The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn Part 70

A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. Far beneath them they heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain. A few white albatrosses skimmed and sailed below, and before, seaward, the sheets of turf, falling away, stretched into a sh.o.r.eless headland, fringed with black rock and snow-white surf.

She stood there, flushed and excited with the exercise, her bright hair dishevelled, waving in the free sea-breeze, the most beautiful object in that glorious landscape, her n.o.ble mate beside her. Awe, wonder, and admiration kept both of them silent for a few moments, and then she spoke.

"Do you know any of the choruses in the 'Messiah'?" asked she.

"No, I do not," said Sam.

"I am rather sorry for it," she said, "because this is so very like some of them."

"I can quite imagine that," said Sam. "I can quite imagine music which expresses what we see now. Something infinitely BROAD I should say. Is that nonsense now?"

"Not to me," said Alice.

"I imagined," said Sam, "that the sea would be much rougher than this.

In spite of the ceaseless thunder below there, it is very calm."

"Calm, eh?" said the Doctor's voice behind them. "G.o.d help the s.h.i.+p that should touch that reef this day, though a nautilus might float in safety! See, how the groundswell is tearing away at those rocks; you can just distinguish the long heave of the water, before it breaks.

There is the most dangerous groundswell in the world off this coast.

Should this country ever have a large coast-trade, they will find it out, in calm weather with no anchorage."

A great coasting trade has arisen; and the Doctor's remark has proved terribly true. Let the Monumental City and the Schomberg, the Duncan Dunbar and the Catherine Adamson bear witness to it. Let the drowning cries of hundreds of good sailors, who have been missed and never more heard of, bear witness that this is the most pitiless and unprotected, and, even in calm weather, the most dangerous coast in the world.

But Jim came panting up, and, throwing himself on the short turf, said--

"So this is the great Southern Ocean; eh! How far can one see, now, Halbert?"

"About thirty miles."

"And how far to India; eh?"

"About seven thousand."

"A long way," said Jim. "However, not so far as to England."

"Fancy," said Halbert, "one of those old Dutch voyagers driving on this unknown coast on a dark night. What a sudden end to their voyage! Yet that must have happened to many s.h.i.+ps which have never come home.

Perhaps when they come to explore this coast a little more they may find some old s.h.i.+p's ribs jammed on a reef; the ribs of some s.h.i.+p whose name and memory has perished."

"The very thing you mention is the case," said the Doctor. "Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic cliff, is to be seen the wreck of a very, very old s.h.i.+p, now covered with coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very old; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not. You English should never sneer at those two nations: they were before you everywhere."

"And the Chinese before any of us in Australia," replied Halbert.

"If you will just come here," said Alice, "where those black rocks are hid by the bend of the hill, you get only three colours in your landscape; blue sky, grey gra.s.s, and purple sea. But look, there is a man standing on the promontory. He makes quite an eyesore there. I wish he would go away."

"I suppose he has as good a right there as any of us," answered the Doctor. "But he certainly does not harmonise very well with the rest of the colouring. What a strange place he has chosen to stand in, looking out over the sea, as though he were a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner--the last of the crew."

"A s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner would hardly wear breeches and boots, my dear Doctor," said Jim. "That man is a stockman."

"Not one of ours, however," said George Barker; "even at this distance I can see that. See, he's gone! Strange! I know of no way down the cliff thereabouts. Would you like to come down to the sh.o.r.e?"

So they began their descent to the sh.o.r.e by a winding path of turf, among tumbled heaps of granite, down towards the rock-walled cove, a horseshoe of smooth white sand lying between two long black reefs, among whose isolated pinnacles the groundswell leapt and spouted ceaselessly.

Halbert remarked, "This granite coast is hardly so remarkable as our Cornish one. There are none of those queer pinnacles and tors one sees there, just ready to topple down into the sea. This granite is not half so fantastic."

"Earthquakes, of which you have none in Cornwall," said the Doctor, "will just account for the difference. I have felt one near here quite as strong as your famous lieutenant, who capsized the Logan stone."

But now, getting on the level sands, they fell to gathering sh.e.l.ls and sea-weeds like children. Jim trying to see how near he could get to a wave without being caught, got washed up like jetsam. Alice took Sam's pocket-handkerchief, and filled it indiscriminately with everything she could lay her hand on, princ.i.p.ally Trochuses, as big as one's fist, and "Venus-ears," scarlet outside. And after an hour, wetfooted and happy, dragging a yard or so of sea-tang behind her, she looked round for the Doctor, and saw him far out on the reef, lying flat on his stomach, and closely examining a large still pool of salt water, contained in the crevices of the rocks.

He held up his hand and beckoned. Sam and Alice advanced towards him over the slippery beds of seaweed, Sam bravely burying his feet in the wet clefts, and holding out his hand to help her along. Once there was a break in the reef, too broad to be jumped, and then for the first time he had her fairly in his arms and swung her across, which was undoubtedly very delightful, but unfortunately soon over. At length, however, they reached the Doctor, who was seated like a cormorant on a wet rock, lighting a pipe.

"What have you collected?" he asked. "Show me."

Alice proudly displayed the inestimable treasures contained in Sam's handkerchief.

"Rubbis.h.!.+ Rubbis.h.!.+" said the Doctor, "Do you believe in mermaidens?"

"Of course I do, if you wish it," said Alice. "Have you seen one?"

"No, but here is one of their flower-gardens. Bend down and look into this pool."

She bent and looked. The first thing she saw was her own exquisite face, and Sam's brown phiz peering over her shoulder. A golden tress of hair, loosened by the sea breeze, fell down into the water, and had to be looped up again. Then gazing down once more, she saw beneath the crystal water a bed of flowers; dahlias, ranunculuses, carnations, chrysanthemums, of every colour in the rainbow save blue. She gave a cry of pleasure: "What are they, Doctor? What do you call them?"

"Sea anemones, in English, I believe," said the Doctor, "actinias, serpulas, and sabellas. You may see something like that on the European coasts, on a small scale, but there is nothing I ever have seen like that great crimson fellow with cream-coloured tentacles. I do not know his name. I suspect he has never been described. The common European anemone they call 'cra.s.sicornis' is something like him, but not half as fine."

"Is there any means of gathering and keeping them, Doctor?" asked Sam.

"We have no flowers in the garden like them."

"No possible means," said the Doctor. "They are but lumps of jelly. Let us come away and get round the headland before the tide comes in."

They wandered on from cove to cove, under the dark cliffs, till rounding a little headland the Doctor called out,--

"Here is something in your Cornish style, Halbert."

A thin wall of granite, like a vast b.u.t.tress, ran into the sea, pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey stone: below, wherever the salt water had reached, a ma.s.s of dark clinging weed: while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was a soft glimpse of blue sky and snow-white seabirds.

"There is nothing so grand as that in Cornwall, Doctor," said Halbert.

"Can we pa.s.s under it, Mr. Barker?" said Alice. "I should like to go through; we have been into none of the caves yet."

"Oh, yes!" said George Barker. "You may go through for the next two hours. The tide has not turned yet."

"I'll volunteer first," said the Doctor, "and if there's anything worth seeing beyond, I'll come for you."

It was, as I said, a thin wall of granite, which ran out from the rest of the hill, seaward, and was pierced by a tall arch; the blocks which had formerly filled the void now lay weed-grown, half buried in sand, forming a slippery threshold. Over these the Doctor climbed and looked beyond.

A little sandy cove, reef-bound, like those they had seen before, lay under the dark cliffs; and on a water-washed rock, not a hundred yards from him, stood the man they had seen on the downs above, looking steadily seaward.

The Doctor slipped over the rocks like an otter, and approached the man across the smooth sand, unheard in the thunder of the surf. When he was close upon him, the stranger turned, and the Doctor uttered a low cry of wonder and alarm.