Fortune's Rocks (10 page)
Because the air has become chillier, she reaches for the shawl on the chair. When she looks out her window, she sees that all along the beach of Fortune’s Rocks, bonfires have been lit and are now blazing. She does not at first understand the meaning of these fires until she notices the men in lifesaving dress and cork belts standing by the fire nearest to the cottage. Other men, among them Rufus Philbrick and her father and John Haskell, hover in their dressing gowns at the perimeter of this group. Since everyone is gesturing toward the sea, Olympia looks out to discover what it is that so excites them; and she is startled to see a large dismasted barque foundering in the white foam of the breakers not three hundred feet from shore. The bow of the vessel has shattered and has a ragged and splintered appearance. As she watches, the rudderless ship rises and rolls and hits the rocks that have been the site of not a few shipwrecks.
The doors of the Ely station, built only the year before, are flung open. A half dozen men in oilskins and crotch-high waders begin to maneuver to the water’s boisterous edge the long, slim lifesaving boat that is kept always ready for such occasions. By now, the operation has drawn a crowd, and Olympia is compelled to throw her shawl over her shoulders and make her own way down to the beach.
She stands in the cold and darkness, just beyond the revealing light of the bonfires, the gale already unraveling her patient plaiting of the night before. The wind blows sparks from the fires and threatens to extinguish the signal lights from the red-globed lanterns. In the foaming currents, Olympia can see that the disabled vessel has pitched to an unnatural angle and that men and also women are abandoning her decks for the rigging.
She feels a hand on her arm and, startled, turns. “Olympia,” Catherine Haskell says, unfolding a cloak and laying it across Olympia’s shoulders. “I saw you from the porch. You should not be out here.”
Olympia accepts the gift of the cloak by drawing it more tightly around her. “What has happened?” she asks Catherine.
“Oh my dear, it is so dreadful. Such a horror. I only hope the lifesavers can get to them.”
“Who are they?” Olympia asks.
“According to Rufus, it is an English ship out of Liverpool. They were meant to put in at Gloucester, but the storm has blown them off course.”
The gale makes conversation difficult. Catherine’s hair blows all about her face, and the skirts of Olympia’s nightdress snap at her shins. Together they watch as a gun is brought out of the station on a wagon and aimed at the ship.
“What are they doing?” Olympia asks.
“It is for the breeches buoy,” Catherine answers.
A signal flare lights up the wounded vessel. A woman falls soundlessly from the rigging, and someone on the beach screams. Catherine turns to Olympia and pulls her toward her, as if to shield her face. But Olympia is taller than Catherine, and the embrace is cumbersome and mildly awkward; so they separate and watch as a man is swamped by a cresting wave.
“My God,” Catherine says.
So sheltered has Olympia’s life been up to this point that she has never seen death, nor anything resembling it. She flinches at the sudden boom of the gun. She watches as a ball with a rope attached spools out across the waves and lands behind the ship. A taut line is immediately established from the shipwreck to the shore. One of the men in lifesaving dress steps into the breeches buoy, a device that resembles nothing so much, Olympia thinks, as a large pair of men’s pants attached to a wash line. As the men on shore haul the line through a pulley, the officer makes slow progress toward the vessel, his legs dangling unceremoniously just inches above the surf.
At the water’s edge, John Haskell and Olympia’s father take hold of the stern of the lifesaving boat and run it into the water. Her father’s face is grave, his features wholly concentrated. The sash of his dressing gown has come undone, and Olympia is surprised to see, as she seldom does, his thin white legs. Although Olympia is embarrassed for his body, she is nevertheless proud of her father’s strength in this matter: Haskell and her father seem oblivious to any possible discomfort from the wind or the sea or their endeavors as they both join in the effort to pull the line. Later Olympia and Catherine will learn that the ship, which was called the
Mary Dexter
and carried Norwegian immigrants, sustained damage at the docks in Quebec; but the captain, too eager to finish the journey, unwisely left before repairs could be made.
Mary Dexter
and carried Norwegian immigrants, sustained damage at the docks in Quebec; but the captain, too eager to finish the journey, unwisely left before repairs could be made.
Catherine and Olympia watch as the breeches buoy returns along the line, not with the man who only moments ago traversed it, but rather with the slumped form of a woman who is in turn carrying a child.
“She will drop the child,” Catherine exclaims.
Those at the shoreline must have the same fear, for Haskell sheds his dressing gown and wades into the surf in his nightshirt to snatch the feet of the cargo. When he has the woman in his grasp, he brings her onto dry ground and, with the aid of Rufus Philbrick, disentangles her from the contraption. Another officer steps into the buoy and sets off for the wounded ship.
“I must go to him,” Catherine says. “Will you be all right here?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Olympia says. “I am fine.”
Olympia watches as Catherine Haskell runs against the wind toward her husband. While Olympia’s father attends to the female passenger, wrapping her in a blanket Josiah has brought to the scene, John Haskell lays the child immediately upon a rug and begins to administer lifesaving breaths. Olympia watches as Catherine puts a hand to her husband’s back, and he looks up at her. He tells her something, perhaps gives her instructions, for she immediately takes charge of the woman Olympia’s father has been attending to. Haskell, apparently having restored the child’s breathing, scoops the girl into his arms and begins to walk briskly with her toward the house. Olympia inhales sharply. For she can see that in order to get to the house, he will have to pass by the place where she is standing at the perimeter of the rescue effort.
Her hair blows all about her face, and she has to hold it back to see him. He carries the child close to him, but flat, level with the ground, his arms cradling her underneath. He does not pause, he cannot stop now, but he nevertheless looks directly at Olympia as he passes her. It is only a moment, because he is moving fast. Perhaps she speaks his name, not
John
but rather
Haskell,
which is how she has come to think of him. And in an instant, he is gone.
John
but rather
Haskell,
which is how she has come to think of him. And in an instant, he is gone.
She stands as if she had been hollowed out.
She hears her father calling to her. She waves to him. She wants to help; of course she does. She tries to run, but there is something wrong with her legs, as if her body were momentarily paralyzed. Her father beckons her impatiently on, and she can see his need is urgent. The sand is a drag against her feet, and her movements are sluggish, as they sometimes are in dreams. She tries to run, but she steps on her nightdress or her legs buckle, and she stumbles.
When she looks up, she can see that her father is walking toward her and saying her name. She shakes her head; she does not want him to see her like this. He bends over and puts his hand on her shoulder. His touch is foreign and strange, for they do not ever embrace, but the unfamiliar touch brings her to her senses. She rubs her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress.
“Olympia?” he asks tentatively.
Awkwardly, she stands. It is almost daybreak now, and she can see the sinking vessel and the drama unfolding there more clearly than before.
“I am fine, Father,” she says. “I tripped on my nightdress.”
She slips her arms into the sleeves of the cloak Catherine has brought her.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” she says. “I want to help.”
• • •
In the early morning hours of June
23, 1899
, seventy-four passengers and one ship’s officer from the
Mary Dexter
drown, while fifty-eight passengers and seven marine officers are brought across in the breeches buoy. Another man, a lifesaving officer from Ely, is lost in the rescue effort. The lifesaving boat itself, with nearly a dozen volunteers, pulls away from the unfortunate barque just before the vessel pitchpoles into the sea and splinters into wooden lathes against the rocks.
23, 1899
, seventy-four passengers and one ship’s officer from the
Mary Dexter
drown, while fifty-eight passengers and seven marine officers are brought across in the breeches buoy. Another man, a lifesaving officer from Ely, is lost in the rescue effort. The lifesaving boat itself, with nearly a dozen volunteers, pulls away from the unfortunate barque just before the vessel pitchpoles into the sea and splinters into wooden lathes against the rocks.
Despite the gravity of the wreck, the citizens of Fortune’s Rocks cannot help but be somewhat prideful about the success of the breeches buoy, which has not ever been tried before at the Ely station.
• • •
Because the house is an unusual one in that it was once a convent, there are still a great many cell-like rooms with beds and dressers on the second floor, several of which are occupied by help, but many of which are vacant. With the Haskells in residence, a kind of field hospital is established, and they become, her small family and their guests and servants, its officers: her father the retired general recommissioned for the event; John Haskell the medical officer with all the responsibilities and intimacies that such a position demands; Catherine Haskell the nursing sister in her simple gray dressing gown with the white apron she found in the kitchen; Josiah the veteran sergeant, excellent in a crisis, his organizational skills beyond compare; Philbrick the quartermaster, who takes upon himself the task of securing foodstuffs for the bursting household; Zachariah Cote a kind of AWOL soldier, who feigns sleep during the entire lifesaving effort and who seems to think his only contribution lies in sitting with Olympia’s distraught mother in her rooms; and Olympia the fledgling private initiated into the ranks of adulthood by default, there being few other able women present.
Olympia does not get any more sleep that night, since she and the others are employed in numerous tasks. Because no one amongst the Norwegian immigrants speaks even the most rudimentary English, nor any of the Americans Norwegian, Olympia is called upon to decipher requests and pleas by facial expressions alone and is often reduced to hand gestures for replies. As a large number of the Norwegian menfolk have been lost to the sea, many of the women are deranged by grief. One such woman, with chestnut hair and light gray eyes, has with her five children under the age of eleven. Her face, when she enters the house, is wild, as if she were still in mortal terror for her life, and she is at first unable to care for her children, who are bathed and dressed by Olympia and Catherine. It is frustrating to Olympia not to be able to speak even the crudest expressions of sympathy to the Norwegian woman, although she hopes that her gestures and the tone of her voice are reassuring enough. Olympia notes that she, like most of the refugees who have come into the house, is in a physically deplorable state, even considering her ordeal; and this causes Olympia to wonder at the conditions aboard the immigrant vessel even before it foundered.
All along the hallways of the cottage is a cacophony of sound — children crying, women speaking excitedly in a foreign tongue, Josiah and the other servants moving briskly from room to room. A copper tub is set up in the kitchen, a cloth hastily erected. Olympia’s job is to bathe the children, female and male alike; and thus she observes that even the most stringent of mores, kept highly polished in normal times, may be quickly abandoned in times of crisis.
By mid-morning, some order has been established. Olympia is bathing a small girl with silver curls whose name may or may not be Anna. Though Olympia has little verbal communication with the child, they manage to convey a great deal by way of an inventive soap sculpture of a sailing vessel that floats for a time and then disappears into the cloudy water. As small children will, the girl seems recovered from her near fatal mishap, and she appears to be, for the moment, simply enjoying her bath. As Olympia kneels before the tub, enduring the child’s brief annoyance when she washes her hair, she hears a sound behind her. When she turns, she sees that John Haskell has entered the room.
“Do not let me disturb you,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He leans against a pine table and crosses his arms. He seems tired, which she knows he must be. He has hours ago changed into dry clothes, although his hair is somewhat unkempt.
Shielding the child’s face with her hand, Olympia pours another pitcher of water over the silvery head. The girl squeals and fidgets, encouraging her to finish the task with dispatch. Through an open window, Olympia notes the ribs of the unfortunate barque, a sight that calls to mind the skeleton of a beached and stripped whale. And how strange it is to see the lifesaving station, which was the locus of such frenetic activity just hours earlier, rendered tame and even charming in the sunlight. The building is a handsome structure with many wide windows and a large tower with a widow’s walk. Intricate carvings decorate the eaves of the red roof, which rises to a sharp peak. How tidy and neat the scene appears, she thinks. And how unapologetic Nature seems to be in her calm indifference.
“It was a brave effort,” Haskell says.
“Yes.”
“Sixty-five souls saved, and only one lifesaving officer lost. That is” — he calculates a moment — “slightly less than fifty percent of the ship’s passengers and crew saved and only eight percent of the lifesavers lost.”
She ponders his calculations.
“Were I the wife of the man who was lost,” she says, “I might consider that poor return for the risk, for to me and my children the loss would be one hundred percent.”
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