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Together we balanced it on the gunwale, and with the help of the stern-board tilted it over. It dropped, into fifteen fathoms of water.

There was another funeral next day in Lansulyan churchyard–where so many have come to be buried who never in life heard the name of Lansulyan: the harvest of Menawhidden, commemorated on weather-beaten stones and, within the church, on many tablets which I used to con on Sundays during the Vicar’s discourses. The life-boat men had mustered in force, and altogether there was a large attendance at the graveside. At one point a fit of coughing interrupted the Vicar in his recital of the service. I was the one auditor, however, who understood the meaning of it.

That evening we took our dessert again under the great elm. Somehow I felt certain he would choose this hour for his explanation: and in due course it came.

“I’m a truth-speaking man by habit,” he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. “But I’m afraid there’s no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my conscience is easy.”

He sipped his wine, and went on meditatively–

“Morals have their court of equity as well as the law of the land: and with us”–the Vicar was an old-fashioned Churchman–“that court is the private conscience. In this affair you insisted on putting your conscience into my hands. Well, I took the responsibility, and charge myself with any wrong you have committed, letting your confidence stand to your credit, as well as the service you have done for me–and another. Do you know the grey marble tablet on the south wall of the church–the Nerbuddha monument?”

I nodded.

“‘Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Stanhope, C.B., and 105 Officers and Men of Her Majesty’s 2-th Regiment of Foot, lost in the wreck of the Nerbuddha, East Indiaman, on Menawhidden, January 15th, 1857. . . .‘ Then follows a list of the officers. Underneath, if you remember, is a separate slab to the officers and crew of the Nerbuddha, who behaved admirably, all the senior officers keeping order to the last and going down with the ship.”

I nodded again, for I knew the inscriptions pretty well by heart.

“The wreck happened in the first winter of my incumbency here. Then, as now, I had one pupil living with me, an excellent fellow. Dick Hobart was his name, his age seventeen or thereabouts, and my business to put some polish on a neglected education before he entered the Army. His elder brother had been a college friend of mine, and indeed our families had been acquainted for years.

“Dick slept in the room you now occupy. He had a habit, which I never cured, of sitting up late over a pipe and a yellow-backed novel: and so he happened to be dressed that night when he saw the first signal of distress go up from Menawhidden. He came to my room at once and called me up: and while I tumbled out and began to dress, he ran down to Porth to give the alarm.

“The first signal, however, had been seen by the folks down there, and he found the whole place in a hubbub. Our first life-boat had arrived less than three months before; but the crew got her off briskly, and were pulling away lustily for the reef when it occurred to a few of those left behind that the sea running was not too formidable for a couple of seine-boats lying high on the beach: and within five minutes these were hauled down and manned with scratch crews–Dick Hobart among them.

“Three days of east wind had knocked up a heavy swell: but the wind was blowing a moderate gale only–nothing to account for a big ship (as she was already reported to be) finding herself on Menawhidden. Three signals only had been shown, and these in quick succession. We learned afterwards that she went down within twelve minutes of striking. She had dashed straight on the Carracks, with the wind well behind her beam, topmasts housed for the night, but, barring that, canvassed like a well-found ship sure of her sea-room. And the Carracks had torn the bottom out of her.