a bird which no true Cornishman will shoot.
The monstrous crags and huge fragments of old wall were cleft in a fashion strongly suggestive of
"casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in fairylands forlorn,"
and we shuddered to imagine with what stupendous force the terrible tides of winter must beat against that naked coast.
We realised what the fury of the sea-winds here must be as we strolled through the churchyard, whose slate slabs are buttressed with masonry and, even so, tip and lean over those graves too old for grief. All is ancient about Tintagel church, and most of all the Norman font whose sculptured faces are worn dim and sleepy with innumerable years, each year bringing its quota of babies for the blessing of the holy water.
We had to leave it,--the mysterious Titanic ruin with its bracken blowing in the wind, the sheep, chained in couples, that prick their silly noses on nettles and furze, the old church, where bells tolled without ringers on the day that Arthur fell, the old wayside cross, the old stone dovecote in the vicarage garden, but not the cliffs and the sea. For we drove up the coast to Boscastle, pausing on the way--and that was our mistake--to see the little church of Forrabury. This is the church that longed for a peal of bells to rival those of Tintagel, but when the vessel that brought the bells was waiting for the tide to take her into the harbour, and the pilot was thanking God for a fair voyage, the captain laughed and swore that it was only their own good seamanship they had to praise, whereupon a mighty billow, far out at sea, swept down upon the ship and overwhelmed her, only the devout pilot escaping with his life. And ever since--so ballad and guide-book assured us--the tower of Forrabury church has stood voiceless, though a muffled knell, when a storm is coming up, is heard beneath the waves. What then was our righteous wrath on finding this venerable edifice all newly done up in pink frescoes,--yes, and with an ornate bell-rope of scarlet twist hanging beneath the tower!
The harbour of Boscastle is a rock-walled inlet somewhat resembling that of Pasajes in the north of Spain. Curving promontories shut in a tidal stream that runs green in the sun and purple in the shadow. Swift lines of creaming foam glint across where the river yields itself up to the strong currents of the sea,--a sea which, as we saw it that brilliant September afternoon, twinkled with myriad points of intolerable light.