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 phœnician 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."
"we'll do it!" was the unanimous resolve. and at this addition to his work charles looked actually pleased!
so—all was soon over, our easy packing done, our bill paid—a very small one—our goodnights said to the kindly handmaid, esther, who hoped we would come back again some time, and promised to keep the artistic mural decorations of our little parlour in memory of us. my young folks went to bed, and then, a little before midnight, when all the house was quiet, i put a shawl over my head, unlatched the innocent door—no bolts or bars at the lizard—and went out into the night.
what a night it was!—mild as summer, clear as day: the full moon sailing aloft in an absolutely cloudless sky. not a breath, not a sound—except the faint thud-thud of the in-coming waves, two miles off, at kynance, the outline of which, and of the whole coast, was distinctly visible. a silent earth, lying under a silent heaven. looking up, one felt almost like a disembodied soul, free to cleave through infinite space and gain—what?
is it human or divine, this ceaseless longing after something never attained, this craving after the eternal life, which, if fully believed in, fully understood, would take all the bitterness out of this life? and yet, that knowledge is not given.
but so much is given, and all given is so infinitely good, except where we ourselves turn it into evil, that surely more, and better, will be given to us by and by.
and so, to bed—to bed! those only truly enjoy life who fear not death: who can say of the grave as if it were their bed: "i will lay me down in peace and take my rest, for it is thou only, o god, who makest me to dwell in safety."
