To sell my books ’tis my delight,
To gain an honest penny.”
Under a coach-horn that had often awakened the echoes of the Cornish hills, were three small cabinets, my friend’s own handiwork. The smallest contained minute shells, carefully classified, which he had collected on Porthcurnow and Gwenvor beaches; but more interesting to me than shells, ferns, or wildflowers, was the collection of birds’ eggs. What rare ones some of those compartments held! What trouble my friend had had in securing them! I have often questioned him about his expeditions on the cliffs, but he preferred to dwell on his visits to the outer islands of Scilly. The rugged grandeur of Mincarlo and Menavawr appealed to him; yet Annet was his favourite, and though he was a man of few words and free from gush, I have heard him sigh when a sea-bird’s egg, or the lichen or withered thrift it rested on, recalled the beauty of this islet, which, when the sea-pinks are in bloom, glows under the June sun with the brilliant beauty of an amethyst set in sapphire.
Nest of Seagull. [Face page 190.
The room had one window only; but it was a spacious bay which faced south, and through it you could see and hear the waves breaking on the beach below. More than once that afternoon, before he lit the lamp, my friend turned the spyglass on some companies of wildfowl that dotted the rough water between the “Battery” and Lareggan rocks.
A double-barrelled muzzle-loader—a Joe Manton—was George Bevan’s favourite gun; and this, with powder-flasks, shot-pouches, caps and wads, were placed ready for the next morning. Only a boy who has been entered to sport and knows how the anticipation of it fevers the blood, can understand how impatiently I looked forward to the morrow. That night I thought sleep would never come; and at what hour I fell off I do not know, for the frost had got into the workings of our eight-day clock, and as for the town clock, that could generally be heard the town over, it might have stopped for all the sound it made in striking. But I must have slept, for I was half awakened by some noise against my window. My first impression was that the snow had changed to hail, but as the rattle grew louder I sat up in bed. Then it was I heard, “Jack, get up!” faint and far away, like the doctor’s voice when you’re coming to after chloroform; and almost immediately the memory of everything came back to me—my friend’s last assurance that he would call for me, the white world outside and, most stirring of all, the woodcock awaiting us in the furze-brakes. I was up in a jiffy, struck a light, and dressed as hurriedly as a fourth-form boy whom the first stroke of the call-over bell finds in bed. The cold had not relented, for a film of ice lay on the water in the jug, and by the candlelight I saw that the window-panes were frosted over. This was joy to me, for in my troubled sleep I had dreamt that the commonplace world was back again, and that every woodcock had flown away in the train of the retreating frost. Moreover, when we set out, the snow crunched under our feet, and a long icicle was hanging from the stone lip of the Alverton chute. Day was breaking when we reached the hilly field at Rosehill and followed the path under the beech-trees; and it is there, for some reason I cannot explain, that I best recall my old friend on that day. He was well above the middle height, and strongly built. The gun was slung across his back by means of a leather strap. The coat of heather-mixture he wore had, besides big side-pockets, several subsidiary ones, and there were leather pieces on the shoulders. Two spaniels followed at his heels, and his henchman, an old man who had been in the employ of the family all his life, closed the procession. My friend’s hair was silvering, as you could see between the upturned collar and the brim of the dove-coloured hat; and for that reason he seemed, to my boyish eyes, an old man. Nevertheless I had some difficulty in keeping up with him, especially when, not having mittens on as he had, I put my hands in my pockets to protect them from the biting cold. Yet how slight must have been my discomfort compared to the distress of the birds—fieldfares, thrushes, whinnards, blackbirds, starlings and missel-thrushes—which were flying hither and thither in the vain search for food. Though no doubt I thought how easily they might be trapped, I was sorry for the smaller birds, wrens and tomtits, that threaded the hedgerow near the farmhouse, and for the robin, puffed out with cold, perched on one leg on the sill of the dairy window. A little farther on, where the footpath crosses the brook near its junction with the Lezingey stream, a snipe rose from some rushes; and farther on again, near some furze-bushes, were tracks of at least one rabbit. But we left them all behind us. The shooting-ground we were making for lay on the southern edge of the “High Country,” and though our shortest way would have been along the “Watery Lane,” as it used to be called, and up Hendra Bottoms, we rose the steep hill leading to Boswednan. By this more roundabout course, we should avoid the drifts through which a farmhand, who had brought tidings of the woodcock, had been obliged to force his way.