Whenever we get near enough, we hail the largest merchantmen in the most
peremptory manner, as coolly as if we had three decks under us and an
admiral on board. The large ships, for the most part paralysed by our
audacity, reply meekly. Sometimes we meet with a foreigner, and get
answered by inarticulate yelling or disrespectful grins. But this is a
rare case; the general rule is, that we maintain our dignity unimpaired
all down the Channel. Then, again, when no ships are near, there is the
constant excitement of consulting our charts and wondering where we are.
Every man of us has a different theory on this subject every time he
looks at the chart; but no man rudely thrusts his theory on another, or
aspires to govern the ideas of the rest in virtue of his superior
obstinacy in backing his own opinion. Did I not assert a little while
since that we were a pure republic? And is not this another and a
striking proof of it?
In such pursuits and diversions as I have endeavoured to describe, the
time passes quickly, happily, and adventurously, until we ultimately
succeed, at four in the morning on the sixth day of our cruise, in
discovering the light of the Longship's Lighthouse, which we know to be
situated off the Land's End. We are now only some seven-and-twenty miles
from the Scilly Islands, and the discovery of the lighthouse enables us
to set our course by the compass cleverly enough. The wind which has
thus far always remained against us, falls, on the afternoon of this
sixth day, to a dead calm, but springs up again in another and a
favourable quarter at eleven o'clock at night. By daybreak we are all on
the watch for the Scilly Islands. Not a sign of them. The sun rises; it
is a magnificent morning; the favourable breeze still holds; we have
been bowling along before it since eleven the previous night; and ought
to have sighted the islands long since. But we sight nothing: no land is
visible anywhere all round the horizon.
Where are we? Have we overshot Scilly?--and is the next land we are
likely to see Ushant or Finisterre? Nobody knows. The faces of the
Brothers Dobbs darken; and they recall to each other how they deprecated
from the first this rash venturing into unknown waters. We hail two
ships piteously, to ask our way. The two ships can't tell us. We unroll
the charts, and differ in opinion over them more remarkably than ever.
The Dobbses grimly opine that it is no use looking at charts, when we
have not got a pair of parallels to measure by, and are all ignorant of
the scientific parts of navigation. Mr. Migott and I manfully cheer the
drooping spirits of the crew with Guinness's stout, and put a smiling
face upon it. But in our innermost hearts, we think of Columbus, and
feel for him.
The last resource is to post a man at the masthead (if so lofty an
expression may be allowed in reference to so little a vessel as the
Tomtit), to keep a look-out. Up the rigging swarms Dick the Bilious, in
the lowest spirits--strains his eyes over the waters, and suddenly hails
the gaping deck with a joyous shout. The runaway islands are caught at
last--he sees them a-head of us--he has no objection to make to the
course we are steering--nothing particular to say but "Crack on!"--and
nothing in the world to do but slide down the rigging again. Contentment
beams once more on the faces of Sam, Dick, and Bob. Mr. Migott and I say
nothing; but we look at each other with a smile of triumph. We remember
the injurious doubts of the crew when the charts were last unrolled--and
think of Columbus again, and feel for him more than ever.
Soon the islands are visible from the deck, and by noon we have run in
as near them as we dare without local guidance. They are low-lying, and
picturesque in an artistic point of view; but treacherous-looking and
full of peril to the wary nautical eye. Horrible jagged rocks, and
sinister swirlings and foamings of the sea, seem to forbid the approach
to them. The Tomtit is hove to--our ensign is run up half-mast high--and
we fire our double-barrelled gun fiercely for a pilot.
The pilot arrives in a long, serviceable-looking boat, with a wild,
handsome, dark-haired son, and a silent, solemn old man for his crew. He
himself is lean, wrinkled, hungry-looking; his eyes are restless with
excitement, and his tongue overwhelms us with a torrent of words, spoken
in a strange accent, but singularly free from provincialisms and bad
grammar. He informs us that we must have been set to the northward in
the night by a current, and goes on to acquaint us with so many other
things, with such a fidgety sparkling of the eyes and such a ceaseless
patter of the tongue, that he fairly drives me to the fore part of the
vessel out of his way. Smoothly we glide along, parallel with the jagged
rocks and the swirling eddies, till we come to a channel between two
islands; and, sailing through that, make for a sandy isthmus, where we
see some houses and a little harbour. This is Hugh Town, the chief place
in St. Mary's, which is the largest island of the Scilly group. We jump
ashore in high glee, feeling that we have succeeded in carrying out the
purpose of our voyage in defiance of the prognostications of all our
prudent friends. At sea or on shore, how sweet is triumph, even in the
smallest things!
Bating the one fact of the wind having blown from an unfavourable
quarter, unvarying good fortune had, thus far, accompanied our cruise,
and our luck did not desert us when we got on shore at St. Mary's. We
went, happily for our own comfort, to the hotel kept by the master of
the packet plying between Hugh Town and Penzance. By our landlord and
his cordial wife and family we were received with such kindness and
treated with such care, that we felt really and truly at home before we
had been half an hour in the house. And, by way of farther familiarizing
us with Scilly at first sight, who should the resident medical man turn
out to be but a gentleman whom I knew. These were certainly fortunate
auspices under which to begin our short sojourn in one of the remotest
and wildest places in the Queen's dominions.
IV.
The Scilly Islands seem, at a rough glance, to form a great irregular
circle, enclosing a kind of lagoon of sea, communicating by various
channels with the main ocean all around.
The circumference of the largest of the group is, as we heard, not more
than thirteen miles. Five of the islands are inhabited; the rest may be
generally described as masses of rock, wonderfully varied in shape and
size. Inland, in the larger islands, the earth, where it is not planted
or sown, is covered with heather and with the most beautiful ferns.
Potatoes used to be the main product of Scilly; but the disease has
appeared lately in the island crops, and the potatoes have suffered so
severely that when we filled our sack for the return voyage, we were
obliged to allow for two-thirds of our supply proving unfit for use. The
views inland are chiefly remarkable as natural panoramas of land and
sea--the two always presenting themselves intermixed in the loveliest
varieties of form and colour. On the coast, the granite rocks, though
not notably high, take the most wildly and magnificently picturesque
shapes. They are rent into the strangest chasms and piled up in the
grandest confusion; and they look down, every here and there, on the
loveliest little sandy bays, where the sea, in calm weather, is as
tenderly blue and as limpid in its clearness as the Mediterranean
itself. The softness and purity of the climate may be imagined, when I
state that in the winter none of the freshwater pools are strongly
enough frozen to bear being skated on. The balmy sea air blows over each
little island as freely as it might blow over the deck of a ship.
The people have the same great merit which I had previously observed
among their Cornish neighbours--the merit of good manners. We two
strangers were so little stared at as we walked about, that it was
almost like being on the Continent. The pilot who had taken us into Hugh
Town harbour we found to be a fair specimen, as regarded his excessive
talkativeness and the purity of his English, of the islanders generally.
The longest tellers of very long stories, so far as my experience goes,
are to be found in Scilly. Ask the people the commonest question, and
their answer generally exhausts the whole subject before you can say
another word. Their anxiety, whenever we had occasion to inquire our
way, to guard us from the remotest chance of missing it, and the honest
pride with which they told us all about local sights and marvels, formed
a very pleasant trait in the general character. Wherever we went, we
found the natural kindness and natural hospitality of the people always
ready to welcome us.
Strangely enough, in this softest and healthiest of climates consumption
is a prevalent disease. If I may venture on an opinion, after a very
short observation of the habits of the people, I should say that
distrust of fresh air and unwillingness to take exercise were the chief
causes of consumptive maladies among the islanders. I longed to break
windows in the main street of Hugh Town as I never longed to break them
anywhere else. One lovely afternoon I went out for the purpose of seeing
how many of the inhabitants of the place had a notion of airing their
bed-rooms. I found two houses with open windows--all the rest were fast
closed from top to bottom, as if a pestilence were abroad instead of the
softest, purest sea-breeze that ever blew. Then, again, as to walking,
the people ask you seriously when you inquire your way on foot, whether
you are aware that the destination you want to arrive at is three miles
off! As for a pedestrian excursion round the largest island--a circuit
of thirteen miles--when we talked of performing that feat in the hearing
of a respectable inhabitant, he laughed at the idea as incredulously as
if we had proposed a swimming match to the Cornish coast. When people
will not give themselves the first great chance of breathing healthily
and freely as often as they can, who can wonder that consumption should
be common among them?
In addition to our other pieces of good fortune, we were enabled to
profit by a very kind invitation from the gentleman to whom the islands
belong, to stay with him at his house, built on the site of an ancient
abbey, and surrounded by gardens of the most exquisite beauty.
To the firm and benevolent rule of the present proprietor of Scilly, the
islanders are indebted for the prosperity which they now enjoy. It was
not the least pleasant part of a very delightful visit, to observe for
ourselves, under our host's guidance, all that he had done, and was
doing, for the welfare and the happiness of the people committed to his
charge. From what we had heard, and from what we had previously observed
for ourselves, we had formed the most agreeable impressions of the
social condition of the islanders; and we now found the best of these
impressions more than confirmed. When the present proprietor first came
among his tenantry he found them living miserably and ignorantly. He has
succoured, reformed, and taught them; and there is now, probably, no
place in England where the direr hardships of poverty are so little
known as in the Scilly Islands.
I might write more particularly on this topic; but I am unwilling to run
the risk of saying more on the subject of these good deeds than the
good-doer himself would sanction. And besides, I must remember that the
object of this narrative is to record a holiday-cruise, and not to enter
into details on the subject of Scilly; details which have already been
put into print by previous travellers. Let me only add then, that our
sojourn in the islands terminated with the close of our stay in the
house of our kind entertainer. It had been blowing a gale of wind for
two days before our departure; and we put to sea with a doubled-reefed
mainsail, and with more doubts than we liked to confess to each other,
about the prospects of the return voyage.
* * * * *
However, lucky we had been hitherto, and lucky we were to continue to
the end. Before we had been long at sea, the wind began to get
capricious; then to diminish almost to a calm; then, towards evening, to
blow again, steadily and strongly, from the very quarter of all others
most favourable to our return voyage. "If this holds," was the sentiment
of the Brothers Dobbs, as we were making things snug for the night, "we
shall be back again at Mangerton before we have had time to get half
through our victuals and drink."
The wind did hold, and more than hold: and the Tomtit flew, in
consequence, as if she was going to give up the sea altogether, and take
to the sky for a change. Our homeward run was the most perfect contrast
to our outward voyage. No tacking, no need to study the charts, no
laggard luxurious dining on the cabin hatch. It was too rough for
anything but picnicking in the cockpit, jammed into a corner, with our
plates on our knees. I had to make the grog with one hand, and clutch at
the nearest rope with the other--Mr. Migott holding the bowl while I
mixed, and the man at the helm holding Mr. Migott. As for reading, it
was hopeless to try it; for there was breeze enough to blow the leaves
out of the book--and singing was not to be so much as thought of; for
the moment you opened your mouth the wind rushed in, and snatched away
the song immediately. The nearer we got to Mangerton, the faster we
flew. My last recollection of the sea, dates at the ghostly time of
midnight. The wind had been increasing and increasing, since sunset,
till it contemptuously blew out our fire in the cabin, as if the stove
with its artful revolving chimney had been nothing but a farthing
rushlight. When I climbed on deck, we were already in the Bristol
Channel.
That last view at sea was the grandest view of the voyage. Ragged black
clouds were flying like spectres all over the sky; the moonlight
streaming fitful behind them. One great ship, shadowy and mysterious,
was pitching heavily towards us from the land. Backward out at sea,
streamed the red gleam from the lighthouse on Lundy Island; and marching
after us magnificently, to the music of the howling wind, came the great
rollers from the Atlantic, rushing in between Hartland Point and Lundy,
turning over and over in long black hills of water, with the seething
spray at their tops sparkling in the moonshine. It was a fine breathless
sensation to feel our sturdy little vessel tearing along through this
heavy sea--jumping stern up, as the great waves caught her--dashing the
water gaily from her bows, at the return dip--and holding on her way as
bravely and surely as the largest yacht that ever was built. After a
long look at the sublime view around us, my friend and I went below
again; and in spite of the noise of wind and sea, managed to fall
asleep. The next event was a call from deck at half-past six in the
morning, informing us that we were entering Mangerton Bay. By seven
o'clock we were alongside the jetty again, after a run of only
forty-three hours from the Scilly Islands.
* * * * *
Thus our cruise ended; and thus we falsified the predictions of our
prudent friends, and came back with our right side uppermost. "Here's
luck to you, gentlemen!"--was the toast which our honest sailor-brothers
proposed, when we met together later in the day, and pledged each other
in a parting cup. "Here's luck," we answered, on our side--"luck to the
Brothers Dobbs; and thanks besides for hearty companionship and faithful
service." And here, in the last glass with one cheer more,--here's luck
to the vessel that carried us, our lively little Tomtit! Tiny home of
joyous days, may thy sea-fortunes be happy, and thy trim sails be set
prosperously for many a year still, to the favouring breeze!
With those good wishes, our holiday trip closed at the time--as the
record of it closes here. With those last words, the book is shut up;
the reader is released; and the writer drops his pen.
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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| Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the |
| original document have been preserved. |
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| Typographical errors corrected in the text: |
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| Page 73 quarteett changed to quartet |
| Page 145 matetials changed to materials |
| Page 163 Brobdignag changed to Brobdingnag |
| Page 193 venimous changed to venomous |
| Page 194 venimous changed to venomous |
| Page 205 followin changed to following |
| Page 207 is it changed to it is |
| Page 216 Colomb changed to Columb |
| Page 233 Tintagell changed to Tintagel |
| Page 234 Excaliber changed to Excalibur |
| Page 247 puctuality changed to punctuality |
| Page 275 Miggott changed to Migott |
| Page 286 recal changed to recall |
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End of Project Gutenberg's Rambles Beyond Railways;, by Wilkie Collins