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.

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 a few withes skirted the runnel. It afforded the easiest of shots; but, alas! both barrels were empty, and the reloading of a muzzle-loader takes time. We crouched, hoping the bird might settle in an adjoining marsh, but it kept on in the direction of Trannack Hill till it became a mere speck in the leaden sky, and at last was lost to view.

Separated from the three-cornered moor by two or three rough fields is a stennack—an excavation made by the “old men” in mining for tin—in length a good stone’s throw, and some thirty yards across. The bed of it lies from twelve to twenty feet below the level of the field that circles it, so that the biting wind swept over the white coverlet that concealed the close thicket of furze, blackthorn, and bramble that grew there. Standing on the edge of the bank, we could follow the movements of the dogs by the snow which fell here and there from the bushes. Presently a woodcock rose silently a few yards in front of them on the far side, and fell to the shot, dropping behind a thorn-bush on the opposite bank. Shortly after, another got up but was missed, and then for a time there was a lull in the sport. Not that the excitement flagged, for the spaniels were giving tongue, and as they drew near the zigzagging bank on which we stood a rabbit bolted on our right; then, strange to say, a fox made off, stealing away with that lissom movement that only a wild creature is endowed with, his ruddy coat showing finely against the white background. Near the farther end of the stennack three teal were flushed. They were up and away in no time, affording a pretty right and left. Two dropped in the thicket, and it was some time before we succeeded in finding them. It may seem hard to understand that the stennack was a haunt for wildfowl, but so it was. There was no pool of water there, no spring, as far as I could see; and a small cave at the foot of the high bank was dry, for, boylike, I peeped in over the drift that half-filled its mouth.

Leaving the field, we made for Trevean farmhouse. The snow in the unfrequented lane that we followed was unmarked by any footprint except the track of a hare. Soon we could smell the reek of burning furze, and as we came in sight of the high stone chimney, we heard the mooing of the cattle that had been driven in from the wild moors around. Two colts, with rugged coats and steaming nostrils, whose heads projected over the half-door of the stable, welcomed us with a neigh, as we crossed the rickyard and entered the house. A fire blazed on the hearth; but of the interior I can recall clearly but one object, an old woman wearing a small red shawl, seated in a high-backed chair at the end of the table, with a big book open before her. It was the indescribable calm on her face that I shall never forget. That is what I see first as the scene passes before my eyes, then the muslin cap she wore, and last, though its hue was so bright, her red turnover. A sheep-dog was stretched at full length on the stone floor, his nose, that lay between his tan-coloured paws, nearly touching the little wooden footstool on which the aged woman’s feet rested; but this part of the picture is faded. My friend chatted with her so long about some great frost of years before that I thought he must have forgotten all about the woodcock. At length we left the farm kitchen and set out for the wild waste-land, the farmer going with us. The good sport we subsequently met with in Billy Hal’s moor tempts me to tell the reader at once what happened there, but I will first touch briefly on the most striking incidents in the wide round we took over the country on the hither side of it.

Scarcely a croft but held its woodcock: hardly a runnel from which a snipe did not rise. In the bottom under Penhale fox-brake, a woodcock rose out of some brambles growing inside the ruined walls of a roofless cottage, and a little further down, where a leat runs into the New Bridge stream—that looked amid the snow like a black ribbon lying on a bed of goose-down—a mallard was shot, and a startled heron was allowed to flap itself away unmolested. Shortly after this, the sun for a brief space broke through the clouds and turned the dull white scene into a glittering fairyland. Near Boswortha Cairn—oh, how piercing was the icy wind there—both barrels were discharged at a passing flock of golden plover, and on the far side of the rocks the farmer, humouring my curiosity, led me to see a set of badgers’ earths. Three of the holes were blocked, and not a track was to be seen in front of the one that remained open. As we hurried to rejoin our little party, the farmer dropped up to his ears in a pit, his black beard lying flat on the snow. His hearty laugh rang out; but my friend, who was some thirty yards below us, did not turn his head—in fact, did not, as he afterwards said, hear any sound. I mention this to show how strong the wind was, though another fact probably contributed to the result—my friend and his old henchman were approaching Billy Hal’s moor.

Waste land it is, as its name indicates, but in luxuriance of growth it is an oasis amidst the barren hills that screen it from unkind winds. In the spring, its bushes are the first of that wild and unprofitable countryside to spread a wealth of golden blossom; in the autumn, the blackberry-picker crowns her basket with big purple berries from the bushes beside the rushy brook there. Later, when the sloes have shrivelled on the blackthorns and the coralline hips of the dog-rose adorn the leafless briers, the farm-boy, seeking strayed cattle, flushes the first woodcock of the season and forthwith sets a springe or two on the boggy margin of the runnel under the thicket of black withes. From then until February this moor holds more than its share of the longbills, and when woodcock are plentiful in other coverts, in Billy Hal’s moor, to use the country folks’ term, they are “daggin.” In the middle rises a knoll, whence the eye may descry the rude boundaries that enclose its, perhaps, four customary acres.

My friend was pushing aside the snow-laden furze towards this vantage-ground, and I followed in his wake. When he had gained it, he raised the hammers of the gun, and then lifted his hand as a signal to the farmer to let loose the dogs. We knew there were at least three woodcock in the moor, for we had seen them drop there. Before you could count ten, a woodcock rose with a great flapping noise. Bang! went the gun as the bird twisted above the withes. Bang!—down it dropped on the snow a good forty yards away, between the moor and a clump of gloomy pines for which it seemed to be making. As I ran round to fetch it I heard “mark cock” twice in succession, but no report followed, and shortly after, “mark cock” from the farmer, with the discharge of both barrels. The going was very rough, but at length I reached the brown bird lying in the snow beside the brook. What a beauty it was! To this day I cannot handle a woodcock without admiring its rich plumage, nor for that matter, though I have taken hundreds, take a trout off a hook without wondering at its lovely colouring.

It need scarcely be said that the rest of the moor was carefully beaten, but how many woodcock were flushed I cannot remember, nor do I regret it, for I fear the number might savour of exaggeration. Only five were added to the bag. One shot was a very long one, and the bird fell in the upper corner of the moor, near the ruins of Billy Hal’s cottage.

How long it was since Hal squatted on the land and hatched a title, I have not been able to trace, nor the manner of his death, nor even where he lies buried. The country-people venerate his memory, partly because of his great skill in hiding smuggled goods and outwitting the king’s officers, partly because of his markmanship with his blunderbuss. Some crofters aver they have heard from their fathers that there was a mystery about his end, and that Hal was buried at dead of night in his own land. However that may be, there he has at times been seen on clear nights in winter, moving noiselessly about amongst the furze with a short heavy gun, or sitting on the stones of his ruined hearth. It is a great pity that the mantle of the famous ghost-layer, Parson Polkinghorne, has not descended to any of his successors. We have it on the best authority that his exorcising formula, which began with the words “Nommy, Dommy” (in nomine Domini), never failed to lay the poor troubled spirits of those less sceptical days.

The moor having been shot over, we made our way to the house. It was now nearly three o’clock, and I felt tired, though not too tired to eat. The farmer’s daughter had laid our luncheon in the seldom-used parlour. There were sandwiches, mince-pies, a basin of clotted cream, some whortleberry jam, and a plate of sturmer pippins. These last were grown in my friend’s garden on espaliers, and he could generally produce one or two even when the next year’s fruit reddened the quarrenden-tree in the corner by the bee-skip. We stayed but a short time, as I thought, over our lunch, for we needed daylight to find our way down the bottoms, and snow had begun to fall again. From between the half-drawn curtains, where an ostrich egg hung, I had seen the big flakes. So bidding adieu to the dear old lady, we made our way down the hill, and at length reached the clump of firs in the bottoms, where my friend stayed to light his pipe. I should not have mentioned so trifling an incident, had it not been that he used the tinder-box for the purpose. This was his almost invariable custom, except in summer: then he preferred a burning-glass, especially when deep-sea fishing. With a twinkle in his grey eyes the farmer remarked, “Like Mr George, edna?” and shortly after, at a spot where, as the curve of the drift showed, was a gap, he left us and was soon lost to sight in the blinding snow. We had rather less than a mile to go before striking a road, but our progress was poor, owing partly to the drifts, partly to the rough ground that lay under the even surface of the snow. A candle was burning in a window of Hendra farmhouse as we passed the lower pond, and when we came in sight of Boswednan lane we saw the lights—the welcome lights—of a carriage that was awaiting us at the foot of the hill. Of the drive home I know nothing, as I slept soundly the whole way.

Thus ended a day’s sport which lives in my memory when days since enjoyed on grouse-moors and by woodland coverts have been well-nigh forgotten, big bags notwithstanding.

Since penning these lines, I have turned to my friend’s diary. These are his brief entries for the two days:—

“25th December.—Heavy fall of snow. Sharp frost. Bunches of duck and geese in the bay. Seine shot at Mullion. Bonfire on Poldhu Cliff. Eleven loads of fish up by five o’clock next morning, when I left Newlyn cellar.”

“26th December.—At Trewern, Trevean, Penhale, Boswortha Cairn, Billy Hal’s moor, with Jack. 9 woodcock; 3 brace snipe, 2½ golden plover, 1 of teal; 1 big snipe, 1 mallard, 1 bittern. Wind keen as a razor on Boswortha Cairn, very lew in Billy Hal’s moor, which was full of ‘cock.’ ”

The old “Joe Manton,” which I have taken out of its case, is standing against my study-table, and a beautiful weapon it is, albeit the barrels are a trifle thin. Many days’ use have worn them so; but as far as I have been able to look back through the interesting diary there is only one entry with a bigger bag, and that was in the very winter when the scream of the iron horse silenced the coach-horn, and gave such a shock to Penwith’s customs. If you ask of what year I have been writing, I will tell you in our West-country way—by naming an unusual event—that it was the year when a pilchard seine was shot on Christmas Day, and tucked in a snowstorm under the cliffs, on which a beacon, to spread the glad tidings, was lighted on a spot whence wireless messages are now transmitted across the seas.

Two fishermen strained at the creaking oars, and held the boat in the tide-race close under the Longships lighthouse, whilst I grasped the taut line, at the end of which a sand-eel was spinning. We could see the bass in their play break the surface some twenty yards astern, and every instant I expected that the bait would be seized. What sport those big fish would have given in the strong current! But no, the bass refused to bite at the silvery lure spinning under their very nose. We changed the bait—tried pilchard, squid, ray’s liver, spider-crab; we varied the length of the line, the weight of the lead; we trailed the bait along the edge of the school; in short, we did all we knew. It was of no use. “They’re not on the feed, sir,” said old Matthey, after two hours of this exasperating work. There was no gainsaying this palpable truth, but in my own mind I set the fact down to piscine cussedness. I had come to Sennen for my holidays in order to try and kill a big bass, and it seemed as if the bad luck that had dogged me wherever I had gone in quest of this fish, pursued me still. In West-country phrase, I appeared to be ill-wished. It was on the top of the spring, and we had fished with apparently every condition in our favour except the clearness of the water. “What’s wanted,” said Matthey’s mate as we approached the wooden slip, “is a bit of a tumble, to stir the bottom and thicken the water.”

As scarcely a breath of wind was blowing, and the sky looked like brass, the prospect of rough weather and clouded water seemed very remote. Yet it turned out not to be so. Well may the fishermen of Sennen Cove, who no longer have the guardian spirit their forefathers had, to warn them, watch the sky for premonitory token of storm.

About sundown, on Tuesday the 14th August, a fortnight or so after the tantalising experience related above, a weather-dog was seen near the horizon, which made the older fishermen shake their heads and caused them to be abroad before dawn. Seeing that the glass had fallen to storm-level and that the seabirds with wild cries were making for the southern cliffs, the thirteen boats were brought in from their moorings and everything made snug just in time before the sea became too rough for any craft in the cove to venture out, except the life-boat. At daybreak on the Thursday the sands were littered with seaweed; in places the foam lay in drifts like snow, and for miles inland the farmers must have heard, in the lulls of the storm, the waves thundering against the cliffs. It was not until the morning of Saturday that fishing was possible, even from the shore, and then only at some risk, because of that treacherous run in the water which from time to time costs the life of a rock-fisher. I had little hope of success, for the sea was now as thick as barm, yet I caught a grey mullet of five pounds, and lost another owing to the hook tearing its hold. After this, being wet through with the spray, I made tracks for my cottage on the brow of the cliff.

By Monday the sea had moderated enough to allow us to get Matthey’s boat afloat, and we ventured out to our old fishing-ground near the Longships and dropped the killick overboard. The water was in perfect order, and one might compare it to a river clearing after a spate. What sport! I kept catching pollack and bream until I was tired of pulling them in; but, alas! the bass had shifted their quarters, and although we visited their usual haunts we failed to meet with them. The glass continuing to rise, we ventured further along the coast, and spent the rest of the week fishing the three miles of water between the Land’s End and Porthgwarra. Excellent whiffing-ground this is well known to be, and so it proved; but unfortunately the week’s sport was marred by a disaster for which I was entirely to blame. It was on the morning of Thursday, just after the steamer the Lady of the Isles had passed on her way to Scilly. Up till then we had had good sport with pollack, five of these beautiful bronze-coloured fish lying in the basket on the bottom-boards. Shortly after, when near the Rundle Stone, I lost a heavy fish, and with it the spinning-flight, through its boring down and getting entangled in the weeds, as big pollack are wont to do. Of course, I should have held on at any cost and not given an inch of line; and this I determined to do with the next fish that should lay hold of the new eel-tail that was soon trailing in the wake of the boat. I was exchanging a few words with old Matthey, who was holding the sheet—we were sailing to and fro the great tidal stream—when I got into a very heavy fish, to which I held on like grim death. In less time than it takes to tell, the line snapped and a bass which had leapt clear of the water twenty yards astern fell back like a bar of silver into the trough of a wave and disappeared. What word or words escaped me on witnessing the fish—it was uncommonly like a salmon—with the broken trace hanging from its open jaws, I do not remember. At such mortifying moments the tongue is very apt to prove an unruly member, yet old Matthey never opened his mouth. He was like one struck dumb, but his face was as long as a fiddle, and the gaff dropped from his fingers as though it burned them.

With the loss of that fish I really began to despair, and it would have been almost pardonable if I had taken a trip to Camborne to consult the wise man there about removing the spell which, all joking apart, I began to fear hung over me. The following week my chances of success were reduced to a minimum, for the wind veered round, the water close in shore became as smooth as it ever is at the Land’s End, and in a few days was as clear as crystal. The resourceful Matthey recommended me, under these almost hopeless conditions, to fish from the small rocky headland that separates the Sennen from the Gwenvor sands.

“The hotter et es the closer in they comes, and et’s the biggest baas as hugs the shore.”

I suggested, quoting the Cornish proverb.

He smiled, and replied, “Well, et’s meant for pelchurs, but et’s true enuf for salmin baas.”

Somewhat cheered by the old fellow’s words, I set out after an early lunch for Roarer Point, as it is called, taking my fishing-tackle with me. The going was heavy, for the sand, beloved of the launce, is loose; moreover the sun beat down mercilessly; but there was some compensation in the scene.

I do not believe the man lives who could have been blind to the beauty of that sea. In an old Eastern poem a Persian is represented as beholding from the desert’s edge a boundless plain of turquoise. The Atlantic on which I looked might have been such a plain, except for the way it heaved; but it was on the breaking wave that the eye dwelt, and found relief from the glare of the beach. How deliciously cool the ever-rising, ever-breaking walls of translucent water looked in contrast with the glowing sands over which the air shimmered and quivered. Overhead a gull floated lazily, its snowy plumage showing finely against the blue vault; and just after I crossed the little stream that trickles down from Vellandreath, a butterfly—I believe it was a red admiral—greatly daring, flitted seaward, and passed out of my sight.

At last I reached the little headland, scrambled over the burning rocks, and gained its extreme point. The water below me was some ten or twelve feet deep, and being outside the line of the breakers, its surface, except when a breath of wind caught it, was without a ripple, and the eye could search every foot of the bottom near the rocks, and for some distance beyond. When I had baited the hook, I threw the line into the water towards the Gwenvor sands, where I could see the approach of any bass that might be coasting towards Sennen Cove, and it might be, watch it swallow the lure, for —

Besides the hand-line I had a rod with me, and on this I had rigged a spinning-flight and launce, intending, when the tide rose about a foot higher, to make a few casts from the point.

A seaweed, favourite food of the shy mullet, grew on two big boulders that lay half-buried in the white sand in the water below me. Though semi-transparent it was clearly visible when the rippled surface smoothed. Presently a small crab, as if fearful of being seen, scuttled across the sandy strait between the rocks where rested my tempting bait of ray’s liver.

My attention was chiefly occupied watching the bait and the water between it and the shore on which white-crested waves were breaking; but now and then I looked into a pool at my side. Bright-coloured anemones starred its sides, delicatest seaweeds spread their fronds in the limpid water, and a small fish called a pulcronack rested motionless between two rosy lichen-like patches, apparently intent on something, or as if it were listening for the steps of the incoming tide.

A buzzing noise drew my eyes for a moment to a green-backed fly that had discovered and settled on the silvery eel, and when I looked at the sea again two dark objects were coming towards me slowly, as they followed the line of the broken water in which they were now and again lost to sight. Owing to the glare I could not at first make the fish out distinctly, though they were swimming over the whitest of sands; but when they came within a rod’s length of the bait, I saw what monsters they were, and instinctively uncoiled some slack line from the wooden frame on which it was wound. The bass, for such they were, were swimming about midway between the surface and the bait, and when a few yards from the luscious morsel, their heads went down, and the next instant only inches separated them from the liver. What exactly happened at this critical moment is uncertain, owing to a slight ripple that disturbed the surface. I could see their blurred dark forms near the rocks, and a slight twitching shook the line, which I held loosely between my nervous fingers for fear of alarming them. Tout vient, etc., I thought, expecting to have the line wrenched through my hands, both of which were ready to grip it as the fish should rush seawards. However, it was not destined that I should land a bass that afternoon, for presently the stately fish moved off in the direction of the point, the bigger one in front; and a more dignified procession of two a chagrined spectator never beheld. I suppose their suspicion had been aroused, though there was nothing to suggest it, so deliberate were their movements. This gave me time to grasp my rod and swing the sand-eel for a cast before the leading fish showed beyond a conical rock that momentarily hid him. Crouching, lest he should catch sight of me, I managed to drop the bait in front of and a little beyond him, and, allowing it to sink, drew it rapidly through the water so that it passed within a foot of his nose. It would be difficult to imagine anything more irresistible for a fish than that silvery bait, the spin of which, though I ought not to say so, might have satisfied a Thames trout! Did the bass make a rush at it? No, it simply swerved a little, and swam away in the most leisurely fashion, the smaller fish following majestically in its wake. They kept their distance as truly as two torpedo boats, and moved as if directed by a single mind.

Let those who think that all sea-fish are easily caught, try their skill and their patience at the Land’s End. I venture to say that, the grey mullet and the Thames trout excepted, no fish is more difficult to capture in clear water than the bass, and that the salmon is a fool to it. To recapitulate my attempts: I had failed in the strong tidal current near the Longships and the Cowloe rocks; I had hooked and lost a monster in the Vrose off Tol-Pedn-Penwith; and my experience when fishing from Roarer Point would have tried the patience of that famous rock fisherman, St Levan himself.

I was not, however, at the end of my resources, for I could improve on the fineness of my tackle. Hitherto I had used single salmon-gut. I now resolved, though not without serious misgiving, to substitute a sea-trout cast, and, as the next best time to the grey of early dawn—an hour which has no great charm for me—to fish under cover of night.

The spot I chose was near where the small stream from Vellandreath runs over the beach, in which, except after heavy rains, it loses itself just before reaching high-water mark. I was there an hour before sundown. My hook baited with cuttle-fish lay a yard or two beyond the broken water. As the tide rose, I moved up the beach and pulled the bait a little nearer in. There was no sign of any fish, but I was hopeful of success when the golden track across the ocean should disappear and the light become sombre. At length the sun dipped below the horizon, the fires it had awakened in the windows of the cottages died away, and the curve of sand lost its warm colouring. With the paling in the west, first the evening star and then the others appeared, the fishing-village twinkled with glow-worm lights, and the Longships and the Seven Stones’ lightship exchanged their nightly greetings across the submerged land of Lyonnesse. When the bells of Sennen ceased ringing, there was scarcely any sound save the murmur of the waves, which broke in lines of phosphorescence on the long strand. Now and then I pulled in my line to see that the bait was free from seaweed; at times I followed a light out at sea, where some steamer moved in the darkness. Thus the hours passed; and at eleven o’clock, despairing of success, I was on the point of going to my lodging. It wanted yet half an hour to high water, however, and I resolved to stay on.

At irksome times like this one’s thoughts are apt to stray, and a straw may give them direction. What may have suggested the train of thought, unless it was the tinkle of the rivulet beside me, I cannot say, but my mind reverted to the part the sands of Whitsand Bay have played in history. Here, three centuries ago, the Spaniard landed and burnt the mill at Vellandreath; here landed Perkin Warbeck, on his ill-starred expedition; here Stephen; here John, on his return from Ireland; here Athelstan; here, if tradition be true, those heathen hordes whom King Arthur and his knights overthrew on Vellandrucher moor; here were drawn up the galleys. . . .

My historical reverie was interrupted by a slight tug at the line held loosely in my hand, a tug followed by the drawing of the slack through my fingers. A bass—it is his way—was running out to sea with the bait in his mouth. At last! I had jumped to my feet on feeling the fish, and when the loose line was used up, I suddenly raised the point of the rod—a sixteen-foot salmon-rod—and drove the hook home. What a rush the fish made! I put on every ounce of strain I dared, considering the fineness of the cast, but it seemed to have little or no effect on the fish, which kept going seawards. I could tell its whereabouts during the first part of the rush by the jet of phosphorescent water that spurted from the line, but now I could see nothing except the dark expanse with its silvery fringe. If the tackle held, I knew the bass could count on nothing in its favour; for the moorings of the boat and of the storepots were far outside the limit of my hundred yards of line, and there was no wreckage now, the fishermen having cleared it away for the sake of the mullet and pilchard seines. To husband the line left on the reel, I advanced as far as I dared into the water, my feet sinking deep in the loose sand. I was rather at a loss to know how to act for the best; whether to continue the steady strain to the last, or give the fish the butt before the line was run out. To stand there and be smashed would be ignominious; so, come what might, I determined to take the offensive. Grasping the greenheart and the line in both hands, I brought the point of the rod back over my shoulder slowly, to avoid a jerk, putting on all the strain I could. Either the fish must yield or the tackle break. There was a violent struggle, in which the top joint played an important part, and then suddenly the tension relaxed, and I feared—in fact, had little doubt—that the gut had snapped, or possibly the hook torn away. Winding up as quickly as possible, I had recovered some twenty yards when, to my joy, the reel screamed again. A second time I applied the butt, and then kept working the fish in. Now he would swim to my left, now to the right, but I could not see the wave which I feel sure he was raising. With much difficulty, for he fought all the way, I brought him to within a few yards of the breakers. How he struggled to maintain his ground there! evidently regarding the broken water as a zone of the greatest danger. After a time I thought I might venture to haul him in. But no, he would not consent to that. Of his own free will he had for many summers sought the shallows, even foraged amongst the breakers; but there was a good reason why he should shun them now. Once I had him just beyond the faintly gleaming arch of a wave, though I could not distinguish the fish, but only the place where he was struggling inside rings of incandescent silver. At last his strength was spent, and I succeeded in dragging him into the grip of a wave which tumbled him half-way up the shelving beach. With a great effort I extricated my legs from the quicksand, and throwing my rod aside, rushed at the fish as the backwash carried him down. I got a hold of him, but lost it, the prickly dorsal fin wounding my hand badly; then the next wave, which nearly swept me off my feet—in my desperation I had followed the fish—washed him in, and though half-blinded by the spray, I succeeded in rolling him on to the dry sand.

I have killed many bass since, but none so heavy—he weighed fifteen pounds four ounces—none which made such a gallant fight. It is true that they were landed under more cheerful conditions, for it must be owned that that night’s fishing on the edge of the Atlantic was weird and lonely.

It was within a stone’s throw of the sea at Lamorna, that I sat and listened to Ned’s “Tale of the Birds.”

We had been fishing the trout-stream that empties itself into the cove, and were resting on the boulders near the bridge before turning homewards. Ned is a good all-round sportsman, but his knowledge of birds is remarkable, and the reason is not far to seek. His father was a taxidermist who was regarded as an authority on British birds by Rodd and by Gould. For some twenty years Ned assisted him in his work; but his delight was, and is, to wander over the country in search of sport and specimens. To this is, perhaps, chiefly due the knowledge he possesses of the avifauna of Cornwall.

To understand the birds of Cornwall, said he, you must know that, besides those always with us, and the migrants that reach us regularly in the spring and autumn, many kinds of wild-fowl visit us in hard winters and remain whilst the frost lasts. This corner of England, owing chiefly to the warm sea about it, is milder than any other except the Scilly Isles, and when birds are frozen out elsewhere, they can pick up a living here. A good feeding-ground is the Land’s End district—what with its beaches, its boggy ground and pools on the moors, and above all the overgrown, marshy valleys, which mostly run north and south, and are sheltered from the bitter east winds. Birds of gay plumage have been shot in these bottoms which you would expect to meet with only in a tropical forest—such as the hoopoe, the waxwing, the roller, the bee-eater, and the golden oriole. Of the four hundred birds comprised in the avifauna of the British Isles two hundred and ninety have been observed in Cornwall, so you see that our bird-life is as rich as the fish-life in the sea about the promontory, or the flora that makes the face of the country so beautiful.

Now it’s out of the question my attempting to talk about nearly three hundred different kinds of birds, so I’ll pick out a few things that may interest you. Look! that’s a starling on the cottage chimney, and I’ll begin with him. A few years ago you might search West Cornwall over without seeing one—I mean in the month of August, though they came in tens of thousands in the winter. I’ve seen the osier beds along the Eastern Green and the reeds at Marazion Marsh black with them; and when I was a boy I used to fire at passing flocks with a bow and arrow, as with a great whirr of wings they skimmed over the Well field on their way to roost. I believe that starlings have regular lines of flight, as they seldom failed to pass over that field about sundown. To come to the point, no sooner was winter over than they all went up-along; but now some remain all the year round, and breed. The cause is to be found, I believe, in the enormous increase of this bird.

Then the daws—I mean the jackdaws—are ever so much more numerous than they used to be. In my young days they were scarce, and I used to be let down over the cliffs with a rope round me, to get their eggs. Now you can see them everywhere, about the old mine-ruins, about the farmhouses, and even about the villages.

The green woodpecker is also more plentiful than it used to be. Considering how bare of trees the country is, this is perhaps more surprising than the increase of the starling or the daw. It is true that some new plantations, such as those at Tregavara and Bijowans, are growing up, and who can say but that in time we shall have jays and nightingales, and perhaps squirrels?

The country-people say that the “tinner,” that is the “dishwasher” or water-wagtail, is scarcer than it was before the blizzard, which must have caused the death of tens of thousands of birds. They call it the tinner, because it builds its nest in the mouth of the old mine-shafts.

Now I’ll tell you about the last Cornish choughs I ever saw alive. It was away on the Rinsey Cliffs, a lone place between Pra Sands and Porthleven; and of course I wanted to get them. I had a gun with me—as indeed I always had, for there was no close season in those days. The birds were on a splat of fine turf near the edge of the cliff, and within gunshot of an old engine-house that lay beyond them. There was no chance of my getting near enough to these birds—shy as hawks through persecution—not even by crawling; for the surface was nearly as smooth as a bowling-green, with only a patch of vernal squill here and there. Lying in a dip of the ground, and all hidden up to my eyes, I could see every movement of the two birds—a cock and a hen they were—and more, I could hear every note they uttered. “Daw, daw,” they kept calling, a kind of bleat, a pitiful little cry I should call it; and yet I wanted to kill them both. Instead of getting closer to me, as I hoped, they were, if anything, moving nearer to the engine-house. Then, thinks I, why not get round and come at them from behind the building. This I set out to do, making a long circuit, and at last the ruin lay between me and them. I reached it without having seen the birds fly away, though I could no longer hear them calling. All of a tremble with excitement, and with the gun at full cock, I crept through a hole in the wall, made my way round the edge of the shaft, and peeped through a chink in the wall opposite. No choughs could I see. They were gone; and I was disappointed, sir, I can tell ee. I went to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. Not a bird was to be seen; nothing but a few shags on the rocks in the white water. As I said, I never saw a chough alive again. They were, I believe, the last of their race. It’s a pity they’re extinct. Handsome birds I call them, with their black glossy plumage and vermilion bill and legs. I can hear that “daw, daw” now as I sit here; plaintive it was for a love-note.

I forgot to say that the magpie is more common than it used to be, though the farm boys “strub” every nest they can find. Interesting birds I call them, and a feature of the country, a homely feature, like the pigeons I saw about the Abbey up in London, only wilder.

Yes, a magpie on a wind-clipt thorn bush, a yellow-hammer on a furze spray, gulls behind a ploughshare, a cormorant on a rock in the green water, and jackdaws about a broken mine-stack, are pictures downright Cornish; and they are always with us.

Dear me, how everything comes back when you begin to talk.

If anything would make me laugh again, it would be what I once saw at Nancothan. I was looking through a window of the farmhouse into the orchard. Perhaps it was the peculiar behaviour of a magpie that attracted my attention. There he was with his neck drawn out and head thrown back, making tremendous thrusts with his beak at something on the ground. After lunging two or three times, he turned his head on one side and looked at whatever lay there, first with one eye, then turning his head, with the other. It’s a comical sight is a magpie looking with one eye at anything. Well then, he began to dig, dig again, and after a final critical examination with each eye, flew up into an apple-tree. I ran out to see what he had been pecking at so vigorously. What do you think I found? why, a china nest-egg! I see that it amuses you, sir, as it used to amuse me. It’s the funniest thing in bird-life I ever saw.