How They All Went Hunting for Sea Anemones at Cape Chatham — And How the Doctor Got a Terrible Fright — And How Captain Blockstrop Showed that There was Good Reason for it.

And presently, the Captain, half dressed, working away at his hair with two very stiff brushes, betook himself to Major Buckley’s room, whom he found shaving. “I’ll wait till you’re done,” said he; “I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

And then he resumed: “Buckley, your son wants to marry my daughter.”

“Shows his good taste,” said the Major. “What do you think of it?”

“I am very much delighted,” said the Captain.

“And what does she say to it?”

“She is very much delighted.”

“And I am very much delighted, and I suppose Sam is too. So there you are, you see: all agreed.”

And that was the way the marriage negotiations proceeded; indeed, it was nearly all that was ever said on the subject. But one day the Major brought two papers over to the Captain (who signed them), which were supposed to refer to settlements, and after that all the arrangements were left to Alice and Mrs. Buckley.

They started for Cape Chatham about nine o’clock in the day; Halbert and Jim first, then Sam and Alice, and lastly the three elders. This arrangement did not last long, however; for very soon Sam and Alice called aloud to Halbert and Jim to come and ride with them, for that they were boring one another to death. This they did, and now the discreet and sober conversation of the oldsters was much disturbed by loud laughter of the younger folks, in which, however, they could not help joining. It was a glorious crystal clear day in autumn; all nature, aroused from her summer’s rest, had put off her suit of hodden grey, and was flaunting in gaudiest green. The atmosphere was so amazingly pure that miles away across the plains the travellers could distinguish the herds of turkeys (bustards) stalking to and fro, while before them, that noble maritime mountain Cape Chatham towered up, sharply defined above the gleaming haze which marked the distant sea.

For a time their way lay straight across the broad well-grassed plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just left it. Then a green swamp; through the tall reeds the native companion, king of cranes, waded majestic; the brilliant porphyry water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire among the emerald green water-sedge. A shallow lake, dotted with wild ducks; here and there a group of wild swan, black with red bills, floating calmly on its bosom. A long stretch of grass as smooth as a bowling-green. A sudden rocky rise, clothed with native cypress (Exocarpus — Oh my botanical readers!), honeysuckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and there a stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer, topping all; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy heath that lay along the shore.

“Here,” said the Doctor, riding up, “we leave the last limit of the lava streams from Mirngish and the Organ-hill. Now, immediately you shall see how we pass from the richly-grassed volcanic plains, into the barren sandstone heaths; from a productive pasture land into a useless flower-garden. Nature here is economical, as she always is: she makes her choicest ornamental efforts on spots otherwise useless. You will see a greater variety of vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath than on two square miles of the thickly-grassed country we have been passing over.”

It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath; a dark dreary expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the bright green grass. It stretched away right and left interminably, only broken here and there with islands of dull-coloured trees; as melancholy a piece of country as one could conceive: yet far more thickly peopled with animal as well as vegetable life, than the rich pastoral downs further inland. Now they began to see the little red brush kangaroo, and the grey forester, skipping away in all directions; and had it been summer they would have been startled more than once by the brown snake, and the copper snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail, and the brush quail (the largest of Australian game birds I believe), whirred away from beneath their horses’ feet; and the ground parrot, green with mottlings of gold and black, rose like a partridge from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a “White’s thrush,” close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great state of excitement about it. “The only known bird,” he said, “which is found in Europe, America, and Australia alike.” Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, called their attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding through; Hakeas, Acacias, Grevilleas, and what not. In spring this brown heath would have been a brilliant mass of flowers; but now, nothing was to be seen save a few tall crimson spikes of Epacris, and here and there a bunch of lemon-coloured Correas. Altogether, he kept them so well amused, that they were astonished to come so quickly upon the station, placed in a snug cove of the forest, where it bordered on the heath beside a sluggish creek. Then, seeing the mountain towering up close to them, and hearing, as they stayed at the door, a low continuous thunder behind a high roll in the heath which lay before them, they knew that the old ocean was close at hand, and their journey was done.

The people at the station were very glad to see them, of course. Barker, the paterfamilias, was an old friend of both the Major and the Captain, and they found so much to talk about, that after a heavy midday-meal, excellent in kind, though that kind was coarse, and certain libations of pale ale and cold claret and water, the older of the party, with the exception of Dr. Mulhaus, refused to go any farther; so the young people started forth to the Cape, under the guidance of George Barker, the fourth or fifth son, who happened to be at home.

“Doctor,” said Alice as they were starting, “do you remark what beautiful smooth grass covers the cape itself, while here we have nothing but this scrubby heath? The mountain is, I suppose, some different formation?”

“Granite, my dear young lady,” said the Doctor. “A cap of granite rising through and partly overlying this sandstone.”

“You can always tell one exactly what one wants to know,” said Alice; and, as they walked forwards, somehow got talking to Halbert, which I believe most firmly had been arranged beforehand with Sam. For he, falling back, ranged alongside of the Doctor, and, managing to draw him behind the others, turned to him and said suddenly —

“My dear old friend! my good old tutor!”

The Doctor stopped short, pulled out a pair of spectacles, wiped them, put them on, and looked at Sam through them for nearly a minute, and then said:

“My dear boy, you don’t mean to say ——”

“I do, Doctor. — Last night. — And, oh! if you could only tell, how happy I am at this moment! If you could guess at it! ——”

“Pooh, pooh!” said the Doctor; “I am not so old as that, my dear boy. Why, I am a marrying man myself. Sam, I am so very, very glad! You have won her, and now wear her, like a pearl beyond all price. I think that she is worthy of you: more than that she could not be.”

They shook hands, and soon Sam was at her side again, toiling up the steep ascent. They soon distanced the others, and went forwards by themselves.

There was such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad ocean was invisible till they were half way up the grassy down. Then right and left they began to see the nether firmament, stretching away infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll, and seemed alone together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure-sphere which lay beneath their feet.

A cloudless sky and a sailless sea. Far beneath them they heard but saw not the eternal surges gnawing at the mountain. A few white albatrosses skimmed and sailed below, and before, seaward, the sheets of turf, falling away, stretched into a shoreless headland, fringed with black rock and snow-white surf.

She stood there, flushed and excited with the exercise, her bright hair dishevelled, waving in the free sea-breeze, the most beautiful object in that glorious landscape, her noble mate beside her. Awe, wonder, and admiration kept both of them silent for a few moments, and then she spoke.

“Do you know any of the choruses in the ‘Messiah’?” asked she.

“No, I do not,” said Sam.

“I am rather sorry for it,” she said, “because this is so very like some of them.”

“I can quite imagine that,” said Sam. “I can quite imagine music which expresses what we see now. Something infinitely BROAD I should say. Is that nonsense now?”

“Not to me,” said Alice.

“I imagined,” said Sam, “that the sea would be much rougher than this. In spite of the ceaseless thunder below there, it is very calm.”

“Calm, eh?” said the Doctor’s voice behind them. “God help the ship that should touch that reef this day, though a nautilus might float in safety! See, how the groundswell is tearing away at those rocks; you can just distinguish the long heave of the water, before it breaks. There is the most dangerous groundswell in the world off this coast. Should this country ever have a large coast-trade, they will find it out, in calm weather with no anchorage.”

A great coasting trade has arisen; and the Doctor’s remark has proved terribly true. Let the Monumental City and the Schomberg, the Duncan Dunbar and the Catherine Adamson bear witness to it. Let the drowning cries of hundreds of good sailors, who have been missed and never more heard of, bear witness that this is the most pitiless and unprotected, and, even in calm weather, the most dangerous coast in the world.

But Jim came panting up, and, throwing himself on the short turf, said —

“So this is the great Southern Ocean; eh! How far can one see, now, Halbert?”

“About thirty miles.”

“And how far to India; eh?”

“About seven thousand.”

“A long way,” said Jim. “However, not so far as to England.”

“Fancy,” said Halbert, “one of those old Dutch voyagers driving on this unknown coast on a dark night. What a sudden end to their voyage! Yet that must have happened to many ships which have never come home. Perhaps when they come to explore this coast a little more they may find some old ship’s ribs jammed on a reef; the ribs of some ship whose name and memory has perished.”

“The very thing you mention is the case,” said the Doctor. “Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic cliff, is to be seen the wreck of a very, very old ship, now covered with coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very old; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not. You English should never sneer at those two nations: they were before you everywhere.”

“And the Chinese before any of us in Australia,” replied Halbert.

“If you will just come here,” said Alice, “where those black rocks are hid by the bend of the hill, you get only three colours in your landscape; blue sky, grey grass, and purple sea. But look, there is a man standing on the promontory. He makes quite an eyesore there. I wish he would go away.”

“I suppose he has as good a right there as any of us,” answered the Doctor. “But he certainly does not harmonise very well with the rest of the colouring. What a strange place he has chosen to stand in, looking out over the sea, as though he were a shipwrecked mariner — the last of the crew.”

“A shipwrecked mariner would hardly wear breeches and boots, my dear Doctor,” said Jim. “That man is a stockman.”

“Not one of ours, however,” said George Barker; “even at this distance I can see that. See, he’s gone! Strange! I know of no way down the cliff thereabouts. Would you like to come down to the shore?”

So they began their descent to the shore by a winding path of turf, among tumbled heaps of granite, down towards the rock-walled cove, a horseshoe of smooth white sand lying between two long black reefs, among whose isolated pinnacles the groundswell leapt and spouted ceaselessly.

Halbert remarked, “This granite coast is hardly so remarkable as our Cornish one. There are none of those queer pinnacles and tors one sees there, just ready to topple down into the sea. This granite is not half so fantastic.”

“Earthquakes, of which you have none in Cornwall,” said the Doctor, “will just account for the difference. I have felt one near here quite as strong as your famous lieutenant, who capsized the Logan stone.”

But now, getting on the level sands, they fell to gathering shells and sea-weeds like children. Jim trying to see how near he could get to a wave without being caught, got washed up like jetsam. Alice took Sam’s pocket-handkerchief, and filled it indiscriminately with everything she could lay her hand on, principally Trochuses, as big as one’s fist, and “Venus-ears,” scarlet outside. And after an hour, wetfooted and happy, dragging a yard or so of sea-tang behind her, she looked round for the Doctor, and saw him far out on the reef, lying flat on his stomach, and closely examining a large still pool of salt water, contained in the crevices of the rocks.

He held up his hand and beckoned. Sam and Alice advanced towards him over the slippery beds of seaweed, Sam bravely burying his feet in the wet clefts, and holding out his hand to help her along. Once there was a break in the reef, too broad to be jumped, and then for the first time he had her fairly in his arms and swung her across, which was undoubtedly very delightful, but unfortunately soon over. At length, however, they reached the Doctor, who was seated like a cormorant on a wet rock, lighting a pipe.

“What have you collected?” he asked. “Show me.”

Alice proudly displayed the inestimable treasures contained in Sam’s handkerchief.

“Rubbish! Rubbish!” said the Doctor, “Do you believe in mermaidens?”

“Of course I do, if you wish it,” said Alice. “Have you seen one?”

“No, but here is one of their flower-gardens. Bend down and look into this pool.”

She bent and looked. The first thing she saw was her own exquisite face, and Sam’s brown phiz peering over her shoulder. A golden tress of hair, loosened by the sea breeze, fell down into the water, and had to be looped up again. Then gazing down once more, she saw beneath the crystal water a bed of flowers; dahlias, ranunculuses, carnations, chrysanthemums, of every colour in the rainbow save blue. She gave a cry of pleasure: “What are they, Doctor? What do you call them?”

“Sea anemones, in English, I believe,” said the Doctor, “actinias, serpulas, and sabellas. You may see something like that on the European coasts, on a small scale, but there is nothing I ever have seen like that great crimson fellow with cream-coloured tentacles. I do not know his name. I suspect he has never been described. The common European anemone they call ‘crassicornis’ is something like him, but not half as fine.”

“Is there any means of gathering and keeping them, Doctor?” asked Sam. “We have no flowers in the garden like them.”

“No possible means,” said the Doctor. “They are but lumps of jelly. Let us come away and get round the headland before the tide comes in.”

They wandered on from cove to cove, under the dark cliffs, till rounding a little headland the Doctor called out —

“Here is something in your Cornish style, Halbert.”

A thin wall of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, pierced by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey stone: below, wherever the salt water had reached, a mass of dark clinging weed: while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was a soft glimpse of blue sky and snow-white seabirds.

“There is nothing so grand as that in Cornwall, Doctor,” said Halbert.

“Can we pass under it, Mr. Barker?” said Alice. “I should like to go through; we have been into none of the caves yet.”

“Oh, yes!” said George Barker. “You may go through for the next two hours. The tide has not turned yet.”

“I’ll volunteer first,” said the Doctor, “and if there’s anything worth seeing beyond, I’ll come for you.”

It was, as I said, a thin wall of granite, which ran out from the rest of the hill, seaward, and was pierced by a tall arch; the blocks which had formerly filled the void now lay weed-grown, half buried in sand, forming a slippery threshold. Over these the Doctor climbed and looked beyond.

A little sandy cove, reef-bound, like those they had seen before, lay under the dark cliffs; and on a water-washed rock, not a hundred yards from him, stood the man they had seen on the downs above, looking steadily seaward.

The Doctor slipped over the rocks like an otter, and approached the man across the smooth sand, unheard in the thunder of the surf. When he was close upon him, the stranger turned, and the Doctor uttered a low cry of wonder and alarm.

It was George Hawker! The Doctor knew him in a moment: but whether the recognition was mutual, he never found out, for Hawker, stepping rapidly from stone to stone, disappeared round the headland, and the thunderstruck Doctor retraced his steps to the arch.

There were all the young people gathered, wondering and delighted. But Alice came to meet him, and said —

“Who was that with you just now?”

“A mermaid!” replied he.

“That, indeed!” said Alice. “And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Go home to your supper; you have seen quite enough; go home in good time.’”

“Doctor, there is something wrong!” said Alice. “I see it in your face. Can you trust me, and tell me what it is?”

“I can trust you so far as to tell you that you are right. I don’t like the look of things at all. I fear there are evil times coming for some of our friends! Further than this I can say nothing. Say your prayers, and trust God! Don’t tell Sam anything about this: tomorrow I shall speak to him. We won’t spoil a pleasant holiday on mere suspicion.”

They rejoined the others, and the Doctor said, “Come away home now; we have seen enough. Some future time we will come here again: you might see this fifty times, and never get tired of it.”

After a good scramble they stood once more on the down above, and turned to take a last look at the broad blue sea before they descended inland; at the first glance seaward, Halbert exclaimed —

“See there, Doctor! see there! A boat!”

“It’s only a whale, I think,” said George Barker.

There was a black speck far out at sea, but no whale; it was too steady for that. All day the air had been calm; if anything, the breeze was from the north, but now a strong wind was coming up from the south-east, freshening every moment, and bringing with it a pent bank of dark clouds; and, as they watched, the mysterious black speck was topped with white, and soon they saw that it was indeed a boat driving before the wind under a spritsail, which had just been set.

“That is very strange!” said George Barker. “Can it be a shipwrecked party?”

“More likely a mob of escaped convicts from Van Diemen’s Land,” said Jim. “If so, look out for squalls, you, George, and keep your guns loaded.”

“I don’t think it can be that, Jim,” said Sam. “What could bring them so far north? They would have landed, more likely, somewhere in the Straits, about the big lakes.”

“They may have been driven off shore by these westerly wi............