JOHN CURGENVEN FISHING.
Safe, but not quite happy. "Here we go up, up, up, and here we go down, down, down," was the principle of our voyage, the most serious one we ever took in an open boat with a single pair of oars. Never did I see such waves,—at least, never did I float upon them, in a boat that went tossing like a bit of cork out into the open sea.
John seemed not to mind them in the least. His strong arms swept the boat along, and he still found breath to talk to us, pointing out the great gloomy cliffs we were passing under, and telling us stories of wrecks, the favourite theme—and no wonder.
This sunshiny morning that iron-bound coast looked awful enough; what must it have looked like, on the winter night when the emigrant ship Brest went down!
"Yes, it was about ten o'clock at night," said John. "I was fast asleep in bed, but they knocked me up; I got on my clothes and was off in five minutes. They are always glad enough to get us fishermen, the coastguard are. Mine was the first boat-load we brought ashore; we would only take women and children that time. They were all in their night-gowns, and they couldn't speak a word of English, but we made them understand somehow. One woman threw her three children down to me, and stayed behind on the wreck with two more."
"Were the women frightened?"
"Oh, no, they were very quiet, dazed like. Some of them seemed to be saying their prayers. But they made no fuss at all, not even the little ones. They lay down in the bottom of the boat, and we rowed ashore as fast as we could, to Cadgwith. Then we rowed back and fetched two boatloads more. We saved a lot of lives that wreck, but only their lives; they had scarcely a rag of clothes on, and some of the babies were as naked as when they were born."