PAGE 15
North Devon
by
‘Must all charms flee,
At the mere touch of cold Philosophy,’
who will not even condescend to be awe-struck at the new wonders which she herself reveals daily? Perhaps, too, according to the Duke of Wellington’s great dictum, that each man must be the best judge in his own profession, sailors may know best whether mermaids exist or not. Besides, was it not here on Croyde Sands abreast of us, this very last summer, that a maiden–by which beautiful old word West- country people still call young girls–was followed up the shore by a mermaid who issued from the breakers, green-haired, golden-combed, and all; and, fleeing home, took to her bed and died, poor thing, of sheer terror in the course of a few days, persisting in her account of the monster? True, the mermaid may have been an overgrown Lundy Island seal, carried out of his usual haunts by spring-tides and a school of fish. Be it so. Lundy and its seals are wonderful enough in all reason to thinking men, as it looms up there out of the Atlantic, with its two great square headlands, not twenty miles from us, in the white summer haze. We will go there some day, and pick up a wild tale or two about it.
But, lo! a black line creeps up the western horizon. Tom, gesticulating, swears that he sees ‘a billow break.’ True: there they come; the great white horses, that ‘champ and chafe, and toss in the spray.’ That long-becalmed trawler to seaward fills, and heels over, and begins to tug and leap impatiently at the weight of her heavy trawl. Five minutes more, and the breeze will be down upon us. The young men whistle openly to woo it; the old father thinks such a superstition somewhat beneath both his years and his religion, but cannot help pursing up his lips into a sly ‘whe-eugh’ when he has got well forward out of sight.
* * * *
Five long minutes; there is a breath of air; a soft distant murmur; the white horses curve their necks, and dive and vanish; and rise again like snowy porpoises, nearer, and nearer, and nearer. Father and sons are struggling with that raving, riotous, drunken squaresail forward; while we haul away upon the main-sheet.
When will it come? It is dying back–sliding past us. ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ No, louder and nearer swells ‘the voice of many waters,’ ‘the countless laugh of ocean,’ like the mirth of ten thousand girls, before us, behind us, round us; and the oily swell darkens into crisp velvet-green, till the air strikes us, and heels us over; and leaping, plunging, thrashing our bows into the seas, we spring away close-hauled upon the ever-freshening breeze, while Claude is holding on by ropes and bulwarks, and some, whose sea-legs have not yet forgot their craft, are swinging like a pendulum as they pace the deck, enjoying, as the Norse vikings would have called it, ‘the gallop of the flying sea-horse, and the shiver of her tawny wings.’
Exquisite motion! more maddening than the smooth floating stride of the race-horse, or the crash of the thorn-hedges before the stalwart hunter, or the swaying of the fir-boughs in the gale, when we used to climb as schoolboys after the lofty hawk’s nest; but not so maddening as the new motion of our age–the rush of the express-train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting; and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish; and rocks, and grass, and bushes, fleet by in dim blended lines; and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far below, meadows, and streams, and homesteads, with all their lazy old- world life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awe- struck, silent, choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on by that great pulse of England’s life- blood, rushing down her iron veins; and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primaeval mission, to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all things,–even, hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers ever learning some fresh lesson, except that hardest one of all, that it is the Spirit of God which giveth you understanding.