Armorel of Lyonesse

therefore it is easily filled. And though it is the principal club-room of Hugh Town, where the better sort and the notab

g accommodation for nine, and when all are present, and all nine are smoking tobacco like one, the atmosphere is convivially pungent. This evening there were only seven. They consisted of the two young men whose perils on the deep you have just witnessed; a Justice of the Peace-but his office is a sinecure, because on

e population must leave the archipelago and go elsewhere. In some colonial circles they play whist, which is an excellent method, perhaps the best ever invented, for disguising the poverty or the absence of conversation. At Tregarthen's they do not feel this necessity-they are contented with their conversation; they are so happily contented that they do not repine even though they get no more than an observation dropped every ten minutes or so. They are not anxious to reply hurriedly

belongs to the sea: they may go up country, which is a journey of a mile and a half, or even two miles-and speak for a moment of the crops and the farms; but that leads to the question of import and export, and, therefore, to the vessels lying within the pier, and to the steam service to Penzance and to vessels in other ports, and, generally, to steam service about the world. And again, wherever two or three are gathered together in Scilly, one at least will be found to have ploughed the seas in distant parts. This confers a superiority on the society of the islands which cannot, even in these days, be denied or

d went out. There is no sitting late at night in Scil

d, 'that you have had rathe

e artist, 'but for a-young lady, wh

oat, especially if she had the boy Peter with her, than any boatman of the islands. And there's not a rock or an islet, not a bay or a headland in this country of bays and capes and rocks, that she do

That is all we know of her. It is a good deal

e Roseveans, Tryeths, Jenkinses, and Woodcocks on Samson. Now, they ar

t nobody else

likely situation, too, facing south-west and well sheltered. You should go and see the flower-farm. Armorel will be glad to sho

it?-I believe she'd only been a wife for twelve months or so. He was drowned on a smuggling run-his brother Emanuel, too. Widow used to look for him from the hill-top every night for a year and more afterwards. A wonderful old woman! Go and look at her. Perhaps she will talk to you. Sometimes, when Armorel plays the fiddle, she will brighten up and talk for an hour. She knows how to cure all diseases, and she can foret

boy, I remember. B

rm to come over here after a wife. And he looks more than fifty, because once he fell off the pier, head first, into the stern of a boat, and after he'd been

is Ch

el-he'd be about fifty-seven now-he was drowned-twelve years ago it must be now-with his wife and his three boys, Emanuel, John, and Andrew, crossing over from a wedding at St. Agnes. He married Rovena Wetherel, from St. Mary's. Then there was her grandfather, he was a pilot-but they were all pilots-and he was cast away taking an East Indiaman up the Channel, cast away on Chesil Bank in a fog-that was in the year 1845-and all hands lost. His father-no, no, that was his uncle-all in the line were drowned; that one's uncle died in his bed unexpectedly-

smuggling here i

known to have made great sums of money. Never was anyone on the islands in such a big way. Lots of money came to the islands from smuggling. They say that the St. Martin's people have kept theirs, and have got it invested; but, for all the rest, it's gone. And they were wreckers too. Many and many a good ship before the islands were lit up have struck on the rocks and gone

sting fami

in the islands. But an unlucky family. All these drownings make people talk. Old wives' talk, I dare say. But for something one o

h a cloth peak, much affected in Scilly, because the

nd lost his reckoning. Then he asked this man if he knew the Scilly Isles. "Better nor any book," says the sailor. "Then," says the skipper, "take the wheel." In an hour crash went the ship upon the rocks. "Damn your eyes!" says the skipper, "you s

is buried in the old churchyard. I saw an inscription to-day which probably marks his t

ry him in the old churchya

at-grandfather and great-grand-uncles, after having been cast away upon the Chesil Bank, and never heard of again, though he was wanted on account of a keg of French brandy picked up in the Channel. He made an immense pile of money, which has been lost; and there's an old lady at the farm

over there

of Lyonesse. Meanwhile, just to clear my brain, I think I

in Tregart

ipes and wh

ion, mind you, in being selected by Fate for vicarious punishment. The old corsair wrecked a ship and robbed the bodies: therefore, all his descendants have got to be drowned. Dear me! If we were all to be drowned because our people had once "done something," the hungry, insatiate sea would be choked, and the world would come to an end. A Scotch whisky, Rebecca, if you please, and a seltzer! To-morrow, Roland, we will once more cross the raging main, but

s seized with a mighty terror and a shaking of the limbs, and his heart sank and his cheek blanched; and he cried