Wild
folk are these here, gatherers of shell-fish and laver, and merciless
to wrecked vessels, which they consider as their own by immemorial
usage, or rather right divine. Significant, how an agricultural
people is generally as cruel to wrecked seamen, as a fishing one is
merciful. I could tell you twenty stories of the baysmen down there
to the westward risking themselves like very heroes to save
strangers' lives, and beating off the labouring folk who swarmed down
for plunder from the inland hills.'
'Knowledge, you see, breeds sympathy and love. But what a merciless
coast!'
'Hardly a winter passes without a wreck or two. You see there lying
about the timbers of more than one tall ship. You see, too, that
black rock a-wash far out at sea, apparently a submarine outlier of
the north horn of this wide rock-amphitheatre below us. That is the
Morte stone, the "Death-rock," as the Normans christened it of old;
and it does not belie its name even now. See how, even in this calm,
it hurls up its column of spray at every wave; and then conceive
being entrapped between it and the cliffs, on some blinding, whirling
winter's night, when the land is shrouded thick in clouds, and the
roar of the breakers hardly precedes by a minute the crash of your
bows against the rocks.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282