"And the captain?"
"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But when he found she was dead he went crazy-like—kept for ever saying, 'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."
We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born, but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's ship Agamemnon.
"Of course you have heard of the Agamemnon, ma'am. I was in her off Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"
Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to be almost historical.
"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight. But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."
He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten face—keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable, but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest sailor of H.M.S. Agamemnon.
So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out our original plan of staying some days there—tourist-haunted, troubled days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.