I stuffed the book into my blouse and rushed to the meeting-place Albert had fixed. I was half an hour late and he swore at me. When we got home, I put the parcel still unwrapped under the mattress. This was a safe place, as I made my own bed; I must wait to begin reading till the morning. If I were to begin tonight Uncle Simeon would see the light under the door and come in to complain of the waste of candles. So I resolved to wake early.
Next morning I woke at five o'clock and undid my parcel. The book was a dark red one. On the cover was printed in gold letters "WESTWARD HO!" It was as big as an average Bible, but not so thick. The moment I opened it, I was struck by the scent of the new pages. All smells are indescribable, though smell aids the memory and quickens the imagination as much as any other sense. To this day, it is by digging my nose between those pages that I can best recall the sentiment of forty years ago: the pleasure of talking with the Stranger, the first wild rapture of reading.
I began to read. Here was Torribridge, a place I knew and lived in, described in print. I had read no other book but the Bible, which was so familiar as to have become part of myself, part of my life, something more than any book. Then, too, its glamour was of far-away folk and lands, holy places and holy people. The fact that now for the first time I saw printed words about seen and homely places—that I read of Torridge instead of Jordan, of Torribridge instead of Nineveh, of little oak ships that sailed from Tawborough Bay instead of great arks of cedar wood that went forth from Tyre and Sidon—gave me a new and exciting sensation very hard to describe. In the degree that the little Devonshire town was less sacred than the Holy City of Mount Zion, so it seemed to my eager eyes more wonderful to read about.
"All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon, must needs know the little white town of Torribridge, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge where salmon wait for autumn floods, towards the pleasant upland on the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls, and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sand-hills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quickly toward the broad surges of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell. Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze which forbids alike the keen winter frosts, and the fierce thunder heats of the midland; and pleasantly it has stood there for now, perhaps, eight hundred years since the first Grenville cousin of the Conqueror, returning from the conquest of South Wales, drew round him trusty Saxon serfs, and free Norse rovers with their golden curls, and dark Silurian Britons from the Swansea shore...."
That afternoon I climbed the hill again, and saw for the first time something of the romance of the little white town; the bright roofs, the line of masts and great brown sails in the harbour, the old bridge, the yellow sands, the fields green golden or red with pasture harvest or loam, the dark velvet forests, deep blue sky and quiet silver river. I could imagine now the fierce Atlantic not far away, to which the gentle stream was flowing. I saw that it was beautiful, in the same way that the lilies and roses in Solomon's Song are beautiful; or Heaven in Revelation, the city of jasper and pure gold, that has set in its midst the great white throne. This change was wrought by a book. My Grandmother's oft-repeated words that the salvation of God could only have been revealed in the Book came into my mind.
When I came to the story proper of men who sailed
Westward Ho! with a rumbelow,
And hurra for the Spanish Main O!
I was enthralled. The idea of a story, of a narrative of doings that never took place, of invented events, had never entered my head. Goldilocks, Rumplestiltskin and Little Red Riding Hood were not of my world. I had never begged "Tell me a story," nor heard the magical antiphone "Once upon a time."
Had Grandmother ever heard of Westward Ho!? Did she know there were books like this; true, yet about familiar places? Surely she must. Would she approve? I doubted for a moment, remembering the picture-book Uncle John had once sent to me, which Aunt Jael destroyed while my Grandmother looked on consenting; but was reassured by the godly sentiments which I found everywhere: by familiar phrases, even on the second page, such as "heathen Roman and Popish tyranny." Were there other books like this? If so, I should like to read them. Were they about the Indies too? A world of ideas possessed me, a new planet had swum into my skies. I read hard, wildly. I woke up at four that I might have a good long read before getting up; I went to my bedroom at odd hours of the day to snatch a few moments' delight.