Of all experiences at sea in a small boat, under sail, there is none in these days of steam and petrol more trying (after a certain length of it) than being thus half-becalmed with barely steering-way in a part of the sea where the great ships ply up and down, they themselves independent of the stillness that holds you fast. You can hear (as I did on that morning) the beat of the propellers, miles away or close at hand. You hear the hooting from time to time of a ship’s siren—but there is nothing to tell you where your danger may be, nor upon what line it may be approaching you. Some with more experience could, perhaps, have judged that these occasional sounds were at such and such a distance, each or none of them threatening; but to me it seemed as though every steamer in the Bristol Channel was atop of us. I have no doubt that had the fog lifted I should have had nothing in sight but a couple of outward bound tramps halfway to the horizon, and perhaps one small steamer in from the Atlantic seas, and going up to Avonmouth, rather nearer to our shore so as to save the strength of the tide. Indeed, when the fog did lift towards noon, the sea was of that appearance, with not half a dozen craft to be seen, and none near. But in the white, cold blankness of the mist (with nothing whereby to judge save the ear), the rhythmic beating of the blades seemed anywhere close at hand; and if the hooting of the steam whistles was dull and dim, that seemed due not to distance, but to the blanketing of the dense cloud. It rose at last, first in patches and wreaths, then altogether, and a pale sun showed over distant land.
There is one thing that has always puzzled me about the Devon and Cornwall peninsula, and that is why the entry into it, up to quite late in history, seems to have been from the north.
The deep harbours and secure anchorages are today on the south. There is a whole string of them; and it is the south that faces towards the main civilisation of the continent. You have the profound inlet of Falmouth, you have Fowey, you have the miles of inland water at Plymouth, you have the Yealm and Salcombe, and the Dart and Teignmouth. Yet the legends, and even the history of Dumnonia are more concerned with such shallow, small, and difficult places as Saint Ives, Padstow, and Bideford River. The wealth seems to have been more on the north than upon the south, for you will note that the pirate raids principally struck there, and the shrines also, the ancient shrines, are rather on the north than on the south; and on the north also is Tintagel, of which it was said by Tristram: “Blessed be Tintagel and all that dwell therein.” The relics of the saints were established in the northern harbours. The seats of government were on the north: there, in the north, is the story of Arthur; and when Cornwall communicates with Brittany in the early Dark Ages, men seem to sail round the end of the land—though the southern harbours are there, pointing right at the further shore.
Did that peninsula swing as on a pivot axis? Did it deepen to the south during the long, hardly-recorded ages?
I knew nothing of these harbours of North Devon and Cornwall, not even by hearsay. I read up diligently in my West Coast Pilot that river which seemed the best for entry along these coasts, and hoped to make it before evening. But the wind died down altogether, and we drifted aimlessly enough back upon the flood, then down again on the ebb, through the night, and all through the morning and the noon, and on into the afternoon again of the second day.
It was full evening, and the sun within an hour of its setting, the air much warmer now and the light mellow with a powdery gold, when a strong breeze came up out of the very sun, as it were; out of the glory. The Nona heeled to it, and was now to be handled at will, making a good run a little north of west, with the opportunity for beating as we chose. We beat up towards the river-mouth, sure, as we thought, that the wind would hold, and that we could easily run up the stream and so to the town beyond before darkness. What we had not reckoned with was a sheer cliff lying along the river-mouth to the west, overhanging it and cutting off the wind. On the eastern shore was an immense stretch of half-covered sand, bearing a name of disaster, and famous for wreckage. Having lost the wind, we could no longer manoeuvre, and, what was worse in that narrow passage, we found that the tide did not run true to the sea-tide outside.
We had counted upon the flood making; but, whether because there was more water than usual in the river, or from some odd effect of the wind, or because locally it is always so (though the West Coast Pilot told us nothing about it, nor the chart either), the river was still running out violently, and there seemed no sign of an upward-going stream before darkness.
I had almost determined to let her drift out again, catch the sea wind when I got beyond the wall of the cliff, find anchoring-ground well offshore, and wait there for the day, when there appeared, coming down the river at great speed, a white motorboat, large and exquisitely apparelled, splendid with burning bronze, regally accoutred in unspotted gleaming mantle of the foam-colour, of the cloud-colour, of the snow-colour, and a line of gold all around. It was indeed a boat apparelled, not only as to itself, but as to its two
