Adventures of Working Men. From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon

“But the tide was rising, and I soon found that I must leave the rock I was on, and swim or wade farther in; while now the horrible thought came – would the tide fill the cavern, and should I be drowned at last? The thought was so horrible, that I was very nearly jumping off and trying to swim to the mouth, where, in my weak state, I must have lost my life; for a strong man could not battle with the waves as the tide rises. I had often heard tell of this ‘Hugo,’ as they call it here, but no one had ever explored it that I know of; for it is only in the calmest of weather that a boat could come near. However, I sat still for a few more moments, trying to pierce the darkness, and find a resting-place higher up. I dared not lower myself into the water again, for thought after thought kept coming of the strange sea creatures that might make the cave their home; but my indecision was put an end to by a heavy wave that came rolling in, and I was lifted from my seat and borne in again for some distance, and dashed against a stone, to whose slimy sides I clung as the water rushed back. Then I tried to find the bottom with my feet, but all in vain; and striking out, I swam on farther and farther into the darkness, helped on by a wave now and then, and clinging to some projection to keep from being sucked back – for once down again in the water, the dread seemed to some extent to leave me.

“On reaching a rock that I could climb upon, to my great joy I found that I could get beyond the reach of the water; but I had to feel my way, for by a bend of the cave I could now see no moonlit mouth, only a shining reflection upon one of the wet walls of the place; while all around me was a horrible black darkness, made ten times more dreadful by the strange echoing wash and drip of the water in the far recesses.

“Perhaps a bolder man would have felt his nerves creep, as it were, sitting, dripping and trembling, upon a slimy piece of stone in that dreadful darkness, conjuring up horrors of a kind that at more calm moments he could not describe; but knowing all the while, by merely stretching out a foot now and then, that the tide was rising higher and higher to sweep him off. Now my feet were under water, then my knees, and soon it rose so high that at every ninth wave – ‘the death wave,’ as we call it down here on the coast – I could feel myself lifted a little; and at last, just as it was before, I was swept off, and swimming again in the darkness to find another rock on which I could creep. More than once I touched something, with hand or foot, and snatched it shudderingly back; while at such times the waves bore me backwards and forwards as they ebbed and flowed. As far as I could tell, the bottom was quite beyond my reach, for I let down my feet again and again. But the cave grew much narrower; for now I struck my head against one side, and then against the other, as I laboriously swam along farther and farther, as it were, into the depths of the earth, till once more I came against a part of the rock which I could climb up – this time, by feeling carefully about, till I struck my head against the roof; and then crouched once more shiveringly down, waiting in a half-dazed, swoon-like state for the next time when I should have to make a struggle for life. I felt dull and listless, my senses seemed to be numbed, and it was almost in a dream that I half sat, half lay upon the wet rock, listening to the wash of the waves, and the dull roar echoing from the cave mouth; while close by me there seemed to be strange whispering sounds mingling with the dripping from the roof, which fell always with a little melodious plash.

“Sometimes I seemed to doze – a sort of stuporlike sleep from exhaustion – and then I started with a cry, expecting that I was hanging once more to the rock outside, or being swept away by a wave from the rock upon which I was resting; and at last, far in as I was, there came what to me was like hope of life – for at first very faint and pale, but by degrees stronger, the light of day came down into the thick blackness of that awful hole, cutting it like arrows, and striking upon the waters before it became broken and spread around.

“As far as I could see, it came down from the roof eight or ten yards from where I sat, but it was a long time before I could summon courage to lower myself into the water, and swim along till I came beneath the bright rays, when I found that they beamed through a rift in the roof some ten feet above me; though, as I again drew myself out of the water on to the rugged side, and then clambered into the rough, long rift, I was so stiff and weak that every movement made me groan with pain.

“Now, come here again to where the rift is, and you can look down, and listen to the roar and bubbling of the water. A strange, wild place, but I made my way up to light and life once more; though I have never found any man here yet with courage to go down, while how much farther the hole penetrates into the bowels of the earth no one knows. There are plenty of such caves along the coast here, made by the water gradually eating out a soft vein of stone from one that is harder; while as to my leaving my bed like that, and climbing to where I had been the day before, it must have been from over-excitement, I suppose. But there, such cases are common, and as a boy I often walked in my sleep, and went by night to places where I could not have gone had I been awake.”

Chapter Fourteen.

My Patients the Fishermen

I dreamed about that cave night after night, and it was a long time before I could get its weird echoes out of my mind. I had only to go down to the shore and listen to the wash of the waves to have my mason friend’s narrative come back in full force, till I felt quite a morbid pleasure in listening to the fancied beating and echoing of the tide in the hollow place.

I used to meet a good many of the fishermen down about the little pier, and after a little bit of a case that I managed with one poor fellow who had been for years leading a weary existence, I found that I might have commanded the services of every fisherman there and had their boats at pleasure. There was always a pleasant smile for me when I went down, and whenever a boat came in if I was seen upon the pier there was sure to be a rough sunburnt face looking into mine as a great string of fish was offered to me.

“They’re fresh as daisies, doctor,” the giver would say: a man, perhaps, that I had hardly seen before, while the slightest hint at payment was looked upon as an offence.

“And there’s no knowing, doctor,” said one man who presented me with a delicious hake, “I may be down at any time and want your help and advice. Didn’t you cure Sam Treporta? Lookye here doctor, don’t you go away again, you stop and practice down here. We’ll be ill as often as we can, and you shan’t never want for a bit of fish so long as the weather keeps fine.”

It was one afternoon down on the little rugged granite pier that I heard the story of Tom Trecarn and the bailiffs, and being rather a peculiar adventure I give it as it was told to me.

“‘Is that you, Tom?’

“‘Iss, my son,’ replied Tom, a great swarthy, black-whiskered, fierce-looking, copper-coloured Cornish giant, in tarry canvas trousers, and a blue worsted guernsey shirt – a tremendous fellow in his way – but with a heart as soft and tender as that of his wife, whom he had just addressed in the popular fashion of his part as ‘my son.’ Tom had just come home from mackerel fishing off the Scilly Isles. The take had only been poor, for the wind had been unfavourable; but the few hundred fish his lugger had brought in were sold, and with a few hake in his hand for private consumption, Tom Trecarn had come home for a good night’s rest.

“‘Oh, Tom,’ burst out his wife, throwing down that popular wind instrument without which upon a grand scale no fisherman’s granite cottage is complete – ‘Oh, Tom,’ said Mrs Trecarn, throwing down the bellows, there known as the ‘Cornish organ’ – ‘Oh, Tom, you’re a ruined man.’

“‘Not yet, my son,’ replied Tom, stoically; ‘but if things don’t mend, fishing won’t be worth the salt for a score of pilchards.’

“‘But Dan Pengelly’s broken, Tom,’ sobbed Mrs Trecarn.

“‘Then we’ll get him mended, my son,’ said Tom, kissing her.

“‘How many fish had ye?’ sang a voice outside the cottage, in the peculiar pleasant intonation common amongst the Cornish peasantry.

“‘Thousand an’ half,’ sang back Tom to the inquiring neighbour.

“‘Where did you shoot, lad?’ sang the voice again.

“‘West of Scilly, Eddard. Bad times: wind heavy, and there’s four boats’ fish.’

“‘Pengelly’s got the bailiffs in, Thomas,’ sang the neighbour, now thrusting his head in at the door.

“‘Sorry for him,’ sang Tom, preparing for a wash.

“‘And I’m sorry for you, Thomas,’ sang the neighbour.

“‘What for?’ said Tom, stoically.

“‘Why, aint all your craft in his store, Tom?’ inquired the neighbour.

“‘Oh, yes – every net,’ sobbed Mrs Trecarn; ‘and we’re ruined. Eighty-four pounds fifteen and seven-pence, too, those nets cost.’

“‘But’t aint nothing to us,’ said Tom, turning a different colour, as an ordinary man would have turned pale.

“‘Why, your craft’s seized too, lad; and ye’ll lose it all,’ cried the neighbour, singing it right into the great fellow’s ear.

“Down went the pitcher of water upon the stone floor in a wreck of potsherds and splash, and crash went the staggering neighbour against the side table set out with Mrs Trecarn’s ornaments, as Tom rushed out of the house, and up the street to Daniel Pengelly’s store.

“Dan Pengelly’s store was a well-known building in Carolyn, being a long, low, granite-built and shale-roofed shed, where many of the fishermen warehoused their herring and pilchard nets during the mackerel season – the mackerel nets taking their turn to rest when dried, on account of the pilchards making their appearance off the shores of Mount’s Bay. For, as in patriarchal days men’s wealth was in flocks and herds, so here in these primitive Cornish fishing villages it is the ambition of most men to become the owner of the red-sailed, fast-tacking luggers which, from some hitherto unexplained phenomenon, sail like the boats of every other fishing station – faster than any vessel that ploughs the waves. Failing to become the owner of a boat, the next point is to be able to boast of having so many nets, many a rough-looking, hard-handed fisherman being perhaps possessor of a couple or three hundred pounds’ worth, bought or bred (netted) by his wife and daughters.

“To Dan Pengelly’s store went Tom Trecarn, to find there a short, fresh-coloured, pudgy man leaning against one of the doorposts, holding the long clay pipe he smoked with one hand, and rubbing his nose with the key he held in the other.

“‘I want my nets out,’ said Tom, coming up furious as a bull. ‘I’ve got eighty pound worth of craft in here as don’t belong to the Pengellys.’

“‘So have I,’ and ‘So have I,’ growled a couple of the group of men lolling about and looking on in the idle way peculiar to fishermen when winds are unfavourable.

“‘Can’t help that,’ said the man, ceasing to rub his nose, and buttoning up the key in his pocket. ‘I’m in possession, and nothing can’t come out of here. The goods are seized for debt.’

“‘But I ain’t nothing to do with Pengelly’s debts,’ said Tom. ‘My nets ain’t going to pay for what he owes. I earned my craft with the sweat of my brow, and they’re only stored here like those of other lads.’

“‘Iss, my son – ’tis so – ’tis so,’ said one or two of the bystanders, nodding their heads approvingly.

“‘I’ve got nothing to do with that,’ said the man in possession; ‘the goods are seized, and whatever’s in Daniel Pengelly’s store will be sold if he don’t pay up; and that’s the law.’

“‘Do you mean to tell me that the law says you’re to sell one man’s goods to pay another man’s debts?’ said Tom.

“‘Yes, if they’re on the debtor’s premises,’ said the man, coolly.

“‘Then I’m blest if I believe it,’ cried Tom, furiously; ‘and if you don’t give up what belongs to me – ’

“Here he strode so furiously up to the bailiff that a couple of brother-fishermen rushed in, and between them hustled Trecarn off, and back to his cottage, where the poor fellow sat down beside his weeping wife, while the two ponderous fellows who had brought him home leaned one on either side of the door, silent and foil of unspoken condolence.

“‘Eighty-four pound!’ groaned Tom.

“‘Fifteen and seven-pence!’ sobbed his wife.

“‘Eight bran-new herring nets of mine,’ said one of his friends.

“‘And fifteen pound worth of my craft,’ muttered the other.

“‘And this is the law of the land, is it?’ growled Tom.

“‘They took Sam Kelynack’s little mare same way as was grazing on Tressillian’s paddock,’ said friend number one; and then they all joined in a groan of sympathy.