If we go down into the valley beneath us by a road bearing south-west, we shall find ourselves at Beck Hole, where there is a pretty group of stone cottages, backed by some tall firs. The Eller Beck is crossed by a stone bridge close to its confluence with the Mirk Esk. Above the bridge, a footpath among the huge boulders winds its way by the side of the rushing beck to Thomasin Foss, where the little river falls in two or three broad silver bands into a considerable pool. Great masses of overhanging rock, shaded by a leafy roof, shut in the brimming waters.
It is not difficult to find the way from Beck Hole to the Roman camp on the hillside towards Egton Bridge. The Roman road from Cawthorn goes right through it, but beyond this it is not easy to trace, although fragments have been discovered as far as Aislaby, all pointing to Dunsley or Sandsend Bay. Round the shoulder of the hill we come down again to the deeply-wooded valley of the Esk. No river can be seen, but when we enter the shade of the trees the sound of many waters fills the air. What was once a thick green roof is now thin and yellow, and under our feet is a yielding carpet of soft brown and orange leaves. Rare and luxuriant mosses grow at the foot of the trees, on dead wood, and on the damp stones, and everywhere the rich woodland scent of decay meets the nostrils. In the midst of all these evidences of rampant natural conditions we come to Glaisdale End, where a graceful stone bridge of a single arch stands over the rushing stream. The initials of the builder and the date appear on the eastern side of what is now known as the Beggar's Bridge. It was formerly called Firris Bridge, after the builder, but the popular interest in the story of its origin seems to have killed the old name. If you ask anyone in Whitby to mention some of the sights of the neighbourhood, he will probably head his list with the Beggar's Bridge, but why this is so I cannot imagine. The woods are very beautiful, but this is a country full of the loveliest dales, and the presence of this single-arched bridge does not seem sufficient to have attracted so much popularity. I can only attribute it to the love interest associated with the beggar. He was, we may imagine, the Alderman Thomas Firris who, as a penniless youth, came to bid farewell to his betrothed, who lived somewhere on the opposite side of the river. Finding the stream impassable, he is said to have determined that if he came back from his travels as a rich man he would put up a bridge on the spot he had been prevented from crossing. It is not a very remarkable story, even if it be true, but it has given the bridge a fame scarcely proportionate to its merits.
CHAPTER III
THE COAST FROM WHITBY TO REDCAR
Along the three miles of sand running northwards from Whitby at the foot of low alluvial cliffs, I have seen some of the finest sea-pictures on this part of the coast. But although I have seen beautiful effects at all times of the day, those that I remember more than any others are the early mornings, when the sun was still low in the heavens, when, standing on that fine stretch of yellow sand, one seemed to breathe an atmosphere so pure, and to gaze at a sky so transparent, that some of those undefined longings for surroundings that have never been realized were instinctively uppermost in the mind. It is, I imagine, that vague recognition of perfection which has its effect on even superficial minds when impressed with beautiful scenery, for to what other cause can be attributed the remark one hears, that such scenes 'make one feel good'?
Heavy waves, overlapping one another in their fruitless bombardment of the smooth shelving sand, are filling the air with a ceaseless thunder. The sun, shining from a sky of burnished gold, throws into silhouette the twin lighthouses at the entrance to Whitby Harbour, and turns the foaming wave-tops into a dazzling white, accentuated by the long shadows of early day. Away to the north-west is Sandsend Ness, a bold headland full of purple and blue shadows, and straight out to sea, across the white-capped waves, are two tramp steamers, making, no doubt, for South Shields or some port where a cargo of coal can be picked up. They are plunging heavily, and every moment their bows seem to go down too far to recover.
On mornings when the sea is quieter there are few who can resist the desire to plunge into the blue waters, for at seven o'clock the shore is so entirely deserted that one seems to be bathing from some primeval shore where no other forms of life may be expected than some giant crustaceans. This thought, perhaps, prompted the painful sensations I allowed to prey upon me one night when I was walking along this particular piece of shore from Whitby. I had decided to save time over the road to Sandsend by getting on to the beach at Upgang, where the lifeboat-house stands, by the entrance to a small beck. So dark was the night that I could scarcely be sure that I had not lost my way, until I had carefully felt the walls of the boat-house. Then I stepped cautiously on to the sand, which I discovered as soon as my feet began sinking at every step.
The harbour lights of Whitby were bright enough, but in the other direction I could be sure of nothing. At first I seemed to have made a mistake as to the state of the tide, for there appeared to be a whiteness nearly up to the base of the cliffs; but this proved to be the suffused glow from the lighthouses. Rain had been falling heavily for the last few days, and had produced so many wide streams across the sand that my knowledge of the usual ones merely hampered me. At first I began stepping carefully over large black hollows in the sand, and then a great black mark would show itself, which, offering no resistance to my stick as I drew it across its surface, I could only imagine to be caused by a flood of ink poured upon the beach by some horrible squid. My musings on whether sea-monsters did ever disport themselves on the shore under the cover of sufficiently dark nights would be broken into by discovering that I had plunged into a stream of undiscoverable dimensions, whose existence only revealed itself by the splash of my boots. Retreating cautiously, I would take a run, and then a terrific leap into the darkness, sometimes finding myself on firm dry sand, and as frequently in the water.
I had decided that I should probably not reach Sandsend until daylight, when a red lamp near the railway-bridge shone out as a beacon, and I realized that I would soon be safe from the tentacles of sea-monsters.