To Ashe presently succeeds the straggling village of Axmouth, whence the sea is visible at the farther end of the marshy lands where the Axe struggles out into the Channel over a bed of shingle. Just above Haven Cliff the highroad is carried over the river by a bridge of three arches that gives access to Seaton.
Seaton Bridge.
Seaton is in process of rising, and to all who have witnessed the evolution of a seaside town from fishing village to “resort”—that is sufficient to say Verb. sap. sat. It possesses a terminal railway station on a branch line, and is the scene of Sunday “there and back” excursions from London in the summer season. On those occasions the place is crowded for a brief three hours or so, when trippers snatch a fearful joy. At other times Seaton is sluggish and dull, and really the bourgeois plastered buildings of the little town are an insult to the magnificent scenery on either hand.
Visitors there were a few on the beach—quiet folk mostly, and provincial of aspect, save indeed a loathly Cockney worm who had by some mischance missed his Margate, who leaned against a seaworn capstan, the sole representative of his particular stratum of civilisation—lonely, ineffable.
“LOATHLY WORM.”
When the rain came down that had been impending all the forenoon, Seaton became doleful. There was nothing to do but take the next train to Exeter in search of a waterproof civilisation.