John Curgenven smiled. "Oh, us and the coast-guards! Us goes anywhere, at all hours, and never meets nothing. D'ye see those white marks all along the coast every few yards? They're rocks, kept white-washed, to guide the men of dark nights between here and Kynance. It's a ticklish path, when all's as black as pitch, with a stiff wind blowing."
I should think it was! One almost shuddered at the idea, and then felt proud of the steady heads and cool courage of these coast-guard men—always the pick of the service, true Englishmen, fearless and faithful—the business of whose whole lives is to save other lives—that is, now that smuggling has abated, and those dreadful stories once current all along the coast of Cornwall have become mostly legends of the past. No tales of wreckers, or of fights between smugglers and revenue officers, reached our ears, but the stories of shipwrecks were endless. Every winter, and many times through the winter, some ghastly tragedy had happened. Every half-mile along this picturesque shore was recorded the place where some good ship went to pieces, often with the brief addendum, "all hands lost."
"The sun's just setting. Look out for the Lizard Lights," called out Charles, who sat in the bow of the boat in faithful attendance upon his "ladies,"—another Knight of the Round Table in humble life—we met many such in Cornwall. "Look! There they are."
And sure enough, the instant the sun's last spark was quenched in the sea, into which he dropped like a red round ball, out burst two substitute suns, and very fair substitutes too, making the poor little moon in the east of no importance whatever. The gleam of them extended far out upon the darkening ocean, and we could easily believe that their light was "equal to 20,000 candles," and that they were seen out at sea to a distance of twenty, some said even thirty, miles.
"Except in a fog; and the fogs at the Lizard are very bad. Then you can see nothing, not even the Lights, but they keep sounding the fog-horn every minute or so. It works by the same machinery as works the Lights—a big steam-engine; you can hear it bum-bumming now, if you listen."
So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee, coming across the water from that curious building, long and white, with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.
"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through everything—except fog. Now, ladies, d'ye think you can jump ashore?"
Some of us did, airily enough, though it required to choose your moment pretty cleverly so as to escape the incoming wave. And some of us—well, we accepted the inevitable, and were only too thankful to scramble anyhow, wet or dry, on terra firma.
And then we had to ascend the zigzag path, slippery with loose stones, and uncertainly seen in the dim half-twilight, half-moonlight. At last we came out safe by the life-boat house, which we had noticed in passing, with the slit in its door for "Contributions," and a notice below that the key was kept at such and such a house—I forget the man's name—"and at the Rectory."