Salcombe streets are of the most break-neck character: full of tragic possibilities and large stones. Only Fore Street is approximately level, and in Fore Street are the shops. Such shops! We looked into one window, about three feet square, and made a mental inventory of its contents:—Six Spanish onions; a plateful of wooden dolls, leering with vacuous glances at a tin of sardines; four tin money-boxes; three plates of apples (incarnate stomach-aches); a cake of blacking; two cakes of soap (whose name wild horses shall not drag from me); five peg-tops; one plum cake; and, casting a greasy light over all, a tallow dip in a brass candlestick. Other shops there were which rejoiced in large frontages and wide expanses of window, and, displayed in those windows, were goods disposed at rare and rhythmic intervals, so that one had not the heart to destroy their symmetry by making purchases.
Salcombe is a port of great possibilities. Were it not so near a neighbour of Plymouth Sound, that haven par excellence, it had been, one may surmise, a well-frequented harbour, with a town rivalling Dartmouth. For here is safe anchorage for ships of deepest draught, and sea-room in plenty within the gullet formed between precipitous cliffs. Even yet, Salcombe may become a harbour where masts will cluster thickly. True, the channel is beset with rocks, but what do rocks avail against dynamite? Now it is seldom visited save by pleasure yachts and stray coasting-vessels, with the Kingsbridge Packet calling periodically at its quay en route to or from Plymouth. Salcombe village has grown into a small town of quiet residents, and equally quiet holiday-makers, and possibly in the near future the Kingsbridge Railway, now building, may push on these few miles further, bringing to the solitary coast scenery of the Bolt Head—the grandest in Devon—a crowd of tourists, with the inevitable consequences.
On this Sunday we stayed at Salcombe, and with due Sabbatical languor explored the fantastic pinnacles of Bolt Head, beautiful with the lowering beauty of a dark and sullen savagery. It is a wild and storm-tossed promontory on the seaward side of a beautiful estate belonging to the Earl of Devon—a place bearing the singular name of The Moult. Down in the bottom, where the Moult homestead stands sheltered, the tall elms grow straight and comely; but on the hillside, trees of all kinds cling tenaciously in gnarled, twisted, and stunted forms, all bent in the direction in which stormy winds most do blow. Down beside the water, facing the entrance to the harbour, stand the remains of Salcombe Castle, washed with the waves of every high tide. Salcombe Castle was the scene of a four months’ defence against the beleaguering Roundheads, and when it at last surrendered, the garrison marched out with all the honours of war, “with thire usuall armes, drumes beating, and collars flyinge, with boundelars full of powder, and muskets apertinable.”
XLVIII.
We were up early this morning, in order to catch the Kingsbridge Packet, which called here on its way to Plymouth, and was timed for eight o’clock. But we need not have hurried over our breakfast to reach the quay, for when we walked aboard on the stroke of eight, the amphibious-looking crew were still busily loading up with the fragments of machinery and steam-pipes salved from a neighbouring wreck, and it was not until nearly an hour later that we were steaming out of the harbour toward the open sea. Meanwhile we secured as decent seats as might be on this grimy cargo-steamer of the old-fashioned paddle description, and watched with considerable amusement the frantic efforts of crew and loafers to push her off from the quay walls. The captain, not, I think, a skipper of coruscating brilliancy, took the wheel, and shouted himself hoarse down the speaking-tube with contrary directions, among which we distinguished such choice expressions as, “Stop her, damn you!” “Easy turn ahead!” “Full turn astern!” while the paddle-box ground horribly against the projecting corners of the quay, and the crew and the crowd of loafers jabbed away violently with long poles.
At last we swung clear, and steamed into the fairway, where we stopped and took two sailing vessels in tow. When we had made all fast we started in earnest, and came out of Salcombe round by Bolt Head with much straining and slackening of hawsers, as the two vessels astern pitched and wallowed in the heavy seas.
The morning was chill and misty, and inclined for rain. The rocks of Bolt Head, although we were so near to them, could only now and again be even partially seen through shredded vapours, and all around was a ghostly wall of opalescent fog. The pilot took charge of the wheel—a statuesque figure, silent, impassive, shrouded in gamboge-coloured oilskins, and steadfastly gazing ahead with set eyes under shaggy eyebrows.
We made, as well as we could, a tour of the vessel, laying firm hold of bulwarks and ropes and seats as we went. There were few people aboard, but there was a great deal of miscellaneous cargo on deck, beside the remains of the wrecked steamer’s engine-room. We coasted round a pile of petroleum barrels, coloured that hideous blue which identifies them anywhere; and then one of us fell over a basket full of squawking live ducks, voyaging to Plymouth market. Then, doubling a promontory of empty beer barrels, we came upon the engine-room, smelling to heaven with boiling oil and rancid fat. We could see it, bubbling and greasy, on the hot metal, and that “finished” us. We leant over the side of the vessel, and were very and continuously ill.
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