Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/292

286 THE CORNWALL COAST waters, and by the sands, that are always treacherous in a rising tide; the flow was too strong for swimming ; the waves soon bubbled mockingly above the drowned heads of man and beast. But there is another cry that suddenly resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name — one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward ; it is better to drive the weary distance to the bridge than to brave a crossing when this warning is abroad. Those who are familiar with this country-side, with its dim lingerings of Celtic tradition, its strange borderland of myth and reality, know the meaning of the cry in their hearts, though, perhaps, they decline to give men- tion to it with their lips. They have been told in their childhood of a man who once lived in these parts, whose life was stained by many black deeds, and lightened by a single good one. He had been a smuggler, a wrecker, a pirate ; his hand was red with blood, his soul dark with the soil of crime. One night a cottager lay dying, and was praying that a priest might be fetched to his bedside. Moved by a rare impulse of pity, the man of many sins set forth to cross the Gannel and to bring the priest from a religious house beyond. But the time for fording had passed ; the river was running swiftly, and waves were leaping hungrily about the usual track of passage. Yet it meant a long