In the lea of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together; but there was no discourse among them.The major part were sailors' wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob rose, and the mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the visible hand of a foe raised to smite them.Apart from the multitude, I observed three or four young lasses standing behind the Whinnyhill families' tomb, and I jealoused that they had joes in the ships; for they often looked to the bay, with long necks and sad faces, from behind the monument.A widow woman, one old Mary Weery, that was a lameter, and dependent on her son, who was on board the Louping Meg, (as the Lovely Peggy was nicknamed at the shore,) stood by herself, and every now and then wrung her hands, crying, with a woeful voice, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord;"--but it was manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her.But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy.He was an Englishman that had been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest was but nine or so, were friendless enough, though both my gudewife, and other well-disposed ladies, paid them all manner of attention till their father would come home.
The three poor little things, knowing that he was in one of the ships, had been often out and anxious, and they were then sitting under the lea of a headstone, near their mother's grave, chittering and creeping closer and closer at every squall.Never was such an orphan-like sight seen.
When it began to be so dark that the vessels could no longer be discerned from the churchyard, many went down to the shore, and Itook the three babies home with me, and Mrs Pawkie made tea for them, and they soon began to play with our own younger children, in blythe forgetfulness of the storm; every now and then, however, the eldest of them, when the shutters rattled and the lum-head roared, would pause in his innocent daffing, and cower in towards Mrs Pawkie, as if he was daunted and dismayed by something he knew not what.
Many a one that night walked the sounding shore in sorrow, and fires were lighted along it to a great extent; but the darkness and the noise of the raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermitted till about midnight: at which time a message was brought to me, that it might be needful to send a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken masts and tackle had come in, and that surely some of the barks had perished.I lost no time in obeying this suggestion, which was made to me by one of the owners of the Louping Meg; and to show that I sincerely sympathized with all those in affliction, I rose and dressed myself, and went down to the shore, where I directed several old boats to be drawn up by the fires, and blankets to be brought, and cordials prepared, for them that might be spared with life to reach the land; and I walked the beach with the mourners till the morning.
As the day dawned, the wind began to abate in its violence, and to wear away from the sou-west into the norit, but it was soon discovered that some of the vessels with the corn had perished; for the first thing seen, was a long fringe of tangle and grain along the line of the highwater mark, and every one strained with greedy and grieved eyes, as the daylight brightened, to discover which had suffered.But I can proceed no further with the dismal recital of that doleful morning.Let it suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, we at last saw three of the vessels lying on their beam-ends with their masts broken, and the waves riding like the furious horses of destruction over them.What had become of the other two was never known; but it was supposed that they had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished.
The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, every body in a manner was down on the beach, to help and mourn as the bodies, one after another, were cast out by the waves.Alas! few were the better of my provident preparation, and it was a thing not to be described, to see, for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless bairns, mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved.Seventeen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated dwelling of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betheral, went to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him, crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation, "Wha, in sic a time, can praise the Lord?"
