Then I, too, went down the steep twisting path through the dark woods to the beach below.
The fog had almost gone, and when I came to the cove I could see the ship at once, lying about two miles offshore with her bows pointed towards the cliffs. I went along the breakwater and stood at the end of it, leaning against the rounded wall. There was a crowd of people on the cliffs already who must have walked along the coast-guard path from Kerrith. The cliffs and the headland were part of Manderley, but the public had always used the right-of-way along the cliffs. Some of them were scrambling down the cliff face to get a closer view of the stranded ship. She lay at an awkward angle, her stern tilted, and there were a number of rowing-boats already pulling round her. The lifeboat was standing off. I saw someone stand up in her and shout through a megaphone. I could not hear what he was saying. It was still misty out in the bay, and I could not see the horizon. Another motorboat chugged into the light with some men aboard. The motorboat was dark gray. I could see someone in uniform. That would be the harbormaster from Kerrith, and the Lloyd’s agent with him. Another motorboat followed, a party of holiday-makers from Kerrith aboard. They circled round and round the stranded steamer chatting excitedly. I could hear their voices echoing across the still water.
I left the breakwater and the cove and climbed up the path over the cliffs towards the rest of the people. I did not see Maxim anywhere. Frank was there, talking to one of the coast-guards. I hung back when I saw him, momentarily embarrassed. Barely an hour ago I had been crying to him, down the telephone. I was not sure what I ought to do. He saw me at once and waved his hand. I went over to him and the coast-guard. The coast-guard knew me.
“Come to see the fun, Mrs. de Winter?” he said smiling. “I’m afraid it will be a hard job. The tugs may shift her, but I doubt it. She’s hard and fast where she is on that ledge.”
“What will they do?” I said.
“They’ll send a diver down directly to see if she’s broken her back,” he replied. “There’s the fellow there in the red stocking cap. Like to see through these glasses?”
I took his glasses and looked at the ship. I could see a group of men staring over her stern. One of them was pointing at something. The man in the lifeboat was still shouting through the megaphone.
The harbormaster from Kerrith had joined the group of men in the stern of the stranded ship. The diver in his stocking cap was sitting in the gray motorboat belonging to the harbormaster.
The pleasure-boat was still circling round the ship. A woman was standing up taking a snapshot. A group of gulls had settled on the water and were crying foolishly, hoping for scraps.
I gave the glasses back to the coast-guard.
“Nothing seems to be happening,” I said.
“They’ll send him down directly,” said the coast-guard. “They’ll argue a bit first, like all foreigners. Here come the tugs.”
“They’ll never do it,” said Frank. “Look at the angle she’s lying at. It’s much shallower there than I thought.”
“That reef runs out quite a way,” said the coast-guard; “you don’t notice it in the ordinary way, going over that piece of water in a small boat. But a ship with her depth would touch all right.”
“I was down in the first cove by the valley when they fired the rockets,” said Frank. “I could scarcely see three yards in front of me where I was. And then the things went off out of the blue.”
I thought how alike people were in a moment of common interest. Frank was Frith all over again, giving his version of the story, as though it mattered, as though we cared. I knew that he had gone down to the beach to look for Maxim. I knew that he had been frightened, as I had been. And now all this was forgotten and put aside: our conversation down the telephone, our mutual anxiety, his insistence that he must see me. All because a ship had gone ashore in the fog.
A small boy came running up to us. “Will the sailors be drowned?” he asked.
“Not them. They’re all right, sonny,” said the coast-guard. “The sea’s as flat as the back of my hand. No one’s going to be hurt this time.”
“If it had happened last night we should never have heard them,” said Frank. “We must have let off more than fifty rockets at our show, beside all the smaller things.”
“We’d have heard all right,” said the coast-guard. “We’d have seen the flash and known the direction. There’s the diver, Mrs. de Winter. See him putting on his helmet?”