So Constance, though naturally free from all idle fancies save that which we may term the affectionate superstition of the heart, could not listen to the croaking of this old woman without vague and growing fear; for though Winny knew nothing of the interest that "Mrs. Devereaux" had in the family of Lamorna, or her connection therewith (Derrick having kept his secret well) those sounds amid the deep at Boscastle were supposed by Cornish tradition to bode evil to the line of Trevelyan.
For it would appear, as Winny Braddon related, that long ago the villagers of Boscastle were very envious of the melodious and musical bells that were rung in the church of Tintagel, to which they were a gift from its superior the Abbot of Fontevrault in Normandy. So De Bottreaux who was lord of the manor, and the site of whose castle is now marked by a green mound only, to gratify those villagers who were his vassals, ordered from London a merry peal for the spire of Boscastle church; and those bells were duly shipped on board a vessel named the Koithgath caravel, for her captain, Launcelot Trevelyan, was a younger son of the family of Lamorna. He had been a wild fellow, of whose future career evil had been predicted by a Pyrdrak Brâz (old Cornish for a great-witch) who dwelt in the Zawn Reeth, a granite cavern at Nans Isal, on the western side of the bay so named—a wild and savage place surrounded by masses of scattered rock.
So Master Launcelot ran off to sea, and served under Drake and Hawkins in many a dark and desperate day's work among the Spaniards in Brazil, Madeira, and the Cape de Verde; and had once been round the Cape of Storms as far as the realms of that mysterious personage then known as Prester John.
Thus in due time, steered by Paul Poindester, a famous pilot from the Scilly Isles, the Koithgath, with the bells on board, arrived in the offing and in sight of Boscastle, with all its furzy hollows, above which rose the castle of Bottreaux, with the standard of its owner flying—a great banner, bearing three toads and a griffin.
As the ship drew in shore, the bells of Tintagel church, that towers still on a bleak, exposed, and lofty cliff to the westward of King Arthur's castle, rang out a taunting and a joyous peal that mingled with the booming of the ocean as it rolled on the bluffs below, or far up the sandy bay of Trebarreth Strand.
Then, according to the story, Launcelot Trevelyan swore an exulting oath as he surveyed the stupendous scenery of his native shore, adding,
"I am here again—thank my good ship and her canvas!"
"Nay," said the old pilot Poindester, as he reverently lifted his hat, "rather thank God and St. Michael of Cornwall."
"By Heaven," rejoined Trevelyan, "I thank myself and the fair wind only."
Poindester though fearless, for he was a native of those dangerous Isles where for one who dies a natural death nine are drowned, rebuked this irreverence, on which the wild Trevelyan stormed and blasphemed, and forgetting to heed his compass or steerage, permitted his caravel to be dashed ashore, just as a sudden storm came on, and the waves of the Bristol Channel hurled her on the cliffs of the Black Pit, where every soul on board perished, save old Paul Poindester. From the high gilded poop of his caravel, Launcelot Trevelyan, with a fierce malediction, cast into the sea, before it swallowed him up, the silver whistle and chain, his badge of naval authority, the gift of Sir Francis Drake, lest it should become some wrecker's prey; and as the timbers parted, and the ship went down into the angry sea, the clangour of the bells resounded in her hold; and there to this day they are heard by people loitering on the shore, when storms are nigh—or when aught is about to happen to the family of Lamorna, add the superstitious folks of Cornwall.