A smart hotel--I do not know the name of it--stands on the headland and seems to insolently hint that, even here, mankind has tamed the wilds. He certainly has made the Cove, down there, look toy-like, and the road up to Mullion village now resembles that through some ancestral park. But nature has provided the huge and savage setting that makes the little enfolding walls of the harbour, the little pool within, and the two or three little houses, look smaller than they really are. A general deceptiveness as to scale pervades the Cove: the rock of Mullion Island is, for instance, a mile in circuit, and does not appear to be one quarter that size. But the calm of a typical August day is the deepest deception of all. It requires one of the autumn equinoctial gales to reveal the innate unconquerable savagery of the place, when a strong man can scarce stand before the wind, and giant waves leap over the arms of the harbour and rush, seething and hungry for prey, up the shore.
There are many records of wrecks at Mullion Cove and the cliffs between it and the Lizard. From them I take that of a wreck on the rocks of Mên-y-Grib = "Rock like a Comb," in 1867.
Undoubtedly the Cornish coasts have their mysteries, but none of them is quite so mysterious as the wreck of the Dutch barque, _Jonkheer Meester Van de Wall van Puttershoek_, which happened on the night of March 25th, 1867. This vessel, of 650 tons, Captain Klaas van Lammerts, homeward-bound from the East Indies with a cargo of sugar, coffee, spices, and tin, was worth about £45,000, and had twenty-five persons on board. She had been observed, the afternoon before, beating up Channel in a gale, and it was then noted that she was being very clumsily handled and would perhaps not succeed in rounding the Lizard. The wreck took place at night, and all on board were drowned, except one man, a Greek sailor, who was discovered the next morning, climbing along the rocks between Polurrian and Poldhu.
"My name," he said, "is Georgio Buffani. I was seaman on board the wrecked ship, which belonged to Dordrecht. I joined at Batavia, but I do not know either the name of the ship or that of the captain."
He repeated this extraordinary statement at the inquest on the drowned, and being shown a list of Dutch East Indiamen, picked out the _Kosmopoliet_, as a likely one. The inquest therefore was concluded on the assumption that this was the lost vessel. The Greek then left and was not again heard of. Soon afterwards, however, the Dutch consul at Falmouth came with the captains of two Dutch Indiamen then lying in port. One of them declared that the _Kosmopoliet_ would not be due for nearly another fortnight, and was convinced that the lost ship was the _Jonkheer_. The vicar of Mullion then appeared with a fragment of flannel he had found, marked "6 K. L." "Yes," said the captain, "it must be the _Jonkheer_, for those are the initials of her captain, Klaas Lammerts."