Lifeboat going over the bar of doom.
In a far-away time Tristram Bird of Padstow bought a gun at a little shop in the quaint old market which in those days opened to the quay, the winding river, and the St. Minver sand-hills. When he had bought his gun he began forthwith to shoot birds and other poor little creatures.
After a while he grew more ambitious, and told the fair young maids of Padstow that he wanted to shoot a seal or something more worthy of his gun; and so one bright morning he made his way down to Hawker’s Cove, near the mouth of the harbour.
When Tristram got there he looked about him to see what he could shoot, and the first thing he saw was a young maid sitting all alone on a rock, combing her hair with a sea-green comb.
He was so overcome at such an unexpected sight that he quite forgot what had brought him to the cove, and could do nothing but stare.
The rock on which the maiden sat was covered with seaweed, and surrounded by a big pool, called in that distant time the Mermaid’s Glass.
She was apparently unconscious that a good-looking young man was gazing at her with his bold dark eyes, and as she combed her long and beautiful hair she leaned over the pool and looked at herself in the Mermaid’s Glass, and the face reflected in it was startling in its beauty and charm.
Tristram Bird was very tall—six feet three in his stockings—and being such a tall young man, he could see over the maiden’s head into the pool, and the face in its setting of golden hair reflected in its clear depths entirely bewitched him, and so did her graceful form, which was partly veiled in a golden raiment of her own beautiful hair.