Part 6

Beautiful Kynance! When, afterwards, I stood one dull winter day in a London Art Gallery, opposite the _Cornish Lions_, how well I recalled this day! How truly Brett's picture gives the long roll of the wave upon the silver sands, the richly-tinted rocks and caves, the brightness and freshness of everything. And those merry girls beside me, who had the faculty of enjoying all they had, and all they did, without regretting what they had not or what they might not do--with heroic resignation they promised not to attempt to swim in the tempting smooth water beyond the long rollers. Though knocked down again and again, they always emerged from the waves with shouts of laughter. Mere dots they looked to my anxious eyes--a couple of corks tossed hither and thither on the foaming billows--and very thankful I was to get them safe back into the "drawing-room," the loveliest of lovely caves.

There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor--what a fairy floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand--would be all covered with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island--even if we left out the dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us against.

What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?

"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight," said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened--come along!"

By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came: stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute, for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.

But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure between.

"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice. "That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make her come down."

"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.

"Not _my_ young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that rock where you have to jump--a good jump it is, and if you miss your footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below. Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged to her, but"--

I fear I made some very severe remarks on the folly of a young man who could thus risk life and limbs--not only his own, but those of his wife to be; and on the weakness of a girl who could allow herself to be tempted, even by a lover, into such selfish foolhardiness.

"They must manage their own affairs," said the old gentleman sententiously, perhaps not being so much given to preaching (out of the pulpit) as I was. "My daughters are wiser. Here come two of them."

And very sensible girls they looked, clad in a practical, convenient fashion, just fitted for scrambling. By them I sent a message to my own girls, explaining the best descent from Asparagus Island, and repeating the warning against attempting Hell's Mouth.

"Yes, you are quite right," said my elderly friend, as we sat down together on the least uncomfortable stone we could find, and watched the juniors disappear over the rocks. "I like to see girls active and brave; I never hinder them in any reasonable enjoyment, even though there may be risk in it--one must run some risk--and a woman may have to save life as well as a man. But foolhardy bravado I not only dislike--I _despise_ it."

In which sentiments I so entirely agreed that we fraternised there and then; began talking on all sorts of subjects--some of them the very serious and earnest subjects that one occasionally drops into by mere chance, with mere strangers. I recall that half hour on Kynance Sands as one of the pleasant memories of our tour, though to this day I have not the remotest idea who my companion was. Except that as soon as he spoke I recognised the reader whose voice had so struck me in last night's thanksgiving service; reminding me of Frederick Denison Maurice, whom this generation is almost beginning to forget, but whom we elders never can forget.

The tide was creeping on now--nay, striding, wave after wave, through "parlour" and "drawing-room," making ingress and egress alike impossible. In fact, a newly arrived party of tourists, who had stood unwisely long contemplating the Bellows, were seen to gaze in despair from their rock which had suddenly become an island. No chance for them except to wade--and in a few minutes more they would probably have to swim ashore. What became of them we did not stay to see, for an anxious, prudent little voice, always thoughtful for "mother," insisted on our precipitate flight before the advancing tide. Kynance, lovely as it is, has its inconveniences.

Departing, we met a whole string of tourist-looking people, whom we benevolently warned that they were too late, at which they did not seem in the least disappointed. Probably they were one of the numerous pic-nic parties who come here from Falmouth or Helstone, to spend a jovial day of eating and drinking, and enjoy the delights of the flesh rather than the spirit.

At any rate the romance and solitude of the place were gone. The quaint old woman at the serpentine shop--a mild little wooden erection under the cliff--was being chaffed and bargained with by three youths with cigars, which defiled the whole air around, and made us take refuge up the hill. But even there a white umbrella had sprung up like a gigantic mushroom, and under it sat an energetic lady artist, who, entering at once into conversation, with a cheerful avidity that implied her not having talked for a week, informed us of all she was painting, and all she had meant to paint, where she lodged, and how much she paid for her lodging--evidently expecting the same confidences from us in return.

But we were getting hungry, and between us and dinner was a long two-miles walk over the steep downs, that were glowing, nay, burning, under the September sun. So we turned homeward, glad of more than one rest by the way, and a long pause beside a pretty little stream; where we were able to offer the immemorial cup of cold water to several thirsty souls besides ourselves. Some of us by this time were getting to feel not so young as we had fancied ourselves in the early morning, and to wish regretfully for Charles and his carriage.

However, we got home at last--to find that sad accompaniment of many a holiday--tidings of sickness and death. Nothing very near us--nothing that need hurry us home--but enough to sadden us, and make our evening walk, which we bravely carried out, a far less bright one than that of the forenoon.

The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the sunset--a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made various purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so original.

But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay--still, there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into the glorious moonlight--bright as day--and thought of the soul who had just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries dwindled down or melted away--as the petty uglinesses around melted in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David speaks about--in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."

DAY THE EIGHTH

And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.

"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."

It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast--and we are people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness--we went

"Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"

along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have examined, I know. But--we didn't do it. Some of us were content to rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute investigation, and some of us were so eminently practical that "a good bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in the world.

So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing slowly over Penolver.

It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous good morning.

"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing, and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."

"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came back to you with whole limbs?"

"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course you know about launce-fishing?"

I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.

"Oh, it is _the_ thing at the Lizard. My boys--and girls too--consider it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."

"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.

"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles in the sand and disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights--the full moon and a day or two after--and they are out half the night. They go about barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"

I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing for hours up to the knees in salt water, catching unfortunate fish.

However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights. One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a small sand-eel.

The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous circle round the sun, like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky; yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints. This colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was wonderfully tender and delicate. We stood a long time watching it, till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see again in all our lives.

It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting us to some distant excursion; but we had decided to investigate the Lizard Lights. We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely poetical phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us utterly if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if we could not understand.

Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us at the door of the huge white building, apparently quite glad to have an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely thrown away. We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked into mysterious machinery for lighting them and for sounding the fog-horn, we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our minds as dark as when we went in.

I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism of the Lizard Lights--I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very long established--to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take for granted that we could understand--which alas! we didn't, not an atom!--inspired me with a sense of humiliation and awe. Also of pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished, and is still accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new discoveries and applications of the recondite powers of good.

The enormous body of light produced nightly--equal, I think he said, to 30,000 candles--and the complicated machinery for keeping the fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became invisible--all this amount of skill, science, labour, and money, freely expended for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?

Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks which this young man had witnessed even during the few years, or months--I forget which--of his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called by the generic name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the former--as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant ships being lost almost immediately after quitting port--they get drunk. Many of the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?

Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story--wild storms, or dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat, dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the ship herself all is over.

"Only last Christmas I saw a vessel go to pieces in ten minutes on the rocks below there," said the man, after particularising several wrecks, which seemed to have imprinted themselves on his memory with all their incidents. "Yes, we have a bad time in winter, and the coastguard men lead a risky life. They are the picked men of the service, and tolerably well paid, but no money could ever pay them for what they go through--or the fishermen, who generally are volunteers, and get little or nothing."

"It must be a hard life in these parts, especially in winter," we observed.

"Well, perhaps it is, but it's our business, you see."

Yes, but not all people do their business, as the mismanagements and mistakes of this world plainly show.

Still, it is a good world, and we felt it so as we strolled along the sunshiny cliff, talking over all these stories, tragical or heroic, which had been told us in such a simple matter-of-fact way, as if they were every-day occurrences. And then, while the young folks went on "for a good scramble" over Penolver, I sat down for a quiet "think"; that enforced rest, which, as years advance, becomes not painful, but actually pleasant; in which, if one fails to solve the problems of the universe, one is prone to con them over, wondering at them all.

From the sunny sea and sunny sky, full of a silence so complete that I could hear every wave as it broke on the unseen rocks below, my mind wandered to that young fellow among his machinery, with his sickly eager face and his short cough--indicating that _his_ "business" in this world, over which he seemed so engrossed, might only too soon come to an end. Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature, so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and accuracy of handiwork--and this poor frail human life, which in a moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness, "there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"--what a contrast it was!

And yet--and yet?--We shall sleep with our fathers, and some of us feel sometimes so tired that we do not in the least mind going to sleep. But notwithstanding this, notwithstanding everything without that seems to imply our perishableness, we are conscious of something within which is absolutely imperishable. We feel it only stronger and clearer as life begins to melt away from us; as "the lights in the windows are darkened, and the daughters of music are brought low." To the young, death is often a terror, for it seems to put an end to the full, rich, passionate life beyond which they can see nothing; but to the old, conscious that this their tabernacle is being slowly dissolved, and yet its mysterious inhabitant, the wonderful, incomprehensible _me_, is exactly the same--thinks, loves, suffers, and enjoys, precisely as it did heaven knows how many years ago--to them, death appears in quite another shape. He is no longer Death the Enemy, but Death the Friend, who may--who can tell?--give back all that life has denied or taken away. He cannot harm us, and he may bless us, with the blessing of loving children, who believe that, whatever happens, nothing can take them out of their Father's arms.

But I had not come to Cornwall to preach, except to myself now and then, as this day. My silent sermon was all done by the time the young folks came back, full of the beauties of their cliff walk, and their affectionate regrets that I "could never manage it," but must have felt so dull, sitting on a stone and watching the sheep and the sea-gulls. Not at all! I was obliged to confess that I never am "dull," as people call it, and love solitude almost as much as society.

So, each contented in our own way, we went merrily home, to find waiting for us our cosy tea--the last!--and our faithful Charles, who, according to agreement, appeared overnight, to take charge of us till we got back to civilisation and railways.

"Yes, ladies, here I am," said he with a beaming countenance. "And I've got you the same carriage and the same horse, as you wished, and I've come in time to give him a good night's rest. Now, when shall you start, and what do you want to do to-morrow?"

Our idea had been to take for our next resting-place Marazion. This queer-named town had attracted us ever since the days when we learnt geography. Since, we had heard a good deal about it: how it had been inhabited by Jewish colonists, who bought tin from the early Ph[oe]nician workers of the Cornish mines, and been called by them Mara-Zion--bitter Zion--corrupted by the common people into Market-Jew. It was a quiet place, with St. Michael's Mount opposite; and attracted us much more than genteel Penzance. So did a letter we got from the landlord of its one hotel, promising to take us in, and make us thoroughly comfortable.

Could we get there in one day? Charles declared we could, and even see a good deal on the road.

"We'll go round by Mullion. Mary will be delighted to get another peep at you ladies, and while I rest the horse you can go in and look at the old church--it's very curious, they say. And then we'll go on to Gunwalloe,--there's another church there, close by the sea, built by somebody who was shipwrecked. But then it's so old and so small. However, we can stop and look at it if you like."

His good common sense, and kindliness, when he might so easily have done his mere duty and taken us the shortest and ugliest route, showing us nothing, decided us to leave all in Charles's hands, and start at 10 A.M. for Penzance, _viâ_ Helstone, where we all wished to stay an hour or two, and find out a "friend," the only one we had in Cornwall.

So all was settled, with but a single regret, that several boating excursions we had planned with John Curgenven had all fallen through, and we should never behold some wonderful sea-caves between the Lizard and Cadgwith, which we had set our hearts upon visiting.

Charles fingered his cap with a thoughtful air. "I don't see why you shouldn't, ladies. If I was to go direct and tell John Curgenven to have a boat ready at Church Cove, and we was to start at nine instead of ten, and drive there, the carriage might wait while you rowed to the caves and back; we should still reach Helstone by dinner-time, and Marazion before dark."