxious as to the final result. We
continued during the whole night to watch the fury of the sea and the
pace of the driving clouds, through whose openings the rare stars
rushed impetuously; the thunder of conflicting elements deprived us of
all power to sleep.
This endured ceaselessly for three days and nights. The stoutest hearts
quailed before the savage enmity of nature; provisions began to fail
us, though every day foraging parties were dispersed to the nearer
towns. In vain we schooled ourselves into the belief, that there was
nothing out of the common order of nature in the strife we witnessed;
our disasterous and overwhelming destiny turned the best of us to
cowards. Death had hunted us through the course of many months, even to
the narrow strip of time on which we now stood; narrow indeed, and
buffeted by storms, was our footway overhanging the great sea of
calamity—
As an unsheltered northern shore
Is shaken by the wintry wave—
And frequent storms for evermore,
(While from the west the loud winds rave,