Snow had fallen heavily during the night, for at daybreak it lay to a depth of several inches on the grass under my window, and weighed down the laurel-bushes that skirted it. It was an unusual sight for a Cornish boy; but more impressive was the hush that had fallen on the world—the noiseless footfall of man and horse and the muffled tones of St Mary’s bells, scarcely audible though an east wind was blowing. This impression has never left me, nor have many of the scenes that met my eyes lost their vivid outlines. Despite the effacing influence of time, I can still see clearly against the white background the incidents of that Christmas-tide. One word about the frost. It was sudden as well as severe, so that even the men who watched the skies for change of weather were taken by surprise. The intense, cold traversed the island as fast as the piercing wind that came with it, and between sundown and dawn had laid its icy fetters on the whole country. Thus Penwith for once suffered with the rest of England, and even more severely. Snowdrops had been already gathered in sunny corners, and a quarryman on his way home to Gulval had seen and picked a few primroses in Trevaylor woods, for his sick wife. This became known subsequently, when the gardeners sought excuses for not having bound up the stems of the palm-trees that had till then flourished in the semi-tropical climate. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say that there was no warning of the frost. Two days before it set in, John Harris, the lighthouse-keeper, had found a woodcock with a broken bill lying dead on the stage outside the lantern, and near it a rare bird only seen so far west in rigorous winters; and those who took the side of the gardeners said that, had he not kept the secret to himself for fear of the game-laws, not only the palm-trees, but also the old aloe in Alverton Lane that had flowered the previous summer, might have been saved. Whether the woodcock found by the lighthouse-keeper was one of a big flight or whether the birds arrived a day or so later is uncertain; at all events it was generally known on Christmas Day that the furze-brakes were “alive with cock,” tidings which raised a longing for the morrow in the breast of the sportsmen. Among these was an old friend whom I found busy in his sanctum filling a leathern pouch with shot from a canister. A log was blazing on the hearth. As I talked to him, I noticed that the ruddy blaze was tinged with green. I was puzzled to know the cause at the time, but I have thought since that the colour must have been due to a copper nail in the half-burnt piece of oak. The mention of this recalls how I used to enjoy sitting by that fireside, listening to the yarns of the three sportsmen who foregathered there. Who that ever heard them can forget the incidents of that famous night’s sea-fishing at the “Back of the Island”; the capture with the walking-stick rod of the two-pound trout whose holt was the deep pool under the roots of the sycamore at the foot of the hilly field at Trewidden; the vigils in the hut at Trevider fowling-pool; the great take of peal in the trammel at Lamorna Cove, and the finding the same morning of the otter drowned in the crab-pot nearly half a mile seaward from the Bucks? Few sporting tales have appealed to me as did those I overheard there; and, unconsciously, the surroundings may have served to impress me the setting of a play impresses the spectator in a theatre. Trophies of the rod and gun mingled with quaint relics of by-gone days, that gave an old-world look to the room. Between cases of stuffed birds and fishes hung pewter jugs, leather bottles, rosaries, and crossbows. Above two sporting prints was a dove-coloured top-hat, with a wide cork band and “Quaker” brim. Few hats could boast such a history as that, but I cannot tell it here. On a shelf, between a bookcase and a corner-cupboard, was the little basket that the woman carried who used to distribute letters in Penzance in the early part of the last century; and below it was a sketch of a contemporary of hers, the famous Joe Pascoe, the one-armed constable, who, according to tradition, was a terror to badger-baiters and cock-fighters, and a match for Boney himself. There, too, was a sketch of Henry Quick, the Zennor peasant-poet, with these lines of his under it:?—
“Ofttimes abroad I take my flight,
??Take pity on poor Henny;
To sell my books ’tis my delight,
??To gain an honest penny.”
Under a coach-horn that had often awakened the echoes of the Cornish hills, were three small cabinets, my friend’s own handiwork. The smallest contained minute shells, carefully classified, which he had collected on Porthcurnow and Gwenvor beaches; but more interesting to me than shells, ferns, or wildflowers, was the collection of birds’ eggs. What rare ones some of those compartments held! What trouble my friend had had in securing them! I have often questioned him about his expeditions on the cliffs, but he preferred to dwell on his visits to the outer islands of Scilly. The rugged grandeur of Mincarlo and Menavawr appealed to him; yet Annet was his favourite, and though he was a man of few words and free from gush, I have heard him sigh when a sea-bird’s egg, or the lichen or withered thrift it rested on, recalled the beauty of this islet, which, when the sea-pinks are in bloom, glows under the June sun with the brilliant beauty of an amethyst set in sapphire.
Nest of Seagull.
The room had one window only; but it was a spacious bay which faced south, and through it you could see and hear the waves breaking on the beach below. More than once that afternoon, before he lit the lamp, my friend turned the spyglass on some companies of wildfowl that dotted the rough water between the “Battery” and Lareggan rocks.
A double-barrelled muzzle-loader—a Joe Manton—was George Bevan’s favourite gun; and this, with powder-flasks, shot-pouches, caps and wads, were placed ready for the next morning. Only a boy who has been entered to sport and knows how the anticipation of it fevers the blood, can understand how impatiently I looked forward to the morrow. That night I thought sleep would never come; and at what hour I fell off I do not know, for the frost had got into the workings of our eight-day clock, and as for the town clock, that could generally be heard the town over, it might have stopped for all the sound it made in striking. But I must have slept, for I was half awakened by some noise against my window. My first impression was that the snow had changed to hail, but as the rattle grew louder I sat up in bed. Then it was I heard, “Jack, get up!” faint and far away, like the doctor’s voice when you’re coming to after chloroform; and almost immediately the memory of everything came back to me—my friend’s last assurance that he would call for me, the white world outside and, most stirring of all, the woodcock awaiting us in the furze-brakes. I was up in a jiffy, struck a light, and dressed as hurriedly as a fourth-form boy whom the first stroke of the call-over bell finds in bed. The cold had not relented, for a film of ice lay on the water in the jug, and by the candlelight I saw that the window-panes were frosted over. This was joy to me, for in my troubled sleep I had dreamt that the commonplace world was back again, and that every woodcock had flown away in the train of the retreating frost. Moreover, when we set out, the snow crunched under our feet, and a long icicle was hanging from the stone lip of the Alverton chute. Day was breaking when we reached the hilly field at Rosehill and followed the path under the beech-trees; and it is there, for some reason I cannot explain, that I best recall my old friend on that day. He was well above the middle height, and strongly built. The gun was slung across his back by means of a leather strap. The coat of heather-mixture he wore had, besides big side-pockets, several subsidiary ones, and there were leather pieces on the shoulders. Two spaniels followed at his heels, and his henchman, an old man who had been in the employ of the family all his life, closed the procession. My friend’s hair was silvering, as you could see between the upturned collar and the brim of the dove-coloured hat; and for that reason he seemed, to my boyish eyes, an old man. Nevertheless I had some difficulty in keeping up with him, especially when, not having mittens on as he had, I put my hands in my pockets to protect them from the biting cold. Yet how slight must have been my discomfort compared to the distress of the birds—fieldfares, thrushes, whinnards, blackbirds, starlings and missel-thrushes—which were flying hither and thither in the vain search for food. Though no doubt I thought how easily they might be trapped, I was sorry for the smaller birds, wrens and tomtits, that threaded the hedgerow near the farmhouse, and for the robin, puffed out with cold, perched on one leg on the sill of the dairy window. A little farther on, where the footpath crosses the brook near its junction with the Lezingey stream, a snipe rose from some rushes; and farther on again, near some furze-bushes, were tracks of at least one rabbit. But we left them all behind us. The shooting-ground we were making for lay on the southern edge of the “High Country,” and though our shortest way would have been along the “Watery Lane,” as it used to be called, and up Hendra Bottoms, we rose the steep hill leading to Boswednan. By this more roundabout course, we should avoid the drifts through which a farmhand, who had brought tidings of the woodcock, had been obliged to force his way.
From the high ground above the hamlet, where we halted a moment to take breath, we overlooked a scene which resembled a rude cast in white of the familiar countryside. Many landmarks were disguised beyond recognition, and the waters of Mount’s Bay, generally like a liquid gem of the deepest blue, looked dull as lead. The newly-risen sun loomed big through the frost-fog which its rays could not penetrate, and a man with weak eyes might have stared at the dull crimson orb without blinking. In the hollow immediately below us, an old labourer, with a big faggot of furze on his back, was staggering across a yard, his feet sinking at every step deeper and deeper into the snow, as he made for the closed door of the farmhouse against which it had drifted. It must be admitted that the snowfall, heavy as it was, could not be compared to the great blizzard of later years, which blocked the railway, isolated the dwellers in the country, and but for his knowledge of the position of a starveling tree on the edge of a quarry, would probably have cost the Earthstopper his life. Nevertheless, wildfowl were quite as abundant; and as the Looe Pool, Marazion Marsh, and other resorts became frozen over, they had to shift their quarters, and ultimately to settle on the sea.
St Michael’s Mount.
More than one skein of duck had passed high overhead since daybreak, flying westward, but none so big as the great flock of widgeon which we saw, some four gunshots above us, as we were turning into the marshy moor near Tremayne plantation, where our sport was to begin. This piece of undrained ground was, may be is, shaped like a triangle. Tussocks of rushes just showed above the snow, and a runnel, winding in and out among them, ran chattering between a double frill of ice. We had not advanced many steps before a snipe rose, to fall to the first barrel, and soon after a wisp got up out of range, and flew away in the direction of the Big Downs. Following the running water, we approached the corner, where rushes gave place to a brambly thicket, between which and the stone walls behind grew a few gnarled holly-bushes. The spaniels were hardly in this cover before they flushed a woodcock. Bang! bang! and the bird fell on our side of the wall. The smoke had not cleared when another rose from the other side, where ............