The Black Rocks of Morwenstow

by John Wilcox

  ‘Aye, but it is only a tiny place, really just a cove, though small craft do come in and out, because there is a smelting works there.’ She began to push him. ‘’Tis just the end of the street here, down the slope.’

  He turned his head. ‘Will you be able to push me back up?’

  She showed her teeth in a grin that lit up her suntanned face. ‘I am much stronger than I look, Josh Weyland. You will see.’

  The street ended abruptly onto a small, rocky plateau that jutted out from the bottom of the cliff. The quay had been built out of local stone and curved around to the right from the bottom of the street, offering protection from the sea, which beat unrelentingly on its wall. As a harbour, it was indeed tiny, but its existence was explained by several squat, smoke-stained buildings sitting on a level patch of rock that projected from the base of the cliff and the beginning of the harbour wall.

  ‘What are they?’ called Josh above the crashing of the waves on the wall.

  ‘Lime kilns. They are used to turn limestone into what they call slaked lime. The stone is brought from Wales by those little boats,’ she nodded to where two single-masted sailing smacks huddled together behind the protection of the wall, ‘and the lime is used by farmers and masons hereabouts.’

  Josh’s jaw dropped. ‘How on earth do the smacks get in and out of the harbour? There’s hardly room to swing a cat at the entrance, getting round the end of the quay between the rocks. And impossible, I would think, with any sort of sea running.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite a palaver. Look,’ she pointed. ‘There’s a boat comin’ in now. You’ll see.’

  Indeed, the little harbour was buzzing with activity. As Josh watched, a dinghy was rowing out to meet the smack, which seemed to be running under full sail straight into the rocks that jutted out in long runes from either side of the harbour entrance. A line attached to a ring on the top of the wall was unravelling from behind the dinghy.

  ‘What the hell … ?’ muttered Josh.

  Suddenly, the smack dropped its mainsail and rounded up into the wind as the dinghy ran alongside. In a swift, well-practised movement, the end of the line was transferred from the dinghy to the smack and made fast. As it became tight, it acted to spring the smack around, pulling her stern about and slowing her headway, so that she was pulled around the end of the pier. Another dinghy had meanwhile rowed out and thrown a mooring line to the sailboat. At this point the vessel’s remaining sail was taken down and she was hauled under the lee of the quay and moored on each bow and quarter so that she nestled snugly against the inside of the massive wall. The whole operation had taken less than three minutes.

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Josh. ‘There’s seamanship for you.’

  ‘Aye.’ Rowena’s eyes were gleaming. ‘They do it all the time.’

  The man in the lead dinghy, who had rowed his boat up onto the shingle, now looked up and waved. ‘Mornin’ Rowena,’ he called.

  Rowena raised her hand and gave a desultory answering wave and then turned her back.

  ‘A friend of yours?’ enquired Josh.

  ‘Not really. Just an acquaintance.’ She spoke quickly. ‘Have you seen enough?’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so. Are you sure you can push me back up this hill?’

  She gave no reply but bent her back and swung the chair round quickly. They rattled over the cobblestones so quickly that Josh was forced to cling to the sides of the bath chair. ‘Steady, child, or you’ll have me over,’ he cried.

  ‘I’m not a child, Joshua. I’ve told you afore. I’m eighteen and I can run up this hill faster’n this, if you like.’

  ‘I do not like, Rowena. I can see how strong you are, thank you very much, and I am most impressed.’

  Rowena, having made her point, stopped outside the house to get her breath back and Josh realised that the doctor and his daughter lived next door to an inn, whose sign swung in the sea breeze. Further along, the buildings ended abruptly and the path curved upwards to begin the long, steep climb to the top of the cliff. Halfway along the climb, on another patch of rocky level ground, a building stood on its own, its dark stonework and few windows giving it a brooding appearance.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Josh.

  ‘That is the Preventers’ barracks. That’s where they and the captain live.’

  ‘The Revenue men who pulled me off the rock?’

  ‘Aye.’ She paused for a moment. ‘They are a rough lot.’

  ‘Well, rough or not. I owe them my life. Do you think you could push me up there so that I could call and express my gratitude?’

  ‘Aye. But it is very steep and you must help me by pushing the wheels with your hands. Forget the steering.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I should have thought of that.’

  It was indeed steep and it was all the two of them could do to make the basket chair mount the hill, particularly as Josh had to let the steering tiller swing freely, so causing the chair to career across the path. As they neared a large studded door, which formed the entrance to the building, it was pushed open and a tall, broad-shouldered man strode through it to meet them.

  ‘Good mornin’, Emma,’ he said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. ‘I see you’ve brought your patient. Come inside and take tea.’

  ‘Well, I don’t rightly think we should, Cap’n. Mr Weyland has much to do but he wanted to say thank ye to your men for savin’ him from the sea that night.’ It was clear that Rowena was less than comfortable in the presence of the captain and Josh regarded him carefully.

  He wore what seemed to be a faded sailor’s uniform of blue and white and a curved cutlass hung from his belt. His face was weathered a dark brown and his eyes were as black as Rowena’s. Hatless, his hair hung in ringlets and he had a long, jagged scar across his cheek. But the most notable feature of his appearance was the curved hook, which took the place of his missing left hand. Yet the overall appearance was not menacing; more jaunty and even dashing.

  Josh immediately averted his gaze from the hook. ‘That is right, Cap’n,’ he said, smiling up at the big man. ‘I’d very much like to shake the hands of the men who rescued me. And,’ he shot a quick look up at Rowena, ‘if my nurse will allow it, I think we have time for a quick cup of tea, if that would not inconvenience you.’

  The captain smiled, revealing large, tombstone teeth. ‘No inconvenience at all, young man.’ He extended his good hand. ‘Jack Cunningham at your service.’

  ‘Josh Weyland.’ They shook hands. Was Rowena scowling? It seemed so.

  The three entered the barracks, the chair swaying over the rough cobblestones. ‘Tea for three, Brown,’ Cunningham called brusquely to a man holding a musket in the doorway. ‘Move yerself, man. Serve it in my cabin.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Can you get out of that chair, Weyland?’ asked the captain. ‘We’ll not get you inside while you stay in it. Entrance is too narrow.’ He smiled at Rowena. ‘We don’t pursue comfort much in the barracks, I’m afraid.’

  Josh nodded. ‘I think so, sir. I’ve got one of the doctor’s crutches and I am learning to hobble with it. Lead on and Rowena … er … Emma will help me.’

  After some difficulty, with Rowena clutching him tightly – in fact, he felt with some embarrassment, almost proprietarily – they reached a room lit only by one small window set high on the seaward side of the building. A flight of wooden steps led up to a small platform arranged by the window and bearing a large telescope, set on three legs and trained so that its long barrel pointed out to sea. The furniture reminded Josh of that in the doctor’s house – very masculine and redolent of the sea. High up on the walls, Josh recognised bound copies of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping resting on a shelf that encircled the room.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t see the lads who hauled you ashore,’ said Cunningham, gesturing them to sit in two rather overstuffed leather armchairs. ‘They are out on patrol. So you must call again if you wish to thank them. But please do so. You would be most welcome
.’

  ‘Thank you, I will. Tell me, Captain …’

  ‘Call me Jack.’

  ‘Thank you. Tell me, Jack,’ Josh paused for a moment to pick his words carefully. ‘I have been away at sea for so long. What actually do the Preventers do? What do they prevent, in fact?’

  ‘Smuggling. That’s our main work.’

  Josh smiled. ‘Yet I thought that that was almost a national sport in this part of the West Country, with both gentry and ordinary folk involved in it.’

  Cunningham scowled. ‘Well, that may be so, but it is illegal. Smuggling cheats the government of this country of a very considerable amount of revenue. Income tax has now been reintroduced for the first time since the Napoleonic War and them that pays it now would pay far less if we could catch them that smuggles.’

  Brown entered the room carrying a tray laden with a large brown teapot, three mugs and buttered bread cut thickly. ‘No cakes, Captain,’ he said. ‘This is all I could find.’

  ‘Oh, that is absolutely fine,’ Rowena cut in quickly. ‘We can’t stay long, Cap’n Jack, and, anyway, we don’t expect frills in the Revenue’s barracks.’

  Cunningham gave her an affectionate smile. ‘You’ll get plenty of frills, girl, when you agree to marry me.’

  Rowena blushed. ‘You know very well that’s not goin’ to happen, Jack, thank you very much. I don’t want to marry and settle down here.’

  The man’s black eyebrows settled down in what appeared to be a straight line above his eyes. ‘Well you damned well ought to, young lady,’ he said curtly. ‘It’s not right that a young woman stays single for too long. Apart from anything else, it upsets the unmarried menfolk.’ He shot a quick glance at Josh. ‘And the married ones as well, for that matter.’ But he softened the harshness of the expression with a quick smile and went on:

  ‘But I was talkin’ about smuggling, or “fair trade” as it’s called around here. Do you know that between 1780 and 1783 as much as two million pounds worth of tea and thirteen million pounds of brandy were smuggled into these islands?’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Aye. And it got worse, of course, during our war against the French when heavy taxes were levied on luxury goods comin’ in to raise money for the British Navy and Army. If we hadn’t had income from that source, now, we would never have defeated old Boney.’

  Josh switched his gaze to Rowena, but she was frowning and looking at the telescope up above her, seemingly paying no attention to the conversation. ‘So is there much smuggling going on around here, Jack?’ he asked.

  ‘Enough to keep us busy.’

  ‘I would have thought that this coast would have been too far away from the continent of Europe to offer safe landings for smugglers. The southern coast of Cornwall and Devon, facing France as it does, would surely be a far more attractive target for smugglers?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course it is and the Preventers on the English Channel coast are just as busy as us, if not more so. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get attempted landings here, and often.’

  ‘Would the French smugglers come all the way round Land’s End, then, to make drops here?’

  ‘Sometimes. But it’s not them that’s the real problem. It’s the transatlantic ships that come up the Channel to Bristol from America and the Caribbean that like to earn a guinea or two by dropping off their fine stuff here to smuggling boats that come out to meet them.’

  ‘How do you prevent it, if it is so prevalent?’

  ‘Three ways. We have fast-sailing cutters who intercept skippers out at sea who are suspected of runnin’ in goods – these can outsail most of the ships they are after. Mind you, the devils hide away the contraband with great cunning: under cargoes of fish and even coal.’

  ‘And rock for smelting?’

  The captain frowned again and levelled a cool gaze at him. ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘there’s no excise duty applied to that sort of cargo.’

  ‘How do you operate in other ways on this coast?’

  ‘Men along the cliffs – that’s us and devilish hard work it is. Smugglers are usually good seamen and, in this part of the world in particular, they will land their stuff in tiny coves and breaks in the cliffs, which are damned difficult to approach by land or sea. And they will often sneak in during a storm when the weather is too foul for us to be out of doors.’

  Josh’s mind swiftly flashed back to the skilled seamanship demonstrated by the sailors bringing in the smacks to the harbour at Hartland Quay, but Cunningham was continuing.

  ‘Lastly, our third arm, so to speak, are mounted dragoons, who can pursue the smugglers inland if they escape us.’ The black eyebrows shot up. ‘But tell me, young Josh, why are you so interested in smuggling along this coastline?’

  Josh took a gulp of his tea. Recalling the taste from his days in Far Eastern waters he suspected it was made from the best China leaves, a somewhat surprising discovery to be made in a Revenue barracks. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Captain, I am not planning to take up smuggling. I am just interested in how folk make their living here. As I understand it, the price of tin has fallen and it seems to me that the land hereabouts is a bit windswept to provide good farming. But I may be wrong.’

  ‘Yes, well, wrecking is the other source of income to the folk of the coast. Although that, o’ course, comes in kind – bits of the ship and so on – and can’t be relied on and depends on the weather.’

  ‘Are you supposed to stop it?’

  ‘We do if we can, but folks are damned quick now at plunderin’ a wreck, and often the ship has been stripped to its bones by the time we get there.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Josh followed Rowena’s gaze up to the window. ‘But you were quickly on the scene when The Lucy foundered. I saw you on the beach as we came thundering in. And,’ he smiled, ‘I’m damned glad that you were for you saved my life.’

  Cunningham shifted in his chair and carefully folded a piece of bread and butter before replying. ‘Well, we had seen you comin’ up the Channel just before the storm broke and I was fairly sure you would run into trouble. You were sailin’ far too close inshore.’

  ‘I fear you’re right. We had a drunkard for a captain. Why, he even saw a light glowing on the cliff face that he thought indicated a safe anchorage, even though I told him there was no such place on this coast.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cunningham drained his cup and put it down on the table. ‘More tea, Emma?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you.’ She stood. ‘We must be goin’. Father will be wonderin’ where we have got to.’

  Cunningham rose. ‘Well, I’m glad you both stopped by. Call in any time, Josh.’ He held out his hand.

  Josh seized his crutch and struggled to his feet. ‘Just one more word, about that light, Jack. There was a light just above the beach. I saw it myself.’

  ‘Really?’

  Rowena broke in quickly. ‘We must go. Come on, Josh.’

  The captain shook his head. ‘There was no light on or about that beach during the storm, Josh. I was there. You can take my word for it.’

  Josh slowly nodded. ‘Of course I will, Jack. Thank you for the tea. Best China, by the taste of it.’

  ‘No. Indian rubbish. We can’t afford good tea here, lad.’

  Further smiles were exchanged and then Josh struggled through the door and out onto the path. ‘Let me walk for a moment or two, if I can, Rowena,’ said Josh. ‘I want to be as mobile as I can as quickly as possible. You go on with the chair. I’ll come behind. I’m sure I can manage.’

  Rowena tossed back her head. ‘You will do nothing of the kind. You could fall and ruin all the good work Father did on that leg. And, anyway, I can’t push this damned contraption on my own without someone steerin’ it.’

  ‘Oh, very well. But can we just go out on this flat piece of rock and get the sea air and talk for a bit?’

  ‘Of course. Back in the chair now.’

  She pushed him down the hill, not without difficulty, for the chair had no brake and Rowena
had to lean back and ease it down the hill to save it careering away. Eventually, they reached the rocky outcrop, which provided a good view of the coastline and even, on this fine morning, a fine perspective of Lundy Island.

  ‘The captain seems very fond of you, Rowena,’ said Jack, pretending to study the horizon.

  She tossed her head again. ‘Well, he shouldn’t be, because I give him no encouragement, I tell you.’ She frowned. ‘He thinks that just because he is my father’s friend that he can take liberties. Well, he shouldn’t.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course, he was a shipmate of your father.’

  ‘Aye, it was many years ago, o’course, when they were both young men. They were the only two to be rescued from the wreck.’

  ‘What was their ship and where did she founder?’

  ‘She was a brig – a bit like yours, I think – named the Evershot, and she hit the rocks off Bude, south of here.’

  ‘Hmm.’ They sat silently for a time. Josh gazed around at the few stunted bushes and low trees, their tops scythed off horizontally by the cruel wind from the sea, and the brambles and gorse that fought gamely to thrust upwards from cracks in the rocks. Overhead, crows were a’cawing and, higher up, two buzzards circled lazily. Yet he saw little and noted less, for his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Did you say Evershot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Although I must have been very young, I seem to remember reading something about it. Didn’t the Bude lifeboat try to come out to the ship?’

  ‘Yes, but the sea was too high and she couldn’t get near to the brig.’

  ‘Do you recall the Line that owned the brig?’

  ‘Oh aye. It was the Blue Cross Line, a Scottish company. Father hated them.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘He said their ships were death traps. They was not properly looked after in terms of maintainin’ the shrouds and the caulkin’ and all that sort of thing. He said that there was so many barnacles on the hull that she was difficult to steer.’

  Joshua nodded slowly. ‘That is a bit familiar. The Lucy – my ship – was owned by the Blue Cross Line and she was not kept up to scratch either.’