Chapter Fourteen.
My Patients the Fishermen.
I dreamed about that cave night after night, and it was a long time before I could get its weird echoes out of my mind. I had only to go down to the shore and listen to the wash of the waves to have my mason friend’s narrative come back in full force, till I felt quite a morbid pleasure in listening to the fancied beating and echoing of the tide in the hollow place.
I used to meet a good many of the fishermen down about the little pier, and after a little bit of a case that I managed with one poor fellow who had been for years leading a weary existence, I found that I might have commanded the services of every fisherman there and had their boats at pleasure. There was always a pleasant smile for me when I went down, and whenever a boat came in if I was seen upon the pier there was sure to be a rough sunburnt face looking into mine as a great string of fish was offered to me.
“They’re fresh as daisies, doctor,” the giver would say: a man, perhaps, that I had hardly seen before, while the slightest hint at payment was looked upon as an offence.
“And there’s no knowing, doctor,” said one man who presented me with a delicious hake, “I may be down at any time and want your help and advice. Didn’t you cure Sam Treporta? Lookye here doctor, don’t you go away again, you stop and practice down here. We’ll be ill as often as we can, and you shan’t never want for a bit of fish so long as the weather keeps fine.”
It was one afternoon down on the little rugged granite pier that I heard the story of Tom Trecarn and the bailiffs, and being rather a peculiar adventure I give it as it was told to me.
“‘Is that you, Tom?’
“‘Iss, my son,’ replied Tom, a great swarthy, black-whiskered, fierce-looking, copper-coloured Cornish giant, in tarry canvas trousers, and a blue worsted guernsey shirt—a tremendous fellow in his way—but with a heart as soft and tender as that of his wife, whom he had just addressed in the popular fashion of his part as ‘my son.’ Tom had just come home from mackerel fishing off the Scilly Isles. The take had only been poor, for the wind had been unfavourable; but the few hundred fish his lugger had brought in were sold, and with a few hake in his hand for private consumption, Tom Trecarn had come home for a good night’s rest.