THE SHIPWRECK

BY CHARLES DICKENS

On a late September night the sleeping town of Yarmouth is startled by the cry: "A wreck close by!" "What wreck?" "A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. It's thought down on the beach she'll go to pieces any moment!"

Numbers of excited people are to be seen, all running in one direction toward the beach and now an immense crowd stands facing the wild sea. The height to which the breakers rise, and, looking over one another, bear one another down, and roll in, in interminable hosts, is most appalling. Suddenly the wreck closes in toward the shore. One mast is broken off six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging, and all that ruin, as the ship rolls and beats-which she does without a moment's pause and with a violence quite inconceivable-beats the side as if it would stave it in. As the ship turns toward the shore in her rolling, her people are plainly descried at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which is audible even above the wind and water, rises from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, makes a clean breach, and carries men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. The second mast is still standing, with the rags of a rent sail and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. But the rolling and beating is too tremendous for any

human work to suffer long. There is another great cry of pity from the beach; four men rise with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost the active figure with the curling hair. There is a bell on board, and as the ship rolls and dashes, the bell rings; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, is borne to those standing on shore. Again the ship is lost from view,-now she rises again. Two men are gone. The agony on shore increases. Men groan and clasp their hands; women shriek and turn away their faces. Some run wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help can be. ́

And now a new sensation moves the people on the beach, and as they part, Ham Peggotty comes breaking through them to the front. Another cry arises on shore, and looking to the wreck they see the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast. Ham is heard to cry: "Mates, if my time is come, 'tis come. If 'tain't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you all! Mates, make me ready,-I'm a-going for the wreck!"

There is hurry on the beach,-men running with ropes from a capstan that is there, and Ham stands out alone in a seaman's frock and trousers; a rope in his hand, another round his body, and several of the best men holding at a little distance to the latter. The wreck is breaking up. She is parting in the middle and the life of the solitary man upon the mast hangs by a thread. Still he clings to it. He has a singular red cap on—not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction roll and bulge, and his anticipative death-knell rings, he is seen to wave it.

Ham watches the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there is a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who hold the rope which is made fast round his body, he dashes in after it and in a moment is buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam,-borne in toward the shore,-borne on toward the ship,-striving hard and valiantly. The distance is nothing, but the power of the sea and wind makes the strife deadly. At length he nears the wreck. He is so near that with one of his vigorous strokes he will be clinging to it-when a high, green, vast hillside of water, moving on shoreward, from beyond the ship, seems to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship is gone! They haul in hastily, but consternation is seen in every face-for there at their feet lies poor old Ham-dead! He had been beaten to death by the great wave and his generous heart was stilled forever. And as they bend compassionately over the form of their brave young comrade, another body is washed ashore-that of the solitary figure which had been seen alone upon the mast, -and there next to him whom he had so unjustly wronged, lay the dead body of James Steerforth!

COMO

BY JOAQUIN MILLER

The red-clad fishers row and creep

Below the crags, as half asleep,
Nor even make a single sound.
'The walls are steep,

The waves are deep;

And if the dead man should be found

By these fishers in their round,

Why, who shall say but he was drowned?

The lake lay bright, as bits of broken moon
Just newly set within the cloven earth;
The ripened fields drew round a golden girth
Far up the steppes, and glittered in the noon.
And when the sun fell down, from leafy shore
Fond lovers stole in pairs to ply the oar.

The stars, as large as lilies, flecked the blue;
From out the Alps the moon came wheeling through
This rocky pass the great Napoleon knew.

A gala night it was the season's prime;
We rode from castled lake to festal town,
To fair Milan-my friend and I; rode down
By night, where grasses waved in rippled rhyme;
And so what theme but love in such a time?
His proud lip curved the while in silent scorn
At thought of love; and then, as one forlorn,
He sighed, then bared his temples, dashed with gray,
Then mocked, as one outworn and well blasé.

A gorgeous tiger-lily, flaming red,

So full of battle, of the trumpet's blare,
Of old-time passion, upreared its head.

I galloped past, I leaned, I clutched it there.
From out the long strong grass I held it high,

And cried "Lo! this to-night shall deck her hair
Through all the dance. And mark! the man shall die

Who dares assault, for good or ill design,

The citadel where I shall set this sign."

He spoke no spare word all the after while.
That scornful, cold, contemptuous smile of his!
Why, better men have died for less than this.
Then in the hall the same old hateful smile!
Then marvel not that when she graced the floor,
With all the beauties gathered from the four
Far quarters of the world, and she, my fair,
The fairest, wore within her midnight hair
My tiger-lily-marvel not, I say,

That he glared like some wild beast well at bay!

Oh, she shone fairer than the summer star,
Or curled sweet moon in middle destiny.
More fair than sunrise climbing up the sea,
Where all the loves of Ariadne are.

Who loves, who truly loves, will stand aloof,
The noisy tongue makes most unholy proof
Of shallow waters,-all the while afar
From out the dance I stood, and watched my star,
My tiger-lily, borne an oriflamme of war.

A thousand beauties flashed at love's advance;
Like bright white mice at moonlight in their play,
Or sunfish shooting in the shining bay,

The swift feet shot and glittered in the dance.
Oh, have you loved, and truly loved, and seen
Aught else the while than your own stately queen?

Her presence, it was majesty-so tall;

Her proud development encompassed-all.

She filled all space. I sought, I saw but her.
I followed as some fervid worshiper.