CHAPTER VIII.
What the Boarding-House thought—Landslips—Yarborough House—The Dane’s Dike—Higher Cliffs—The South Landing—The Flamborough Fleet—Ida, the Flamebearer—A Storm—A talk in a Limekiln—Flamborough Fishermen—Coffee before Rum—No Drunkards—A Landlord’s Experiences—Old-fashioned Honesty.
The party—four gentlemen and one lady—at the boarding-house where I tarried to dine, agreed unanimously that to pass a whole Sunday morning in walking, was especially blameworthy. Besides being wrong in itself, it was “setting such a bad example;” nor would they hear reason on the question. With them, indeed, it was no question: they quoted the fourth commandment, and that settled it. Any departure from that was decidedly wrong, if not sinful. And then, perhaps out of a benevolent desire for my spiritual welfare, they urged me to stay till the morrow, when I might join them in a boat-trip to the Head and help to fire guns at the seafowl. It surprised me somewhat to hear them discuss their project with as much animation as if they had not just administered a homily to me, or the day had not been Sunday. The possibilities of weather, the merits of cold pies, sandwiches, and lively bottled drinks, powder and shot moreover, and tidal contingencies, were talked about in a way that led me to infer there was nothing at all wrong in consuming the holy day with anticipations of pleasure to come in the days reckoned unholy. Then one of the party set off to walk to a village three miles distant; and presently, when I started for Flamborough, the other three accompanied me as far as the path along the cliff was easy to the foot. So I could only infer again that there is nothing wrong in short walks on a Sunday. It is simply the distance that constitutes the difference between good and evil. Some folk appear to believe that if they only sit under a pulpit in the morning, they have earned a dispensation for the rest of the day.
The cliffs now are sixty feet in height, broken by frequent slips in the upper stratum of clay, and numerous cracks running along the path marks the limits of future falls. One of the slips appeared to be but a few hours old, and the lumps, of all dimensions, with patches of grass and weeds sticking out here and there, lying in a great confused slope, suggested the idea of an avalanche of clay. Ere long you come to Yarborough House, a stately mansion standing embowered by trees about a furlong from the shore. Holding that an Englishman has an inherent right of way along the edge of his own country, I gave no heed to the usual wooden warning to trespassers, erected where the path strikes inland at the skirt of the grounds, and kept along the pathless margin of the cliff. Nothing appeared to be disturbed by my presence except a few rabbits, that darted as if in terror to their burrows. Once past the grounds you come into large fields, where the grain grows so close to the brink of the precipice, that you wonder alike at the thrift of the Yorkshire farmers, and the skill with which they drive their ploughs in critical situations.
As you proceed, the cliffs rise higher, interrupted in places by narrow gullies, one of which is so deep and the farther bank so high as to appear truly formidable, and shut out all prospect to the east. After a difficult scramble down, and a more difficult scramble up, you find yourself on the top of a ridge, which, stretching all across the base of the headland from sea to sea, along the margin of a natural ravine, remains a monument, miles in length, of the days
“When Denmark’s Raven soar’d on high,
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky.”
It is the “Dane’s Dike,” a barrier raised by our piratical Scandinavian forefathers to protect their settlements on the great promontory. With such a fence, they had always a refuge to fall back upon where they could hold their own, and command the landing-places till more ships and marauders arrived with succours. As the eye follows the straight line of the huge grass-grown embankment, you will feel something like admiration of the resolute industry by which it was raised, and perhaps think of the fierce battles which its now lonely slopes must have once witnessed.
Still the cliffs ascend. Farther on I came to a broader and deeper ravine, at the mouth of which a few boats lay moored; and others hauled up on the beach, and coming nearer, I saw boat after boat lodged here and there on the slopes, even to the level ground above, where, judging from the number, the fleet found its rendezvous. It was curious to see so many keels out of their element, most of them gay with stripes of blue and red, and bearing the names of the wives and daughters of Flambro’. The little bay, however, known as the South Landing, is one of the two ports of Flamborough: the other, as we shall see after passing the lighthouse, is similar in formation—a mere gap in the cliffs. They might be called providential landing-places, for without them the fishermen of Flamborough would have no access to the sea, except by ladders down the precipice. As it is, the declivity is very steep; and it is only by hauling them up to every available spot, that room is found for the numerous boats.