TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Original spelling and punctuation has been retained, with a few
exceptions. Some quotation mark errors were corrected. Italicised
text has been coded with underscores before and after. Small caps
were converted to uppercase.
A few of the illustrations were untitled. Short descriptions have
been added, prefixed by "TN: ". On page 51, the passage "to the
deer-haunted heights of Dunkerry" is retained. There are five
mentions of "Dunkery" in the book, and only one of "Dunkerry".
* * * * *
IN THE WEST COUNTRY.
* * * * *
[Illustration: CLOVELLY FROM THE SEA.]
In the West Country
BY
FRANCIS A. KNIGHT,
AUTHOR OF
_"By Leafy Ways," "Rambles of a Dominie,"
"By Moorland and Sea,"
&c., &c._
_ILLUSTRATED._
Bristol:
W. CROFTON HEMMONS, ST. STEPHEN STREET.
London:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
_These sketches are, with alterations and additions,
reprinted from the "Daily News" and the "Speaker," by
kind permission of the editors._
WITHOUT PERMISSION,
BUT WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE
TOO DEEP FOR WORDS,
These Pages are Dedicated
TO
THE DEVOTED COMPANION
WHOSE RAMBLES WITH ME IN
The West Country
BEGAN NOW NEARLY
"_... five and twenty years ago;
Alas, but time escapes! 'Tis even so._"
_Printed at the Publisher's Works, St. Stephen Street, Bristol._
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
[Illustration: untitled. TN: Sailing Ships in Harbour.]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CLOVELLY: "WESTWARD HO!" COUNTRY 1
CLOVELLY: THE SOUND OF THE SEA 9
CLOVELLY: THE VIKINGS' SEAT 16
WESTWARD HO! AN OLD CARRONADE 25
DARTMOOR DAYS 36
EXMOOR--WYCHANGER: A FAR RETREAT 50
EXMOOR--LUCCOMBE: TWILIGHT IN THE
HOLLOW 59
EXMOOR: HORNER WATER 67
EXMOOR: WHERE RED DEER HIDE 75
TORR STEPS: A MOORLAND RIVER 82
EXMOOR--WINSFORD: VOICES THREE 90
BREAN DOWN: FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 98
THE COUNTRY LIFE 114
HALE WELL: A QUIET CORNER 128
THE GREENWOOD TREE 146
CHILL OCTOBER 162
TURF MOOR: A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND 176
TURF MOOR: THE FROZEN MARSHES 188
WINSCOMBE: A CAMP OF REFUGE 196
WINSCOMBE: A MIDSUMMER MEADOW 204
WINSCOMBE: HARVEST HOME 213
THE MENDIPS--WINTERHEAD: AFTERMATH 222
WOODSPRING: A GREY OLD HOUSE BY
THE SEA 235
KEWSTOKE: THE MONK'S STEPS 250
BY COACH TO TINTAGEL 258
[Illustration: untitled. TN: Bird, perhaps a heron, flying with
moon and clouds in background.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
CLOVELLY FROM THE SEA (_frontispiece_).
CLOVELLY STREET 1
A ROCKY COAST 9
MOONLIGHT 16
OLD SAILOR AND CHILD _to face_ 22
AN OLD CARRONADE 25
DARTMOOR: CHAGFORD 36
DARTMOOR--EVENING: TAKING HOME
THE SHEEP _to face_ 48
A WEST COUNTRY COTTAGE 50
THE OLD MILL: TWILIGHT 59
EXMOOR: HORNER BRIDGE 67
WHERE RED DEER HIDE 75
TORR STEPS 82
AN EXMOOR SKETCH 90
A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA 98
MOORLAND NEAR THE SEA 114
A WEST COUNTRY MOLE CATCHER _to face_ 124
A QUIET CORNER 128
THE GREENWOOD TREE 146
THE HARVEST MOON 162
ON SEDGMOOR 176
WINTER IN THE MARSHES 188
WINSCOMBE--THE CHURCH PORCH 196
A MENDIP VILLAGE--WINSCOMBE _to face_ 200
THE MOWERS 204
A WEST COUNTRY REAPER 213
COUNTRY LIFE 222
WINTERHEAD: AN UPLAND PASTURE _to face_ 233
A GREY OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA 235
THE MONK'S RETREAT 250
TINTAGEL 258
[Illustration: untitled. TN: Farmstead.]
[Illustration: CLOVELLY STREET.]
AT CLOVELLY.
There are few parts of English coast-line whose traditions are
more picturesque than those of the beautiful sea-board of Devon.
Its shores are haunted by memories of the great Armada, of the
deeds of Drake and Hawkins, of Howard and Raleigh, and of many
another old sea-dog, who played his part in the making of our
island story. It was the coast of Devonshire that was first
harried by the Danes, when, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle, "three ships of Northmen, out of Denmark," put in to
plunder Teignmouth. The other side of the county suffered most.
Again and again the hamlets on the northern shore were wasted by
the merciless invaders. The isle of Lundy, that from the land
shows like a faint blue bar along the sky line, has a stirring
story of its own. It has served in its time as a stronghold even
of corsair Algerines. Pirates from Spain and Holland each held it
in their turn. On the beach of its only landing place there still
lies, buried in the shingle, an ancient gun that was hurled over
the cliff by the French when they were about to leave the island.
Its rightful lords themselves were, in the good old days, little
better, probably, than buccaneers.
But there is a greater and more real interest linked with this
pleasant shore. The memory that, before all others, haunts the
coast of Devon is the memory of Charles Kingsley. The legends that
have most charm for us here are from the pages of "Westward Ho!"
If Bideford has regained nothing of its lost renown, Bideford that
in Queen Bess's time "was one of the chief ports in England ...
furnished seven ships to fight the Armada; and even more than a
century afterwards ... sent more vessels to the northern trade
than any port in England saving London and Topsham," we cannot
forget that it was there that "Westward Ho!" was written. As we
stroll along the streets of the little seaport that lies opposite,
we are less likely to think of Hubba and his vikings than of how
"the _Vengeance_ slid over the Bar, passed the sleeping sandhills,
and dropped anchor off Appledore with her flag floating half-mast
high, for the corpse of Salvation Yeo was on board."
Kingsley's pictures of South American forests have fired the heart
of many a reader, old as well as young, to see for himself the
wonders of those enchanted regions, to gaze on a giant ceiba tree,
like that on the green steeps above La Guayra, where "Parrots
peeped in and out of every cranny, while, within the air of
woodland, brilliant lizards basked like living gems upon the bark,
gaudy finches flitted and chirrupped, butterflies of every size
and colour hovered over the topmost twigs, innumerable insects
hummed from morn till eve; and, when the sun went down, tree-toads
came out to snore and croak till dawn."
But those descriptions, marvellous as they are, were borrowed from
books. It was not until fourteen years after that passage was
written that "the dream of forty years" was fulfilled; that the
author of "At Last" was able to see with his own eyes the West
Indies and the Spanish Main; could, as he says, "compare books
with facts, and judge for myself of the reported wonders of the
earthly paradise." But it is quite another thing when he is
talking of the coast of Devon. There his foot is on his native
heath. He was not, it is true, born within sound of the sea, but
some of his earliest memories were of Hartland and Welcombe, of
Bideford and Clovelly. Above all of Clovelly. To use his wife's
words, "His love for Clovelly was a passion." Even his well-loved
Eversley had hardly a warmer place in his regard.
Kingsley was just eleven when his father became rector there, and
for some six years he doubtless spent most of his holidays at
least among the scenes which he describes so well. Thirteen years
passed before he went back. "I cannot believe my eyes," he wrote
to his wife; "the same place, the pavement, the same dear old
smells, the dear old handsome, loving faces again." The cottages
are much the same as when last he saw them, now nearly fifty years
ago, "with jessamine and fuchsia running up the windows." Just the
same as then is "the narrow paved cranny of a street, vanishing
downwards, stair below stair." Any change there is must be for the
better. The village has been drained; that is a substantial
improvement, and the fuchsias and climbers have wreathed half the
hamlet in a very bower of green. Clovelly Church--so far away that
the sound of its bells never reaches the village in the cleft
below--has few features of its own to recommend it. But the
grey-haired sexton remembers how he sat with young Kingsley in the
choir, sixty years since, when they were boys together. And the
churchyard is to us like a chapter of romance. Half the names we
know best in "Westward Ho!" are on its stones.
Here are two names that conjure up those "five desperate minutes"
on the mountain road when the gold train was taken; when the
surviving Spaniards, "two only, who were behind the rest,
happening to be in full armour, escaped without mortal wound, and
fled down the hill again." They were chased by "Michael Evans and
Simon Heard ... two long and lean Clovelly men ... who ran two
feet for the Spaniards' one; and in ten minutes returned, having
done their work." Another stone reminds us of "the armourer, who
sat tinkering a head-piece," humming a ballad in honour of his
birthplace. "'Tis Sunderland, John Squire, to the song, and not
Bidevor," said his mate. "Well, Bidevor's as good as Sunderland
any day, for all there's no say-coals there blacking a place
about."
The names of Ebbsworthy and Parracombe recall that scene by the
banks of the Meta, when Amyas went with Ayacanora in search of two
of his men, who had taken to the forest, each with an Indian
bride. It was Parracombe who asked only to be left "in peace,
alone with God and God's woods, and the good wives that God has
given us, to play a little like school children. It's long since
I've had play-hours, and now I'll be a little child once more,
with the flowers and the singing birds and the silver fishes in
the stream that are at peace and think no harm, and want neither
clothes, nor money, nor knighthood, nor peerage, but just take
what comes."
Here are Yeo and Hamblyn. And if there are no Careys in the
churchyard, they lie in plenty in the church itself. Here, too,
is a Passmore. "Lucy Passmore, the white witch to Welcombe. Don't
you mind Lucy Passmore, as charmed your warts for you when you was
a boy?" It is a far cry from Clovelly to the deep gorge of
Welcombe: a good way even to Harty Point, with whose lesser
altitude the crew of the _Rose_ compared the towering heights
above the mangrove swamps of Higuerote. But the place is close to
the village where Frank and Amyas kept watch after that strange
missive had been left at the Court by some "country fellow"--
"Mister Carey, be you wary
By deer park end to-night
Yf Irish ffoxe com out of rocks
Grip and hold hym tight"
We can stand there now and look out over just such a scene as
Amyas saw when, "outside, the south-west wind blew fresh and
strong, and the moonlight danced upon a thousand crests of foam;
but within the black, jagged point which sheltered the town, the
sea did but heave in long, oily swells of rolling silver, onward
into the black shadow of the hills, within which town and pier lay
invisible, save where a twinkling light gave token of some weary
fisher's wife, watching the weary night through for the boat which
would return with dawn."
The beech below, the "steep hillside fenced with oak wood," are at
least the same as in Kingsley's time. And if the stout craft that
he used to watch putting out from the pier have not outlived the
gales of half a century, there are men on the fishing boats of
to-day that remember him well. There are those in the village who
recollect even his father, "a man who feared no danger, and could
steer a boat, hoist and lower a sail, shoot a herring net, and
haul a seine as one of themselves." Who that stands looking
seaward from the ancient quay, whose rude, unmortared masonry has
weathered full five hundred winters, and watches the great green
rollers thundering up the beach, but thinks of the bay as Kingsley
saw it, "darkened with the grey columns of the waterspouts,
stalking across the waves before the northern gale; and the tiny
herring-boats fleeing from their nets right for the breakers,
hoping more mercy even from those iron walls of rock than the
pitiless, howling waste of spray behind them?" Yes, it is
"Westward Ho!" country. Turn where we will--the bay, the cliffs,
the woods, the village--all remind us of Amyas Leigh, of Will
Carey, of Salvation Yeo.
[Illustration: A ROCKY COAST.]
THE SOUND OF THE SEA.
The long curve of the shore on either side this little fishing
port, guarded here by a mighty wall of cliff, here by steep faces
of red rock, and bordered here with fields that come down nearly
to the water's edge, is fringed with a wide belt of shingle--no
smooth stretch of yellow sand, but miles and miles of great grey
pebbles, the ruins of old cliffs, the wreck of rocky battlements
shattered by the surges, and rolled and shaped and rounded by the
rude play of winds and waves. Down the long shore, headland beyond
headland shows fainter and more faint, until the shadowy outline
of the land fades into the far horizon. Westward from the harbour,
a long cliff towers above the shore, with strange curves and
mighty buttresses, of endless shades of red and brown, its seaworn
faces weathered to cool grey or stained to inky black, touched
with the gold of clinging lichens and the bright green of tiny
ferns. Along its ledges sturdy rowan trees are rooted, among
thickets of gorse and bracken and heather. Higher up there hangs
over the rocky brows a crown of dwarf oak trees, gnarled and
storm-beaten.
At the foot of the vast wall, growing dim now as evening darkens,
is a little space of shingle-covered beach, that at high water is
altogether shut out from the world. When the tide is in there is
no way in or out. If on the steep side of the cliff there are
tracks up which a goat might clamber, yet round the points of rock
that fence it in, against which now the waves are breaking, there
will be no way for hours. For hours nor voice nor foot of man can
break the quiet of this lonely spot. A single gull, rocking idly
on the waves, over its double in the clear water under it, and one
solitary cormorant standing erect and motionless on a great rock
that is almost as dark as he, deepen the sense of solitude.
Solitude there is, but not silence. The warm air of the summer
twilight is full of the sound of the sea--"low at times, and loud
at times, and changing like a poet's rhymes;" and after each
wave-beat on the storm-worn rocks the dark cliff overhead so
flings back the answer that it seems as if
"From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song"
The hour is late. The cliff grows cold and sombre. Darkness is
settling in its cavernous hollows. The shadow of the shore steals
slowly out over the pale green sea. Over the bay are scattered the
fishing-boats of the port, still far off, but making for home
towards the tiny quay that, from the shore below the village,
stretches out its sheltering arm. Far out at sea, beyond the
jagged line of tumbling waves against the sky, lies a great ocean
highway, whose white sails and drifting smoke show faintly through
the haze. Over the vast sea, here dark with shifting
cloud-shadows, there still bright in the clear sunshine, are hues
a painter might toil for in vain. Who could render the swift
changes of colour that wind and sun are weaving with their
magical loom over the wide expanse? Here a band of pale, clear
green stretches far across the bay; here a belt of soft amber;
there a long stretch of rich, imperial purple, with endless
interchange of brown and green and blue, ruffled with light flaws
of wind, and touched at far intervals with white points of foam,
as of waves that were fleeing from the rougher sea outside.
The art of man might copy to the life the curve of that great
green wave, with scraps of seaweed showing darkly through its
cool, transparent depths; but not the deftest hand that ever drew
could give the low roar of the incoming roller, the sound of its
plunge on the unyielding rock. The painter might imitate the snowy
whiteness of the water beaten suddenly into foam, but not its
seething hiss as it rushes in among the boulders, not the rattle
of the pebbles as the wave draws back for its next plunge along
the beach. He might show us the glisten of the wet stones, rounded
and polished by the eternal chafing of the surges; he might make
the white foam flicker in the black shadows under them, but not
the sullen sound of boulders shaken to their stony roots by the
resistless tide--boulders that on rough nights of winter, when
the lighthouse tower is veiled in storm-drift, and great waves are
thundering on the bar, are hurled like play-things up and down the
beach. The cormorant on the canvas might be to the full as stately
and sombre as that dark figure yonder, brooding like some spirit
of evil; but no shout could startle him to flight, driving him,
with slow beat of his broad wings, to seek safety in some still
more secluded resting-place. The clearest colours of the palette,
the deftest touches of the brush, the highest ideal of the painter
can give us but one glimpse of what after all is one unending
change. His may be the ideal. This is the real, the restless,
seething, stormy sea. What is the sea without its sound? As we
gaze at the dumb fury of a painted storm--the fatal reef, the
doomed ship, the white lash of the pitiless surges, it is to Fancy
alone that we must look for
"The sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea sand."
But now the fishing-boats are coming in. Their brown sails, always
so dear to the soul of the artist, have taken colour from the
flaming west, and shine like fiery orange in the light of sunset.
Their dark hulls are glistening with spray, the white foam shines
like silver underneath their bows. One after one they near the
shore, and as they pass into the shadow of the cliff the silver
melts from the hissing foam below them, the borrowed colour fades
slowly from their sails, that, as each craft reaches her moorings,
rattle down, mere heaps of sombre, sea-beaten canvas. Boats are
putting out from the shore to bring in the fish. Groups of idlers
and fishing-folk gather on the quay. For the moment the hum of
voices rises louder through the narrow street of the little town,
half hidden now in the darkness of the hollow--the little town
that is like no other in the islands.
"'Tis a stairway, not a street.
That ascends the deep ravine."
The sun is down. Far off across the bay the lighthouse has mounted
guard over the bar,--the very bar over which
"Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
Away to the west as the sun went down."
Now silence begins to settle on the village. The bearded vikings
are gone from the seat where, night after night, they spin the
same old yarns; where night after night the wayfarer over-hears
scraps of seafaring talk--of prodigious hauls of fish, of
hairbreadth escapes, of trawlers that, fleeing from a storm, were
caught on the very threshold and dashed to flinders on the quay.
A sound of the sea is in it all. And when the last group of idlers
has broken up, when the clatter of the last belated footsteps has
died away up the little, unlighted, stony street, and the hush of
night is brooding on this quaint old village, the song of the sea
grows louder still. Now through the quiet air comes faintly up the
cry of some wandering plover, the muttered croak of a solitary
heron. All night the little town is full of voices of the sea--
"The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean."
[Illustration: MOONLIGHT.]
THE VIKINGS SEAT.
Half way down the one street of this "little wood-embosomed
fishing town--a steep stair of houses clinging to the cliff," as
Kingsley calls it, is one of the few level spaces that break the
otherwise abrupt descent. No better place could have been chosen
for a seat, for no point in all the village commands so wide a
view of the sea. There is no place so good as this for watching
the trawlers putting out, hauled slowly to the head of the quay,
and then spreading their great brown mainsails,--double-reefed of
late, for there is mostly a stiff breeze outside the bay. On the
left, in front of one of the prettiest of many pretty houses in
the village, half covered with a bower of creepers, is a low wall,
on which, when their day's work is done, the sailors and the old
sea captains gather for their nightly gossip. Below are groups of
cottages, scattered in picturesque confusion, with ancient roofs
of crumbling slate, and quaint old gables, all wreathed in
creepers and honeysuckle and tall fuchsias. Lower still is the old
quay, five centuries old, with brown fishing nets hung up to dry,
and with a half-score or so of trawlers moored to old corroded
guns embedded in the masonry, their tall masts swaying idly on the
long swell that now, at high tide, fills the little harbour. The
fishermen are still busy over their gear. When all is stowed they
will make their way up here, to the wall yonder, or to this bench,
to talk over the doings of the day. Here the old captains,
grey-headed, storm-beaten sea kings, sit, night after night, and
spin over and over their well-worn yarns. There is not so much in
their speech of
"... the magic charm of foreign lands,
With shadows of palms, and shining sands;"
not so much of the high seas,
"Of ships dismasted, that were hailed,
And sent no answer back again,"
as of disasters nearer home, of some mishap among the boats.
It is always the boats. The talk is ever and ever the same--of
spars carried away, of split mainsails, of the failure of the
fishing. A few days since the trawlers put out with a fair wind
and a smooth sea. The trawls were not yet down when clouds swept
off the land, the air was darkened by a great rush of rain, and a
sudden storm, with heavy squalls of wind, broke over the boats.
One by one the brown sails disappeared. On the quay stood a group
of anxious figures vainly endeavouring to peer through the storm.
When the weather cleared it was seen that one of the boats was in
trouble. A squall had laid her on her beam ends, and she shipped a
heavy sea. The men had given themselves up for lost, for no help
could have got to them in time, even had their plight been seen;
when, happily for them, the bowsprit carried away, some of the
strain was taken off, and the boat righted. All next day her
skipper was strolling idly on the quay, like a man dazed; and as
you pass the Vikings' Seat in the evening, or indeed any little
knot of sailors, you will still hear scraps of the story.
The gravestones round the church on the hill are evidence enough
of the risks they run that go down to the sea in ships. More
eloquent still are the tales of the old fishermen:--how, for
instance, in one great storm, now "five-and-fifty years agone," as
they put it, twenty-one men from this port were drowned in the
bay, within sight of land. Still farther back, "a matter of
one-and-seventy years agone," no fewer than thirty-two were lost;
and the whole population of the port is even now not much over two
hundred. Of such great disasters the churchyard has few records.
So strong are the currents in the bay that bodies are seldom
recovered. Some of the stones are only in memory of those whose
rest remains unknown--not here, but somewhere in the stormy sea.
Every son of the village is a fisherman born. Every man has been a
sailor almost since he could remember anything. Few as are the
inhabitants of the place, twenty of them are captains on the high
seas, or, having spent their lives in battling with the storm,
have put in for the last time to spend in this harbour of refuge
their few remaining days. These are the men of the old school,
who, from childhood to old age, have kept green the memory of
their native village, always cherishing the hope
"... their long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last."
The modern captain is a more prosperous man. He knows more of the
world. He is not content with the narrow street, the tiny rooms,
the small affairs of this awkward out-of-the-way corner. His home
will be at some larger port. In twenty years there will be few of
the old race of sea captains left to rule the conclaves round the
Vikings' Seat.
They are a kindly race, those West Country fishermen. Kingsley's
eulogies of his beloved Devon folk were never more deserved than
here, never were more true than now:--a warm-hearted, honest,
pleasant-spoken race, gentle and courteous, yet free and
independent as ever. A fine old figure is that venerable,
white-headed, white-bearded mariner, whose memories go back over
eighty years of seafaring life. He is never tired of the story of
a sailor of this village, who, returning home in a gold-ship, was
cast away on Norfolk Island--then entirely uninhabited--together
with his wife and a handful of the crew. The men saved nothing
from the wreck but one precious lucifer match, parent of all the
fires they had in many dreary years. Some of the party, in
despair, put off in a boat, but nothing was ever known as to their
fate. Years passed before a sealing brig put in and took off the
few survivors. The portrait of the castaway and his wife, in their
rude dress of skins, sewn with bone needles of their own making,
is still shewn in the village--he, with lifted hand, as if
pointing to the long-looked-for sail; she, with a bright look of
joy upon her pretty face.
The white-haired sailor, for all his eighty years of sailing, has
never been out of sight of land; but that tall, grizzled sea
captain standing yonder has been round the Horn more times than he
can well reckon up. After forty years he came home, with every
intention of getting another ship, feeling that nothing could ever
part him from the sea. But the years have passed, and still he
lingers in the village. Nothing now could tempt him from the
shore. Of all the wonders of his forty years' experience, none
seems to have burnt itself so deep into his memory as a night in
the tropics, in a perfect calm, on a smooth and oily sea, in
which all the stars were copied with such perfect clearness that,
as he puts it, "you would almost think there really was another
world, and that you were in it."
In a doorway hard by, festooned after the manner of the place with
creepers and tall fuchsias, is a picture for an artist. At the
threshold there sits, on the brick-floor, the grandfather, an old,
sunburnt, sea-beaten fisherman, nursing a fair-haired,
rosy-cheeked youngster, who laughs and crows and struggles to
escape the old man's careful arm, bent on setting off alone on a
voyage of discovery down the stony slope. Behind them, framed in
the darkness of the room beyond, stands the mother, looking on
well pleased.
[Illustration: OLD SAILOR AND CHILD.]
What have the years in store for that young fisherman? Will his
grave be here? Will days that are coming see one more stone set up
in memory of a sailor lost at sea? Perhaps not. As one of the old
captains says, "Boys don't take to the sea now. Going to be
artists. Learn to draw and all manner of things." In his time "the
schoolmaster was a very different sort from now. He had to be a
schoolmaster, land-measurer, pig-killer, all in one. You paid
three halfpence a week for learning to read, three halfpence
more for learning to write, and then you went to sea. Boys all
went to sea at twelve. They had their choice--work or starve."
Sailors of his day had rarely even as much schooling as that. He
had never, he said, courted but one woman in his life, and that
was for another man. He had had so much trouble reading and
writing other folks' love-letters that he never had the heart to
try it for himself.
Round the Vikings' Seat the children of the village are playing.
Hard by, on a tiny stretch of level ground, half-a-dozen boys are
intent on some running game--nautical little figures in regulation
jerseys; sea boots too, some of them. Where will they be in twenty
years? If they are not to man the trawlers of the future there is
all the more chance that they will be scattered. If they are not
to be fishermen, there is no room for them here. Here there is
nothing but the fishing.
And the girls? These laughing, sunny, bright-eyed little flowers
of Devon, absorbed in an old-world country game, singing as they
play--
"How many miles to London town?
Three score ten.
Shall us get there by candle light?
Oh yes, if your legs are long and straight."
What of the girls? Below there, sleeping in the twilight, is the
sea, the cruel, treacherous, hungry sea, destined but too surely
to darken the sunshine of their simple lives. That small figure
now, that dainty little golden-haired darling, for her what have
the years in store? In days to be will she
"... start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door?"
Will she make her way against the storm, some winter's night, down
to the little quay, and peer with wild eyes through the rain and
the spray, amid a roar of wind and surge, and of great waves
thundering on the bar, hoping against hope for the home-coming of
the _Madcap_ or the _Village Girl_? What would you? It is an old
story, and
"... men must work and women must weep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning."
[Illustration: AN OLD CARRONADE.]
AN OLD CARRONADE.
Half-buried in the soft turf that clothes the rocky brows of a low
headland in the West there lies an ancient carronade. It is a
quiet spot. There is no sound save the lap of the tide along the
shore, the stir of the wind in the long grass, the cry of a
sea-gull wheeling over, or now and then the sharp clamour of a
troop of daws that flutter round their harbour in the cliff. About
it grow great tufts of sea-pink, whose flowers, save here and
there a belated bloom or two, have long since gone to seed. But in
summer the air is sweetened by the breath of thyme and crowfoot,
and at times, from the rocky steeps below, comes the strange smell
of blossoming samphire. There is no mark on the old gun. The rust
of years has eaten deep into its battered metal. No date remains,
no royal cipher. But there is a tradition that it was recovered
from the wreck of a Spanish warship that, in the flight of the
Armada, went to pieces on this rock-bound coast. In the face of
the cliff, a few hundred yards to the westward, there were found
embedded, many years ago, some corroded cannon-balls that once
might have fitted such a gun as this, but surrounded by so thick a
coat of rust that they were increased to nearly four times their
original calibre. The gun has at any rate seen some hard fighting.
It has been spiked. Some part at least it has played in our rough
island story, whether on pirate or privateer, or on one of the
unwieldy galleons of the Great Armada. But as it lies here now,
deep sunk in its green rest, it is a very emblem of peace and of
disarmament.
The tide is at the full, almost "too full for sound or foam;" yet
along the broad beach below,
"... where the sand like silver shines,
Flows the long, monotonous cadence of its unrhymed lyric lines."
And round the rocky bases of the little island yonder--once, so
tradition says, a Viking stronghold--there is the low fret of pale
green waves. Beyond the island stretches away to the horizon a
vast sweep of sea, smooth, unbroken; an expanse of vivid blue,
more brilliant than the brightest sapphire. But
"When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,"
then the huge green rollers come charging up this narrow strait,
and thunder in the caverns of the cliff, whirling great flakes of
foam a hundred feet into the air. They are gentle waves that lap
to-day against the rocky wall. But there is no stormier sea when,
on rough nights of winter,
"The wild winds lift it in their grasp,
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece."
A few brown-sailed luggers are cruising in the bay,--mackerel
fishing perhaps. The pilchards have deserted this coast
altogether. Some of the men say that the constant passing of
steamers has disturbed them. Others declare "there have been no
pilchards since the new parson came, and there'll be none till
he's turned his back on the parish."
On the verge of the next headland, a rampart of grey cliff that
stands out towards the open Atlantic, are two great grave mounds,
mere flaws on the horizon's edge, piled over the ashes of some
long-forgotten warriors. There is a legend here that, at midnight,
two kings in golden armour rise from these green barrows, and
fight on the short sward of the downs until the lighthouse on the
far point
"... shows the matin to be near.
And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire."
Then the old sea-kings turn back to their rest, to lie till
nightfall, each
"Arched over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust shut in an urn of brass."
On a ledge of rock below the barrows, a pair of ravens build. Year
after year their brood is reared in safety, beyond the reach even
of the most venturesome of climbers. The old birds patrol the
cliff for miles, like wandering spirits of two wreckers,
condemned to haunt for ever the scene of their ill deeds. Here
they come now, sailing slowly along on their broad wings, the
sunshine glancing on their glossy plumage. They go sweeping by,
uttering at times a crooning sound, not a croak at all, a soft,
low note, with no touch of harshness in it. Gracefully they wheel
and soar and glide, now turning over in the air, now poising like
a pair of kestrels. Below them, crouching on the hot sand of the
beach that skirts the bases of the cliff, a flock of gulls are
resting, like heaps of foam left stranded by the tide. They do not
shrink as the dark figures pass over. There are no eggs to plunder
from the rocks; no young broods to harry; and a full-grown herring
gull will show fight even to a raven.
It is a noble wall of cliff that guards this sandy fringe of the
Atlantic; now light, now dark; here bare and weathered and
windswept, there overgrown with sea-pink and samphire; and here
again worn into deep clefts and cavernous hollows, which, when
this old gun was new, were thorns in the side of the Preventive
men. No shore in England has seen more smuggling than this. Many a
contraband cargo has been landed at the little village at the
head of the creek. It is whispered that more than one family of
standing here owes its rise to well-planned "runs" of silk and
spirits and tobacco. In the side of the Witan Stone--a grey old
Menhir that was old in Roman times--there is still pointed out a
hole called the "Gauger's Pocket," into which a bag of gold was
dropped when a "run" was coming off, with due notice to the
exciseman to go and look for it, and then to keep well in the
background. It was quite an open ceremony. "Please, sir," a
smuggler would say to the officer, "please, sir, your pocket's
unbuttoned." "Aye, aye," was the answer, "but I shan't lose my
money for all that."
Those days are not so long ago. It is not really many years since
the clergyman who tells that story entered on that cure in the
West Country which, to use his own words "was a mixed multitude of
smugglers, wreckers, and dissenters," who still held that to shoot
the gauger was not only a venial but a meritorious deed. When a
man was hanged for murdering one of those hated representatives of
law and order, his death was regarded as a piece of flagrant
injustice, a crime in the eyes of Heaven itself; the very grass,
it was triumphantly pointed out, refusing to grow upon his grave.
Those were days when the prosperity of a sea-board farm depended
less on its scanty grazing and its sterile corn-land than on its
ill-gotten harvest of the sea. They were all in it. Even a parson
has been known to hold the lantern while the spirit kegs were
hauled safely through the surf. And once, when a wreck came ashore
in church time, and the congregation had with one accord rushed
out of doors, the vicar stopped them on their way to the sea.
"Brethren," he shouted, "I have but five words more to say." Then
walking deliberately to the front, and taking off his surplice, he
said: "Now, let us start fair."
This is a terrible coast. There are villages where half the
gardens are decorated with figure-heads of lost ships, where the
churchyards are strewn with sorrowful memorials of men, known or
nameless, whose lifeless bodies have been given up by the sea. It
is not long since corpses that were washed ashore were buried with
scant ceremony just above high-water mark. But of recent years
these wasted relics of mortality have been treated with more
reverence, and in some villages it has become a custom to use
figure-heads of wrecked vessels as memorials of the dead. In one
place the white effigy of an armed warrior guards the grave of
thirteen sailors, whose bodies the sea had laid upon the shore. In
another graveyard the stern of a ship's boat has been set up over
the remains of ten seamen "who were drifted on shore in a boat,
frozen to death, at Beacon Cove, in this parish," one Sunday in
December, now nearly fifty years ago. The rock-bound coast is as
perilous as ever, but the days have gone when the shipwrecked
mariner was dashed ashore alive only to meet his death from
enemies more relentless than the waves. It was the height of
rashness in the good old wrecking times to rescue a drowning
man:--
"Save a stranger from the sea,
And he'll turn your enemy."
In our time, at any rate, no shipwrecked sailor would meet with
anything but kindness at the hands of Englishmen. The real race of
wreckers has died out--that is to say, the cold-blooded wretches
who would lure a ship ashore, and then murder the crew by way of
precaution before proceeding to plunder the cargo. But the spirit
of plunder at least is not dead. Coastguardsmen and agents of
insurance companies know only too well how cleverly the Cornish
fishermen even of to-day, though ready to lend willing hands in
salving, and though fairly well paid for it too, contrive to
appropriate stray things that take their fancy. It is not long
since a large ship went ashore at the Lizard, and finally ground
herself to pieces on the rocks. The closest watch was kept by the
agents and preventive men, but next spring a perfect epidemic of
musical instruments broke out in every village in the district,
proving audibly enough that the light-fingered wreckers had been
at their tricks all the time. How it is done the rambler in the
West Country, who can use his eyes and ears, will soon discover;
will agree too, with the remark made the other day in a Western
village, that people who talked of wrecking as a thing of the past
knew very little about it.
"You see, sir," said a weather-beaten fisherman, "a great deal
drifts out of a wreck, and although there are salvage men always
on the watch, there's many a cask and bale that's picked up by our
boats. One man with a long pair of tongs and another with a
water-telescope can make a good thing of it between them. There
was an Italian steamer, now, that went ashore at Mullion. She was
full of fruit and wine and all sorts of things--enough for
everybody. There was great cases of champagne lying about, and the
word went round among our men that it was 'real' pain, with no
'sham' to it, for when we did knock the tops of the bottles off,
the wine all went out at one spurt, and we couldn't get a drop.
But at last we got corkscrews, and then we was happy. Well, I had
a cask of sherry wine out of her," he went on, "and I got it safe
in by the back way, and you see I've a coastguardsman living on
each side of me. But, law bless you, sir! they be just the same as
we.... Oh, yes, sir, everything is supposed to be given up, but
everything isn't, not by a good way. And when we risk our lives to
save the cargo, who has a better right to a share of it than we?"
He was near the _Mosel_, he said, when she ran full speed upon the
rocks, and the sound of it was like a thousand tons of cliff
falling into the sea, and such shrieks as never were heard....
Might he have stopped her? Well, perhaps he might. But a mate of
his who put out at the risk of his life, and warned a big liner
that was too close in shore--she was backed off and saved--never
got so much as a word of thanks, let alone any reward, for saving
her. "Another man," he went on, "warned a steamer from his boat,
and, as I'm a living man, they tried to swamp him for fear the
captain should be blamed for his bad sailing. No, sir, we'll never
do nothing to risk life, but if we can't get fair pay for saving a
ship, we'll get fair share by helping ourselves." ... Might
anything be kept that was picked up? Oh yes, pieces of timber
below a certain length. He was pressed further as to how the
particular length was settled. "Well," he said slowly, "we do keep
a saw in our boat."
[Illustration: DARTMOOR: CHAGFORD.]
DARTMOOR DAYS.
The dwellers in the picturesque homesteads scattered at wide
intervals over this countryside would hardly be content to hear
these hills of theirs called a wilderness. But up yonder against
the sky line, with grey clouds trailing low along its topmost
ridges, is a brow of the wildest wilderness in England, and these
hillside pastures are the fringe of Dartmoor. One might well
imagine, too, looking out over this beautiful landscape, that the
lines of these West Country yeomen were fallen to them in pleasant
places. And, indeed, fortunes have been made here in the "good old
days," when bread was dear and wages were at starvation point. But
times are hard. And there are sons of the soil here now working
for hire on other farms, whose sires held broad acres of their
own.
The wayfarer who, making his way up from Chagford towards the
moorland, should chance to pass this little settlement, might well
pause in wonder as he passed the gate, and stand and rub his eyes
in doubt whether it was a dream or not. So unlike the old country
is this log hut and all about it that a settler from the Bush
might, if he saw it, almost fancy himself upon his native heath.
The very trees that flourish here are strange. Among shrubs that
have been brought from the slopes of the Himalaya, grow tall
bamboos whose feathery crowns look over the topmost ridges of the
roof. And yet on every hand there are suggestions of the
moorland--those stacks of peat, with their picturesque coverings
of furze and straw; that granite roller, so thickly set with
crystals of felspar. The very props of the clothes-line are
untrimmed birch poles from the wood, wearing still their silvery
bark. It is moorland earth that made those rhododendron thickets
so broad and strong. It is moorland air that has draped the trees
with shaggy lichens, adding centuries of age to oaks yet hardly in
their prime, and lending to the sturdy fruit bushes of the borders
the air of hoary patriarchs. Furze bushes, in whose thorny depths
the yellow-hammers build in springtime, and willow-warblers weave
their domes of grass, flourish in the garden precincts. And all
the banks are overgrown with a green jungle of fern and broom and
bilberry--children of the moorland, stealing down to regain their
lost dominions.
This is winter by the calendar. But it is a day of clear shining
after rain. The air is full of the sound of streams--of the roar
of moorland torrents, of the deeper voice of the river plunging
through the wooded gorge below. The stems of the tall birches in
the wood below the house, still wet with last night's rain, shine
as if they were sheathed in silver, and their branches glitter as
if every twig were hung with silver beads--as, indeed, they are,
the silver of the clinging raindrops.
A graceful, yellow-breasted wagtail, still lingering here when the
rest of her kindred are across the sea, flutters down now and then
from the top of the dovecot to catch the flies that are sunning
themselves against the wall. On the roof above the pigeons sit in
conclave, their slumbrous voices just in keeping with the music of
the streams. In his cage against the wall of the hut I can hear,
now and then, a raven stirring. He is a silent bird for the most
part:
"He speaketh not; and yet there lies
A conversation in his eyes--
The golden silence of the Greek,
The gravest wisdom of the wise,
As if he could, but would not speak."
Some day he will talk, and then perhaps we shall learn what
strange things he has been hoarding in the dark places of his
memory. Again and again last night he woke me by rattling the bars
of his prison, or by sharpening that great bill of his against his
perch. I doubt if he slept a wink before daylight. It was strange
to hear him thus in the darkness. At times, too, I heard the
mellow voices of the owls, sounding clear above the rush of the
streams and the patter of rain upon the roof.
Birds pass and repass now in the sunlight. At times the pigeons
sweep down from their rest overhead, with sudden clatter of wings,
and as they wheel round the house they rouse into speech for a
moment the taciturn jackdaw, whose cage adjoins the prison of the
yet more silent raven.
From far up the moorland sounds the hoarse clamour of crows. And
magpies go by, carefully keeping clear of the precincts, as if
they were aware that the Master of the House had a keen eye and a
steady hand. But they might lay aside their fears. No beast or
bird is vermin in this corner of Arcadia. No jay or magpie ever
suffered here the penalty of evil deeds or tarnished reputation.
One night the Master of the House was roused by the sounds of a
slight scuffle outside. An owl had swooped on a rat in a corner of
the verandah, and through the wooden wall of the hut was plainly
heard the rustle of feathers as the bird spread its broad wings
over the body of its victim. Weasels find sanctuary under the very
flooring of the shanty, and stoats may hunt the covers at their
will without fear of trap or gun. The Hunt know well that there is
no surer spot to find a fox than the larch plantations up yonder
on the hill. And there, too, the badgers pursue in safety the even
tenour of their harmless lives.
When the larches were first planted, and were but just struggling
to get their heads above the hillside jungle,
grasshopper-warblers hid their nests on the ground among them, and
chats, and tree-pipits. A few years later blackbirds came and
built among the branches. Now the ring-doves trust their frail
platforms of stick to the strong young arms. And in a year or two
sparrow-hawks and magpies will build in the green tops. The trees
have already killed the grass about their feet, and the bare earth
beneath their shadow is a favourite haunt of the woodcock.
But in spite of crows and magpies, stoats and weasels, and all the
creatures of the wild that are too often branded as vermin, there
is no want of pheasants in the cover. And the Master of the House,
with his man behind him, and three eager little terriers dancing
at his heels, has but this moment left me to look for a woodcock.
The dogs are much keener for the sport than their owner, master of
woodcraft though he be. He is always readier to use his
field-glass than his gun. Many a time, as he stood motionless, gun
in hand, has a rabbit cantering by paused to look up at him, or a
woodcock settled near, and come and gone unharmed. The moor-folk
here are sportsmen born, with the keenest eyes for the whereabouts
of hare or pheasant, and far too much given to the setting of
gins. The Master of the House--who says that half the pheasants he
shoots have already lost a leg--showed me yesterday an illustrated
price-list of the traps made by a man who boasts of supplying the
Queen and the Prince of Wales, and who reckons in his long list of
noble patrons not a few distinguished names that we have been
accustomed to think of as belonging to champions of the "brute"
creation. Yet here were not only rat-traps and rabbit-traps, traps
for foxes and even for tigers, but traps--of horrible device, and
certain to inflict the most cruel tortures--for killing hawks and
herons. Surely, if some keepers are still ignorant and brutal,
better things might have been expected of their masters. And his
must be a mean and sordid soul who would grudge the kingfisher his
meed of beauty--even supposing that so rare a bird can do any
appreciable amount of harm. Yet in this list of fiendish enginry
is figured a kingfisher-trap. This the purchaser is directed "to
screw to a stump in the water where the birds resort, and place a
piece of wood on the fork for them to alight on, or a small fish
may be used as bait."
In the last few days, when from other parts of the island have
come reports of bitter weather, of rough winds and frosty airs,
the climate here has been almost summer-like. Yesterday, as I sat
in the verandah, more than one wasp, roused by the sunshine from
her winter slumber, was buzzing among the rafters overhead. But,
as the day wore on, there were signs of a change. Ominous-looking
clouds began to gather up from the southward. And, in the late
afternoon, as we rode slowly up the steep track towards the moor,
there came now and then a spurt of wind and rain.