“Stand clear, and don’t fire again!” shouted Andrew as he swung the hammer preparatory to delivering a blow. My friend jumped aside; and, as the huge brute came within striking distance, the hammer caught it full on the head and felled it to the ground. A tremor passed over the body; the seal was dead.
Whilst the battle lasted, angry bellowings came from the shelving beach beyond, where other seals—blurred, restless forms—awaited our attack. But wholesale slaughter was not our object; not another shot was fired. I would have liked to get nearer to the herd, but the danger of crossing the pool was too great.
“For God’s sake, don’t think of it!” shouted my friend; “we’ll light more torches.” This done, Andrew picked up the one he had laid on the rocks, and we advanced to the edge of the water with a torch in each hand, holding them well up, and forward at full arm’s-length. It was the sight of a lifetime. Five huge beasts, two grey, the rest a dirty yellow, mottled with black spots, lay swaying on the sand, prepared to make a rush—they can shuffle down a slope at a great pace—if we entered the pool; and these were not all, for in dark recesses beyond I saw indistinct forms move, and once I thought I caught the gleam of liquid eyes. For several minutes we stood fascinated by the wild scene, but it behoved us not to linger. Once or twice I noticed my friend turn his face towards the mouth of the cave. In the excitement he had not forgotten that the tide had turned. There was not time to skin the dead seal and remove the blubber; so my friend, who meant coming for this purpose at next low water, went to the foot of the ladder and shouted to the shepherd to throw down the rope. With some difficulty he made himself understood, for the roar of the waves was now greater than ever; and a few moments after the shepherd had shouted “Stand clear!” down came the coil on to the boulders. One end of the rope was tied securely to one of the flippers of the dead seal—a huge beast—and the other round a rock on which a bigger one rested. Andrew and I were taking a last look at the seals when our guide called out that there was no time to lose; and, indeed, the tide was washing the boulders at the foot of the ladder when we got there.
“Take your time, sir,” said Andrew as he held the bottom of it, “and higher up, press your knee against the wall, thet’ll clear the staave above.”
When a third of the way up, I looked towards the inner part of the cave. Profound gloom shrouded it, though the lights still flickered on the walls; and the seals, as far as I could hear, had ceased their angry challenges. Having reached the adit, I held a torch over the chasm to light the Earthstopper in his ascent. When he was near the top of the ladder, I saw that his face was spattered with blood. My friend having also reached the adit, the ladder was hauled up and put into the sack, and we made our way again into the open air. Scarcely a word was said as we climbed the cliff and crossed the heather and stubble to the farmhouse. After a wash and a hurried supper, the Earthstopper attached his lantern to the saddle and rode down the track towards Gwithian Churchtown. I could hear him jogging along until he reached the place where the road lies under feet of driven sand. The black clouds had lifted a little, and Crobben Hill was dimly discernible against the stars.
“Pity we can’t have spoart without killin’,” were the Earthstopper’s words as we had stood near the dead seal, and I thought of them as I turned to go indoors.
CHAPTER XV
REMINISCENCES OF BOYHOOD’S DAYS
Snow had fallen heavily during the night, for at daybreak it lay to a depth of several inches on the grass under my window, and weighed down the laurel-bushes that skirted it. It was an unusual sight for a Cornish boy; but more impressive was the hush that had fallen on the world—the noiseless footfall of man and horse and the muffled tones of St Mary’s bells, scarcely audible though an east wind was blowing. This impression has never left me, nor have many of the scenes that met my eyes lost their vivid outlines. Despite the effacing influence of time, I can still see clearly against the white background the incidents of that Christmas-tide. One word about the frost. It was sudden as well as severe, so that even the men who watched the skies for change of weather were taken by surprise. The intense, cold traversed the island as fast as the piercing wind that came with it, and between sundown and dawn had laid its icy fetters on the whole country. Thus Penwith for once suffered with the rest of England, and even more severely. Snowdrops had been already gathered in sunny corners, and a quarryman on his way home to Gulval had seen and picked a few primroses in Trevaylor woods, for his sick wife. This became known subsequently, when the gardeners sought excuses for not having bound up the stems of the palm-trees that had till then flourished in the semi-tropical climate. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say that there was no warning of the frost. Two days before it set in, John Harris, the lighthouse-keeper, had found a woodcock with a broken bill lying dead on the stage outside the lantern, and near it a rare bird only seen so far west in rigorous winters; and those who took the side of the gardeners said that, had he not kept the secret to himself for fear of the game-laws, not only the palm-trees, but also the old aloe in Alverton Lane that had flowered the previous summer, might have been saved. Whether the woodcock found by the lighthouse-keeper was one of a big flight or whether the birds arrived a day or so later is uncertain; at all events it was generally known on Christmas Day that the furze-brakes were “alive with cock,” tidings which raised a longing for the morrow in the breast of the sportsmen. Among these was an old friend whom I found busy in his sanctum filling a leathern pouch with shot from a canister. A log was blazing on the hearth. As I talked to him, I noticed that the ruddy blaze was tinged with green. I was puzzled to know the cause at the time, but I have thought since that the colour must have been due to a copper nail in the half-burnt piece of oak. The mention of this recalls how I used to enjoy sitting by that fireside, listening to the yarns of the three sportsmen who foregathered there. Who that ever heard them can forget the incidents of that famous night’s sea-fishing at the “Back of the Island”; the capture with the walking-stick rod of the two-pound trout whose holt was the deep pool under the roots of the sycamore at the foot of the hilly field at Trewidden; the vigils in the hut at Trevider fowling-pool; the great take of peal in the trammel at Lamorna Cove, and the finding the same morning of the otter drowned in the crab-pot nearly half a mile seaward from the Bucks? Few sporting tales have appealed to me as did those I overheard there; and, unconsciously, the surroundings may have served to impress me the setting of a play impresses the spectator in a theatre. Trophies of the rod and gun mingled with quaint relics of by-gone days, that gave an old-world look to the room. Between cases of stuffed birds and fishes hung pewter jugs, leather bottles, rosaries, and crossbows. Above two sporting prints was a dove-coloured top-hat, with a wide cork band and “Quaker” brim. Few hats could boast such a history as that, but I cannot tell it here. On a shelf, between a bookcase and a corner-cupboard, was the little basket that the woman carried who used to distribute letters in Penzance in the early part of the last century; and below it was a sketch of a contemporary of hers, the famous Joe Pascoe, the one-armed constable, who, according to tradition, was a terror to badger-baiters and cock-fighters, and a match for Boney himself. There, too, was a sketch of Henry Quick, the Zennor peasant-poet, with these lines of his under it: —
“Ofttimes abroad I take my flight,
Take pity on poor Henny;