The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.

enabled it to keep afloat, not-withstanding the roll of the sea, and the breaking of the waves over it. The person was evidently not swimming, although, by the wash of the tide, and the set of the wind, he was being driven into shore. Mark Ingestrie felt that his only chance of getting through the surf was to dive under it, and that manoeuvre he executed with a skill that few could have commanded and to the admiration and delight of all the spectators of his heroic conduct, he appeared outside the roaring edge of the sea, quite able to swim gallantly towards the shipwrecked man. As he had said, the dawn was coming fast now, so that there was no great difficulty in seeing him, and in watching, with some degree of accuracy, his movements. "He will do it!" said the colonel. "Do it?" said the sailor who had the first hold of the rope that was round the body of Mark Ingestrie. "Do it? Of course he will. The man who has the heart and hand to try these sort of things, always does them." "I believe you are right, my friend," said the colonel. "I know I am, sir. I have seen too much of this sort of thing, and if I had not been a little out of sorts in my larboard leg, I should have gone; but I'm not all right, you see, sir, so it won't do. Ah, there he has him! It's all right enough--I told you so." The progress of Ingestrie was watched by many eyes with the most intense interest. Under no circumstances was distance so deceiving as at sea; and although the black object in the water, which the practised eye of Ingestrie had shown him, was a man, appeared to be only just without the line of the surf, he (Ingestrie) knew that the distance was, in reality, much greater, and that he would have a good swim through those troubled waters before he could get within arm's-length of the shipwrecked person. To be sure, as the body was drifting to the shore, he made better progress, and the distance between him and it was diminished much more rapidly than as if it had been stationary. Colonel Jeffrey distinctly saw Ingestrie reach the body, at length, and the sailor who had hold of the rope, likewise saw him, and he sung out-- "Now, pull away; but easy, my lads--a steady pull, and no jerking, or you will hinder him instead of helping. That's it--easy now, easy." "Ah!" said Ben, who had come down to the beach to see what was going on. "Easy does everything, as I always said. Pray, Colonel Jeffrey, what unfortunate animal is that you are dragging out of the water?" "Don't you know, Ben?" "Not I. But I suppose it is some poor half-drowned fellow from the ship." "It is that, as well, I hope; but the person who is with him, and who is being hauled to the shore, is no other than our friend, Mr. Ingestrie." "What, Johanna's husband?" "The same." "Oh, lor! oh, lor! I'm afraid easy won't do it then, and that my little girl will be a widow. Give me hold of the rope. If pulling will do it, I'll soon have him on shore again all right. The idea, now, of a man, with the nicest young creature of a wife in the world, going into the sea at the end of a rope, and covering himself all over with froth and sea-weed! Oh, dear! oh, dear! It's truly dreadful, it is; and easy certainly don't do it." Ben would have lent his aid to pull the rope, but the colonel kept him back, as it was not strength but skill and tact that in the process was required, and the rope was in the hands of men who had both. It was clear that Ingestrie had got hold of the floating object, whatever it was, and that, as he was pulled into shore, he brought it with him. When he reached the edge of the surf again, a quick pull brought him at once through it, and a couple of the sailors, dashing into the waters, got a hold of him, and drew him right up on to the beach between them. Half a dozen more brought to the shore the body of a man, tied to a plank of wood. Poor Mark was nearly exhausted. He was just able only to smile faintly in answer to the colonel's anxious inquiries. "He must be carried home," said the colonel. "Lend me some assistance, my brave fellows, to do so." "No--no!" Ingestrie managed just to say faintly. "Take him--take him!" He pointed to the man whom he had rescued, and the colonel immediately said, "Make yourself easy about him, my dear friend. The sailors will carry him to the house, and if the vital spark has not quite fled, you shall have the pleasure of knowing that you have saved him. But it is yourself that I wish to have got home." "Can you walk?" said Ben. "I--don't think--I will try." Poor Ingestrie did try, but he was really so completely exhausted by the efforts he had made, that it was quite evident that he was unequal to the task of walking along the shingle. "Give it up," said Ben. "You can't do it." "He must be carried," said the colonel. "To be sure he must," said Ben; "and this is the way to do it." With these words, Ben did not hesitate another moment, but taking Mark Ingestrie in his arms as though he had been an infant, he walked over the pebbly beach with him as easily as though he had been only a very ordinary kind of bundle to carry. As he went on, it occurred to Ben that Johanna might see him carrying her husband home, and might imagine that some fearful accident had happened to him, so, by way of putting an end to that idea, he kept crying out as he got near the house-- "Here we are! All alive and kicking! It's only a joke. All alive--alive O! Here we are! it's only a joke! All alive! alive! and ready for feeding time!" CHAPTER CLXXI. A RATHER IMPORTANT DISCOVERY IS MADE. The man, who appeared to be the only one at all--dead or alive--who was preserved from the wreck of the ship off the coast of Sussex, was carried to the house where all our friends were staying, and being taken into the kitchen, was there placed in the care of a couple of medical men, who were hastily sent for, and who quickly restored animation to the seemingly drowned person. It was reported to Ingestrie that the stranger was all right, and as he himself had by that time thoroughly recovered, and had changed his saturated apparel for a dry suit, the news gave him the liveliest satisfaction. "Well," he said, "it is something that I have not gone through that tremendous surf in vain." "Yes, Mark," said Johanna, with the tears starting to her eyes, "but we must, indeed, get away from the sea-coast, and then you cannot be tempted to expose your life in such adventures. Only think of what might be the consequences!" "Yes," said the colonel. "It is hardly fair, although, at the moment, one cannot help admiring the heroism of the act." "I don't know how it can be avoided," said Ingestrie. "If you see a poor fellow struggling for his life, and you feel that you may save him at a little risk to yourself, it seems a strange thing not to do it." "It does," said old Mr. Oakley, "and I should be the last to say no to the noble impulse; only if there are to be many storms off his coast, I shall second the resolution of Johanna that you ought to live somewhere else." "And so shall I," said Arabella. "And I," said Tobias. "He's better, they say," cried Ben, popping his head into the room. "The doctors say he is better, and that, after he has had a sleep, he will be all right." "The sailor belonging to the ship you mean?" said the colonel, "What sort of a person is he, Ben?" "Haven't seen him yet, so can't tell; but they have made up a good fire in the back kitchen, and he is lying on a sofa there, and going to sleep, and the doctor says it will do him no good to disturb him, or bother him by talking." "It certainly will not," said Ingestrie. "It matters very little to us who he is, poor fellow. He is saved--that is the principal thing." "Yes," said Johanna, "that is everything; and, at all events, Mark, there is one human being who through life, let his position and prospects be what they may, must look upon you as his friend and preserver." "Ah!" said poor Tobias, "We should all be very happy if Sweeney Todd were but in the hands of justice. It is very strange why I tremble so to-day at the thought of him; and I did not tremble yesterday." "You have no occasion to tremble to-day, nor yesterday either, Tobias," said Arabella. "Remember how surrounded you are by your best friends, and remember, likewise, that, after all, Todd is but a man, and by this time he must be but a poor, weak, dispirited one, and much more intent upon devising means for his own safety, than in carrying out his revenges." "If, indeed, he lives," said the colonel. "Just so," said Ingestrie. "My opinion will very much incline to the idea that he is dead, if Sir Richard Blunt does not very shortly get some news of him." "That will be a pity," said Tobias, "unless it can be proved past all dispute, for while it continues only a likely thing, the dread of him will still cling to my heart, and I shall never be happy." "Nay, Tobias," said the colonel, "you must pluck up a spirit. The probability is now, that Sweeney Todd, let him be where he may, is much more afraid of meeting you than you can possibly be of meeting him." "I wish I thought so," said Tobias. "But only look now how sweetly the sun is peeping out on the water after the storm there. This is very beautiful." Tobias walked to the window; and his praise of the beauty of the morning caused the breakfast-table to be, in a very few minutes, completely deserted. To be sure, the praise that the imaginative boy had lavished upon the young day, was by no means misapplied; for a more lovely day than that which broke over Brighton, after that terrific gale in the Channel, could not be conceived. It seemed as if the good genii of earth, sea, and sky, were striving to banish from the minds of all the inhabitants of that place the recollections of the frightful storm that had made the world dismal and terrific. "Indeed, it is lovely," said Johanna, "Who, now, to look at that placid sheet of water, with scarce a ripple upon its surface to reflect the sunbeams, would think that only a few hours ago, it presented a scene of such fury that it was a shuddering terror to look upon it?" "And yet," said Ingestrie, "it is these varieties that make the great world beautiful." "Not a doubt of it; but they require more stern minds than mine, Mark, to stand them." The party now, finding that the day was so delightful, sallied out to the beach to make some inquiry among the sailors and boatmen, concerning the damage that the gale had done. The moment Mark Ingestrie appeared with his friends, he was recognised as the person who had performed the gallant exploit of going through the surf to the rescue of the shipwrecked man, and he became immediately the observed of all observers. This sort of homage was at once flattering and embarrassing to Johanna. She felt proud that it was her husband who was entitled to so much popular consideration and respect, and yet, with her natural timidity of disposition, she shrank from sharing it with him. Some eager inquiries were made of Ingestrie now, regarding the man he had saved, and it was a great gratification to him to be enabled to state that he was doing well, although he had not himself seen him since he grappled with him in the water, and brought him to the beach. A few fragments only of the wreck had been washed to the shore, but nothing that could in any way enable them to identify the vessel; so that that was a species of information that must come from the man who had been saved, whenever he should be able to go through the fatigue of an interview with his friend and his deliverer.