Читать книгу In the Wake of fortune - Ivan Dexter - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Within a dozen miles of Land's End, where the grotesque and imperishable rocks of the "Shark's Fin" and "The Armed Knight" leave the wild surges of the Atlantic, is situated the ancient hamlet of St. Columb's Cove.

The place is wild and picturesque in the extreme.

The ceaseless billows of the ocean rolling across from the shores of America have indented the Granite rocks which faced them into strange and uncouth shapes. Hollows and caves have been worn by the erosive action of ages, and at times when the sea was lashed to fury it howled and shrieked amongst them in doleful and appalling accents.

The little cove was hollowed out of a soft stratum in the iron-bound coast, and within it small craft could find shelter.

Looking from its cliffs on a fine day the dim outlines of the Scilly Islands away to south-west could be discerned, and lying between was the fabled submerged land of Lyonesse, over which King Arthur, of Round Table fame, and his knights used to hunt.

There was not a spot in the whole locality that was not associated with strange and weird legends.

Over at yonder black cliff was the dreaded place where the spectre of St. Columb's made its ominous appearance as a herald of evil to the little settlement. This portentous visitation took the form of a phantom ship, black and square rigged, followed by a shadowy boat, the whole being of unearthly aspect and worked by no human hands.

When the mists rose seawards over the calm ocean about nightfall the spectre ship was seen to glide silently towards the dark beetling cliff, and apparently sail right into it, disappearing as mysteriously as it had come.

The apparition boded woe to Columb hamlet, and the primitive residents, almost secluded from the busy world and superstitious to the last degree, placed implicit faith in the legend.

Of all peoples on the earth those of Cornwall are perhaps the most superstitious, and attach supernatural reasons to most commonplace events.

From King Arthur's time down to the latter end of the nineteenth century innumerable are the legends associated with Cornwall, and St. Columb's Cove was in the very heart of the mystic district.

To the north the coast town of Tintagel stood with its ruins of Arthur's celebrated castle, where the court of Round Table was held. The famous bells of Tintagel, with the weird romance attached to them, are still heard by credulous people chiming on occasions beneath the ocean.

Indeed, eminent men have heard the strange sounds as of bells chiming, but science now attributes the booming noise to other and natural causes.

Close by the town is the site of the battlefield where King Arthur met his death. Nearer to St. Columb is the celebrated morass which it was part of the doom of the wicked Tregeagal to drain, and within half a mile of the Cave hamlet were several strange granite rocks on an open moor.

Of course a legend is attached to them, and it is at the expense of a worthy man of former times, named St. Just.

This worthy man dwelt at the western side of the Promontory, and on the eastern side lived another good man called St. Keverne, whose name is still famous in Cornwall.

St. Just once paid his brother in righteousness a visit, but on his leaving St. Keverne missed some of his property. Waxing wroth—for even saints hankered after earthly riches—he pursued his late visitor, carrying with him from the coast a few granite rocks of about a ton weight each.

He overtook him near St. Columb. A colossal fight ensued and the rocks were used as missiles with such effect that St. Just was glad to disgorge the stolen property.

Such is the given reason assigned by the Cornish people for the presence on the moor of the strange rocks, and it is simply stated as a sample of the supernatural reasons to explain very natural circumstances.

From time immemorial the hamlet of St. Columb had been supported by mining.

Up to the year 1819 its output of tin had been considerable, but after that date the yield had gradually fallen off until in 1863, the year this story opens, it could scarcely be called a mining district longer.

Throughout Cornwall the stanniferous areas had become less, but the working of other minerals had taken their place.

Coal and iron were being substituted for tin and copper, and it was simply a change in the mineral, that made no alteration save for the better in the progress of the district.

With St. Columb's Cove, however, it was different.

Tin was the only mineral in the neighbourhood that had been found profitable to work, and once that industry became extinct there was nothing else to take its place.

The locality was not fit for either agricultural or pastoral pursuits.

The coast-line was sterile and desolate, and the salt spray of the Atlantic, which in rough weather swept far inland, precluded the growth of vegetation, save that of a marine character.

The fens and moors at the back of the hamlet were almost as unsuitable for agriculture, and nothing of a remunerative nature could be won from the earth by that industry.

As a fishing village the cove was also unsuitable.

The long wash of the ocean which beat upon the coast with terrific violence, whenever a slight storm arose, rendered fishing as a pursuit out of the question in that particular spot.

The cove offered few advantages in that respect, and as there were other parts not far distant which gave good shelter, fishing smacks sought them.

So treacherous was the coast that a vessel driven near it was inevitably doomed to destruction. It was caught in powerful currents when far off and sucked in to disaster and death.

In former times the reputation of the coast was extremely evil.

It was even said as a matter beyond dispute that the inmates of a monastery which was built near the Black Cliff, and could be seen a long distance to seaward, were in the habit of hanging a lantern out at night to entice voyagers to destruction.

The good monks of course maintained that the lamp was hung out as a signal of danger to keep mariners away. That might be, but there could be no disputing the fact that the religious brothers claimed and received their full share of the wreckage that was plundered from the ill-fated vessels lured on the rocks. In latter days without the hanging out of false lights the wrecks on the coast were numerous and disastrous enough to satisfy any lover of the sensational.

Of course the inevitable legend was associated with such disasters.

On stormy evenings a woman's shrieks were said to be often heard coming from seawards, and some few favoured individuals with powerful imaginations had even caught a glimpse of a female form floating along in the mist and calling for succor.

This was supposed to be the ghost of a woman who long ago had been the only person saved from a terrible wreck.

Her husband and family had all been swallowed up in the furious sea when the ship drove on the rocks, and she, caught by a huge wave had been thrown into a cleft of rock, where she was found unconscious by a party of wreckers.

Instead of dropping her back into the sea they had saved her, but it was soon found that her reason had been shattered by the awful experience of the calamitous night.

When she was able to get about she used to spend her time wandering along the beetling rocks and everyone pitied her sad case.

One evening when a storm was lashing the ocean against the cliffs she disappeared, but a miner making his way home had seen her end.

He had watched her go to the edge of the Black Cliff and gaze, apparently fascinated, into the tumbling billows below.

Suddenly she precipitated herself from the Cliff and disappeared for ever.

As her body was not washed ashore and she had a mystery attached to her and the vessel in which she was lost, the usual legend grew around the event.

It thus happened that in 1865 through the decline of the staple mining industry that the residents were fewer than in former times.

The remainder still clung tenaciously to the remnant of the mining work which remained. Centuries before the place had been famous for its output of tin.

It was at the Cove so many historians said that the old Phœnicians first landed in search of minerals, and long before the time of Julius Cæsar the precious metals and the baser ones also had been worked from their native ore.

All over the district could be found the remains of ancient workings. These had been abandoned long anterior to the local records, but from the extensive ruins they must have contained immense deposits of ore. In several places shafts of profound depth existed that had not been touched for centuries.

At what period or by what people they had been excavated no one could tell.

It was honestly regarded as beyond dispute that for twenty centuries mining had been carried on in the vicinity of St. Columb's Cove, and romantic stories were current of the fabulous riches that had been won from the earth there.

If B. Raleigh had lived a thousand years before he did there would have been no occasion—had half the stories been true—for him to seek the El Dorado in the mysterious recesses of a new world. In the Land's End he would have found the wealth for which he pined.

Even in the sixteenth century the bulk of the riches had been taken from the place, and as times rolled on the patient but persistent miner still further diminished the treasure which lay buried in the earth.

In the year 1865 the glory of St. Columb's Cove had disappeared, or was but a memory of the past so far as its mineral wealth was concerned, and in the whole district there was but one mine which was still worked.

This was called the "Wheal Merlin," and the site was supposed to have been pointed out as a profitable one to work by the famous enchanter of that name.

This mine was in 1865 owned by one John Trenoweth, and it had been in the same family for generations.