“Storm, billow, whirlwind, past,
Come to thy God at last!”
I may be allowed, as this is a gossiping book, here to tell a story of Boscastle, which came to my ears when staying there a few years ago, and which is true.
There lived at Boscastle, within twenty years, an old seafaring man whom we will call Daddy Tregellas—his real name has escaped me. A widow in the village died, leaving a fair young daughter of eighteen, very delicate and consumptive, without a home or relation. Daddy Tregellas had known the widow and felt great pity for the orphan, but how to help her he did not see. After much turning the matter over in his mind he thought the only way in which he could make her a home and provide her with comforts without giving the gossips occasion to talk, was by marrying her. And married accordingly they were. The Boscastle people to this day tell of the tenderness of the old man for his young, delicate wife; it was that of a father for a daughter,—how he watched the carnation spots on her cheek with intense anxiety and listened with anguish to her cough; how he walked out with her on the cliffs, wrapping shawls round her; and sat in church with his eyes fixed on her whilst she sang, listened or prayed. The beautiful girl was his idol, his pet.
She languished in spite of all his care. He nursed her through her illness like a mother, with his rough, brown hand as gentle as that of a woman. She died propped up in bed, with her chestnut hair flowing over his blue sailor’s jersey, as he held her head on his breast.
When he had laid his pet in Forrabury churchyard the light of his life was extinguished. The old man wandered about the cliffs all day, in sunshine and in storm, growing more hollow-cheeked and dull-eyed, his thin hair lank, his back bowed, speaking to no one and breaking slowly but surely.
But Mr. Avery, the shipbuilder, about this time laid the keel of a little vessel, and she was reared in Boscastle haven. The new ship interested the old man, and when the figure-head was set up he fancied he traced in it a likeness to his dead wife.
“It is—it is the Pet,” faltered the old man.
The owner heard the exclamation and said: “So shall it be. She shall be called The Pet.”
And now the old love, which had wound itself round the wife, began to attach itself to the little vessel. Every day the old man was on the quay watching the growth of The Pet; he could not bear her out of his sight. When The Pet was ready to be launched Mr. Avery offered Tregellas the position of captain to her. The old man’s joy was full; he took the command and sailed for Bristol for coals.