The Wreckers
Where the moorland ends and meets the sea and the cliffs give way to the black,
a whisper carries from man to man, ready with rope-tied sack.
Down Greagle’s Mouth is a secret way known only to a local few – a treacherous path carved deep in the rock, salt hewed by the funnelling spume.
The wrecking crew is a pod of four, more secret and ancient than Knight’s Templar law; shades darker than the devil’s ebony shroud, cunning as lightning forks from a cloud. Murderous as man or beast can be these scavengers – the scourge of the shallow sea.
When the wind is howling and whistling its tune and hail reddens your face.
When the sky is black and Thor’s hammer comes crashing, the wreckers lie in wait.
Out to sea through eyeglass spied, a sail is silhouetted on the lightning flash.
Drifting and helpless, she is raging sea-rocked, and cat-o’-nine tails lashed.
Anchors overboard to steady her course, all attempts are to no avail,
for this night she’ll be swallowed, spat out on shore as the wreckers’ lamp is obeyed .
From craggy cave the four become three as the lamp man is sent on is way,
to scramble the cleft then be headland found, his lamp primed for ships to obey.
With long arm swings, the yellow light streams – a promised haven, a toddy to be had;
and the arms of a wench with a welcoming bosom, and to be alive you’d be very glad.
Aboard the imperilled boat, a cabin lad shouts as the beckoning yellow is seen.
“Land ahoy!” screams the Coverack boy from the crows nest’s dovetailed beams.
The captain’s last chance: “Let’s make those sails dance and bring this lady about.
There’ll be wine, women and song to be had in the port two miles thereabout”.
The mighty sail billows and grasps the wind, and heaves the doomed frigate along.
Through trough and peak the centre mast creaks and the deckhands grip the wheel strong. On shore, eyes wide, the lamp man stares as the mesmerised ship is reeled in.
Like a moth to the flame he savours the game with his sickly toothless grin.
In Greagle’s Mouth three heartbeats pound as the frigate is tossed ever close.
No thought of the lives or family ties just the gold and her rum-filled hold.
A hundred yards from shore the crew’s spirits soar, and old shanties are about to flow,
when the captain’s smile is wiped off his face by the sight off the ship’s port bow.
Out of the black looms the granite stack, standing hollow two hundred feet high,
like a gaping mouth filled with salt water chilled, and canines lurking below.
Too late to cry, resigned to die as the last wave heaves them in –
to Greagle’s Mouth, the yellowish light, and the sickly toothless grin.
“Take hold my lads” the captain cries, “Deception is the name of this game. But mark my words in this life or the next, punished be will be those to blame”.
Ready with greed, craggy teeth unsheathed in readiness for the bow’s first bite,
from the wave top comes a mighty drop and the shipwright’s keel incised.
The fatal wound is just a taste and the rocky razors do their worst.
Then the bubbling hold, full of sea water cold, fills up to the plank roof and bursts.
From the mighty mast a silent crash as the cabin boy meets his end. In the captain’s tradition of being last, he’s tossed overboard and to sea bed sent.
To the splintering wreckage bodies cling, then vanish beneath the soup.
Non-swimmers splash as their sinking mates gasp for that last gaping breath.
Impaled, lifeless, her canvas sliced, the frigate is broken in two.
From Greagle’s Mouth, her stern’s carried out to the black from whence it first blew .
In the cold light of day the sea at bay, silence broke by a lone gull’s cry,
the pod of four sprint down to explore amid the carnage and the shipmates cries.
No prisoners taken, no help or prayer answered, no mercy or hole in the ground.
Just a lust for gold, not the life of a lad who sought to know if the earth was round.
Lugs are ripped and fingers snipped from the twisted remnants of man,
and sandy trails run from barrels and pales being dragged up to drier land.
The sickening scene behind, the cargo stored, and bloodied hands dipped in the tide,
the four laughing lags trace their footsteps back to where the black cliffs take their dive.
Two nights have passed since the crew’s last breaths and to the Mouth many a visit been. With use of ropes, tackle and block, the bloodied palate is clinically cleaned.
The trove of treasure is traded by night, the liquor quaffed by shore. And the dead sailors’ gold is displayed in the tavern on the necks of the wrecking four.
The secret pact taken in a sober world, to silence, brotherhood and stealth, is soon forgotten in the arms of a wench and here’s another one to your health.
As the cock crows at dawn, the evil tale is let slip to a wide-eyed, black-haired girl.
His words a loaded gun, she soon makes haste to fire off the sins of the toothless one.
Through tavern, down path, along chalk-cliff edge, salty fret on the maid’s black locks, she comes to the village, to the gaol-house door, and delivers three hard Judas knocks.
The toothless grin, on awakening, lies surrounded by burliness on all sides.
He’s dragged from his pit, then punched and kicked, his bruised body tossed outside.
The tune of silver drops into delicate hands, for information and directions she gave.
A final farewell to the toothless one, and a promise she’ll dance on his grave.
Three days and nights he’s chained and bound, with thumbscrews applied on the hour , then the toothless grin at last gives in and the names of his accomplices are found.
A goring of butchers is gathered up with aprons and innocent cries, then padlocked away till judgment day in a windowless, stinking sty.
On December second at two o’clock in a courtroom sardine packed,
“Guilty!” is called, and the four sink their heads as the wig dons its cap so black.
“You’ll be hung by the neck till you no longer breathe, and in chains your carcasses shall stay, till the ravenous birds of the air have fed, and your wind-dried bones crack”.
Away they are led, four hearts pounding and faces ashen, jeered by the crowd on all sides. Then carted and shackled to be to be horse-drawn and dragged to the headland above Greagle’s Mouth.
The gibbets await with the head-bowed priest clutching leather-bound bible in hand.
The four are noosed, their quaking forms tear, as the last sermon is read:
Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed;
he who steals from death his life in death he must dread.
And to the sea and air his remains be cast for his charcoal’d soul deserves no cask.
The four soon drop and their bloodshot eyes pop, gargle and do their dance. A sign of the cross as their fight is lost, their demise crowd-cheered, justice had.
The spirits of four watch the spectacle below as they drift to their eternal rest – a remorseless quartet of murderous sweat, of sniggers and wet-fish flesh.
Beneath the cliffs a rumbling stir not heard by mortals on land, of screams and cries of unbound rage as the frigate’s corpses hatch their captain’s plan.
The seaweed souls shine the primed luring lamp, for dead wreckers to follow and obey,
And the murderous four, seeing heaven’s glow, drift down to where the dead crew lay.
A rapid descent into the cleft, passing the cave they as mortals slept, then onto their fate a black iron gate, in the fret beyond the phantom crew await.
The gate flung open the four go in, expecting wine, women, song and promised joy.
But out from the mist, a yellow lamp primed, shuffle the old salts of the frigate destroyed. “In death you will die”, the captain’s cry; the cabin boy adds a haunting “Ahoy!”
Barnacled mates hold strong the souls of the wrong as judgment is given once more.
“Salty brine shall be your wine, your keel-haul screams your song. And the women you will fear as the whine you will hear before the feline’s nine flays your backs to the raw. Haul them away!”
Mates’ hooks gripping fast, the four are dragged into the misted depths, to suffer eternal damnation for their crimes in life and the captain’s promise to his loyal lads is kept.
Peace now descends over Greagle’s Mouth and the sun begins to warm golden sand.
And the emerald green can be distant seen from the cliffs craggy granite grandstand.
But forget ye not!
When the winter wind is howling, and the snow reddens your face, and a night’s ale makes you crooked and purse-thin. When you have lost your way home and drunkenly you roam following footsteps in the deep white crust beneath.
You may see in the distance through the blizzard’s blow a yellowy light promising safety and a tippled gin. But be warned death awaits from a drop into the black for the unfortunate soul who is taken in.
For swinging the lamp on the edge of the Mouth a last, unfamiliar face you will see. It’s the ghostly wrecker savouring the game once more, with his sickening toothless grin.
COPYRIGHT 2010
