Sea-dogs all! — Text and Context

The river-path along the Severn shore at Gatcombe was almost knee-deep with turbid water, and only a post here and there showed where river ordinarily ended and firm land began. Fishers and foresters stood in the pelting rain and buffeting wind anxiously calculating what havoc the sudden summer storm might work, helpless themselves to put forth a hand to save anything from its fury. Stout doors and firm casements (both were needed in the river-side hamlet) bent with the fury of the sou'-wester that beat upon them. The tide roared up the narrowing estuary like a mill-race, and the gale tore off the tops of the waves, raised them with the lashing raindrops, and hurled both furiously against everything that fringed the shore. Gatcombe Pill leapt and plunged muddily between its high, red banks, and the yellow tide surged up the opening and held back the seething waters like a dam. There was black sky above, and many-coloured earth and water below.

The lading jetty against the village only appeared at odd moments above the tumult of waters, and a couple of timber ships that lay on the north side, partially loaded, were plunging and leaping at their anchor cables like two dogs at the end of their chains. Great oaken logs bobbed up and down like corks, or raced with the current upstream; the product of many weeks' timber-cutting in the forest would be scattered as driftwood from Gloucester to the shores of Devon and Wales.

On the high bank above Gatcombe, one other man, half hidden by the thick trees, braved the fury of the storm. There was nothing of the fisher or forester about him; the pale, worn face and the tall, lean figure soberly clad in black betokened the monk or the scholar, but claimed no kinship with them that toiled in the woodlands or won a living from the dangerous sea. Leaning against a giant beech that rocked in wild rhythm with the storm, he watched the wind and tide at their work of devastation, an odd smile of satisfaction playing about the corners of his thin lips.

"A hundred candles to St. James for this tempest!" he murmured. "If the ships do but break loose and get aground, I will tramp Christendom for the money to build him a church." But though the man in black watched the river for the space of two hours longer, his hopes of utter destruction were unrealized; the cables held, the rain ceased, the wind abated, and the tide began to run seawards once more. Bit by bit the jetty rose above the swirling waters. Inshore the sands of the river-bed were uncovered, and the fishers and wharfmen swarmed along them and on the pier, saving from the sea the logs of oak that were within reach. For a while the man on the cliff watched them; then he turned aside into the dripping recesses of the forest. "Comfort thyself," he said, tapping his bosom as he walked; "the omens are good. What water hath commenced, the fire shall finish!"

Almost upon the instant a sturdy figure broke from the bushes above Gatcombe Pill and hurried along the cliff towards the harbour. Deep-chested, full-throated, weather-stained, compacted of brawn and sinew, he looked the ruddy-faced, daring sailor-man, every inch of him. From crown to toe he was clad in homely gray; but if, on the one hand, the ass peeps out from the borrowed lion's skin, so will royalty shine through fustian; and the newcomer had the air of a king among men. He hallooed to the ships, and then hastily scrambled down the cliff.

Only the groaning of the trees and rustling of the undergrowth hid the footfalls of the man in black from the ears of the man in gray. He was looking for him, but the time when they should meet was not yet come.