Stuart joined them on the lug. “They can’t yarn,” he said regretfully, jerking his thumb towards the line of ancient salts. “I’ve tried them and they can’t. In fact, I believe they’re tin.”
“Detachable?” queried Peter.
“No; on a row. I daresay it would be possible to break one off from the end. But they’re too old and glazed to be taught much; we must start with the new generation, and teach the young idea how to salt. Perhaps if we sowed among them a few volumes of W. W. Jacobs—I say, come along and explore.”
They entered Carn Trewoofa softly, as if fearful it should break or melt or in some such magical fashion manifest its unreality. And, picking her way between rope and anchor and occasionally a stray doorstep where there was no door, Merle came to a correct conclusion regarding the origin of this wonder-corner: It was smell made concrete. Someone had waved a wand over a handful of the richly mingled prevailing odour of seaweed and sea, tar and fish and clover, straw and fowl, soil and stone and lobster-pot; muttered a few compelling words—and the result was Carn Trewoofa.
The trio were just able to add to their medley of impressions, the mad swirl of paths, seven to one hut, that none could tell its back nor yet its front; and the yet madder swirl of chickens, seventy to one hen, and seven orphans to boot. Every ten yards traversed showed them a painted slab set in the wall, or in a door, or even on a roof; a slab and a slit and the word: Letters. They speculated what would happen if somebody failed to realize that this was a toy village, and posted real epistles in these alluring receptacles. “They are intended for all the letters one has never sent,” Stuart declared; “letters to my own feet, or to my great-uncle in Heaven; to the Times, and to a skylark, and to the Red King in Looking-glass Land.”
Likewise he discovered the national fisheress costume to be a cricket-cap; and counted no less than eight of these articles in the wearing. “Which proves that once, many years ago, a cricket team rounded the point in a pleasure steamer. And the Corsair lured them all to their destruction. But their caps were washed up on the shore, and worn ever since by the Women of Carn Trewoofa.—Nine! I’ll stalk the lot e’er yet I quit this spot.” He counted the tenth on the head of a buxom matron standing outside the “Longships” inn, and doing most effective things with two buckets and a pump.
She nodded pleasantly to the three, and asked them in raucous Cornish whether they were strangers in the land.
“Very,” responded Peter gloomily.
The wearer of the tenth cricket cap volunteered the information that she had rooms to let.
“At the inn!” gasped Merle.