down a frightful descent of three hundred feet
to the beach. It was indeed a scene to be
looked on once only in a human life. On a
ridge of rock, just left bare by the falling tide,
stood a man, my own servant; he had come out
to see my flock of ewes, and had found the
awful wreck. There he stood, with two dead
sailors at his feet, whom he had just drawn out
of the water stiff and stark. The bay was
tossing and seething with a tangled mass of
rigging, sails, and broken fragments of a ship;
the billows rolled up yellow with corn, for the
cargo of the vessel had been foreign wheat;
and ever and anon there came up out of the
water, as though stretched out with life, a human
hand and arm. It was the corpse of another sailor
drifting out to sea, "Is there no one alive?"
was my first question to my man. "I think
there is, sir," he said, "for just now I thought I
heard a cry." I made haste in the direction he
pointed out, and on turning a rock, just where
a brook of fresh water fell towards the sea,
there lay the body of a man in a seaman's garb,
He had reached the water, faint with thirst, but
was too much exhausted to swallow or drink.
He opened his eyes at our voices, and as he saw
me leaning over him in my cassock-shaped
dressing-gown, he sobbed, with a piteous cry,
"Oh, mon père, mon père!" Gradually he
revived, and when he had fully come to himself
with the help of cordials and food, we gathered
from him the mournful tale of his vessel and
her wreck. He was a Jersey man by birth, and
had been shipped at Rio, on the homeward
voyage of the vessel from the port of Odessa
with corn. I had sent in for brandy, and was
pouring it down his throat, when my parishioner,
Peter Barrow, arrived. He assisted, at my
request, in the charitable office of restoring the
exhausted stranger, but when he was refreshed
and could stand upon his feet, I remarked that
Peter did not seem so elated as in common
decency I expected he would be. The reason
soon transpired. Taking me aside, he whispered
in my ear, "Now, sir, I beg your pardon, but if
you'll take my advice, now that the man is
come to himself, if I were you I would let him
go his way wherever he will. If you take him
into your house, he'll sorely do you some harm."
Seeing my surprise, he went on to explain.
"You don't know, sir," he said, "the saying on
our coast:

        Save a stranger from the sea,
        And he'll turn your enemy.

There was one Coppinger cast ashore from
a brig that struck up at Hartland, on the Point.
Farmer Hamlyn dragged him out of the water
and took him home, and was very kind to him.
Lord, sir, he never would leave the house again.
He lived upon the folks a whole year, and at
last, lo and behold! he married the farmer's
daughter Elizabeth, and spent all her fortin
rollicking and racketing, till at last he would
tie her to the bedpost and flog her till her father
would come down with more money. The old
man used to say he wished he'd let Coppinger
lie where he was in the waves, and never laid a
finger on him to save his life. Ay, and divers
more I've heard of that never brought no good
to they that saved them."

"And did you ever yourself, Peter," said I,
"being, as you have told me, a wrecker so many
years—did you ever see a poor fellow clambering
up the rock where you stood, and just able to
reach your foot or hand, did you ever shove him
back into the sea to be drowned?"

"No, sir, I declare I never did. And I do
believe, sir, if I ever had done such a thing, and
given so much as one push to a man in such a
case, I think verily that afterwards I should
have been troubled and uncomfortable in my
mind."

"Well, notwithstanding your doctrine, Peter,"
said I, "we will take charge of this poor fellow,
so do you lead him into the vicarage and order
a bed for him, and wait till I come in." I
returned to the scene of death and danger, where
my man awaited me. He had found, in addition
to the two corpses, another dead body, jammed
under a rock. By this time, a crowd of people
had arrived from the land, and at my request
they began to search anxiously for the dead. It
was, indeed, a terrible scene. The vessel, a
brig of five hundred tons, had struck, as we
afterwards found, at three o'clock that morning-night,
and by the time the wreck was discovered
she had been shattered into broken pieces by
the fury of the sea. The rocks and the water
bristled with fragments of mast and spar and
rent timbers; the cordage lay about in tangled
masses. The rollers tumbled in volumes of
corn, the wheaten cargo; and amidst it all the
bodies of the helpless dead, that a few brief
hours before had walked the deck the stalwart
masters of their ship, turned their poor
disfigured faces toward the sky, pleading for sepulture.
We made a temporary bier of the broken
planks, and laid thereon the corpses, decently
arranged. As the vicar, I led the way, and my
people followed with ready zeal as bearers, and
in sad procession we carried our dead up the
steep cliff, by a difficult path, to await, in a room
at my vicarage which I allotted them, the
inquest. The ship and her cargo were, as to any
tangible value, utterly lost.

The people of the shore, after having done
their best to search for survivors and to discover
the lost bodies, gathered up fragments of the
wreck for fuel, and shouldered them away;
not, perhaps a lawful spoil, but a venial
transgression when compared with the remembered
cruelties of Cornish wreckers. Then ensued my
interview with the rescued man. His name was
Le Daine. I found him refreshed, and collected,
and grateful. He told me his Tale of the Sea.
The captain and all the crew but himself were
from Arbroath, in Scotland. To that harbour also
the vessel belonged. She had been away on a
two years' voyage, employed in the Mediterranean
trade. She had loaded last at Odessa.
She touched at Rio, and there Le Daine, who
had been sick in the hospital, but recovered,
had joined her. There, also, the captain had