The Adventures of Dick Trevanion: A Story of Eighteen Hundred and Four

The village of Polkerran lies snugly in a hollow between cliffs facing the Atlantic, at the head of a little bay that forms a natural harbour. The grey stone cottages rise from the sea-level in tiers, as in an amphitheatre, huddled together, with the narrowest and most tortuous of lanes between them. Through the midst a stream flows from the high ground behind, in summer a mere brook, in winter a swollen torrent that colours the sea far out with the soil it carries down. The bay is shaped like a horseshoe; at low tide its mouth is closed by a reef except at the northern end, where there is always a narrow fairway between the reef and the sharp point of land known as the Beal. Northward of this is another little inlet called Trevanion Bay, whence the coast winds north-east, a line of rugged, precipitous, and overhanging cliffs, unbroken until you come to St. Cuby's Cove, where they reach a height of three hundred feet, and bulge out over the sea like a penthouse roof.

One August evening, in the year 1804, a wide tubby boat lay in twelve feet of water, just outside the line of breakers beneath the cliffs, about a mile and a half from the village. The sun had been down some two hours, but there was enough of twilight to show to any one out at sea—the boat being invisible from the land—that it contained two lads, one a tall, slight, but muscular youth of seventeen or thereabouts, the other a thicker, sturdier boy, who looked older, but was, in fact, a year or more younger than his companion.

"Well, Maister Dick," said the younger boy, "I reckon we'd better go home-along; it do seem as if the water be too clear to-night."

"They're not on the feed, Sam, that's certain," replied Dick Trevanion. "But I don't like going empty-handed. I'm thinking of supper."

"It do be queer, sure enough. 'Tis a hot night, and they mostly comes in close when 'tis hot, and the biggest comes the closest. I 'spect what us do want is a bit of a tumble, to stir up the bottom and muddy the water."

Dick Trevanion had come out at sunset with his companion Sam Pollex to fish for salmon bass, which at this time of year were usually plentiful along the coast. For two hours they had had no luck. Every now and then a ripple and spirt on the smooth surface showed that fish were sporting beneath; but though they changed the bait, trying squid, pilchard, spider-crab in turn; varied the length of line and the weight of the lead; trailed the bait where they last saw the surface disturbed—though they tried every device known to them to lure the fish, they had not as yet been rewarded with a single bite. It was exasperating. Dick knew that the larder at home was bare, and had set his heart on carrying back two or three fish for supper and next morning's breakfast.

"It will be high-water in half-an-hour," he said. "We'll wait till then, and no longer."

Baiting his hook with cuttle-fish, he got Sam to row slowly up the shore towards a spot where the sea broke gently over a yard or two of half-submerged rocks. The air was very still; there was no sound save the light rustle of the waves washing the foot of the cliff. As the sky darkened and the last faint radiance vanished from the west, the stars appeared and the shade beneath the cliff became deeper. Sam rowed up and down for some minutes, Dick hauling in his line once or twice to see that the hook was not fouled with sea-weed; but still there was no sign of fish.