Michaels Crag | Page 7

Every three or four years
he gets leave from the Vittling and comes home to England; and then
he always ups and runs down to the Lizard, and wanders about on the
cliffs by himself like this, with Miss Cleer to keep him company. He's a
chip of the old rock, he is--Cornish granite to the core, as the saying
goes; and he can't be happy away from it. You'll see him any day
standing like that on the very edge of the cliff, looking across over the

water, as if he was a coastguard hisself, and always sort o' perched on
the highest bit of rock he can come nigh anywhere."
"He looks an able man," Le Neve went on, still regarding the stranger,
poised now as before on the very summit of the tor, with his cloak
wrapped around him.
"Able? I believe you! Why, he's the very heart and soul, the brains and
senses of the Vittling Department. The navy'd starve if it wasn't for him.
He's a Companion of St. Michael and St. George, Mr. Trevennack is.
'Tain't every one as is a Companion of St. Michael and St. George. The
queen made him that herself for his management of the Vittling." "It's a
strange place for a man in his position to spend his holiday," Le Neve
went on, reflectively. "You'd think, coming back so seldom, he'd want
to see something of London, Brighton, Scarborough, Scotland."
The coastguard looked up, and held his brush idle in one hand with a
mysterious air. "Not when you come to know his history," he answered,
gazing hard at him.
"Oh, there's a history to him, is there?" Le Neve answered, not
surprised. "Well, he certainly has the look of it."
The coastguard nodded his head and dropped his voice still lower. "Yes,
there's a history to him," he replied. "And that's why you'll always see
Trevennack of Trevennack on the top of the cliff, and never at the
bottom.--Thank'ee very kindly, sir; it ain't often we gets a chance of a
good cigar at Kynance.--Well, it must be fifteen year now --or maybe
sixteen--I don't mind the right time--Trevennack came down in old
Squire Tyrrel's days, him as is buried at Mullion Church town, and
stopped at Gunwalloe, same as he might be stopping there in his
lodgings nowadays. He had his only son with him, too, a fine-looking
young gentleman, they say, for his age, for I wasn't here then--I was
serving my time under Admiral De Horsey on the good old Billy
Ruffun-- the very picture of Miss Cleer, and twelve year old or
thereabouts; and they called him Master Michael, the same as they
always call the eldest boy of the Trevennacks of Trevennack. Aye, and
one day they two, father and son, were a-strolling on the beach under

the cliffs by Penmorgan--mind them stones on the edge, sir; they're
powerful loose-- don't you drop none over--when, just as you might
loosen them pebbles there with your foot, over came a shower o' small
bits from the cliff on top, and as sure as you're livin', hit the two on 'em
right so, sir. Mr. Trevennack himself, he wasn't much hurt--just bruised
a bit on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch cap; but Master
Michael, well, it caught him right on the top of the head, and afore they
knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye, that it did, sir, just so;
it smashed the boy's skull in. They carried him home, and cut the bone
out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it wa'n't no good; he lingered on
for a night, and then, afore morning, he died, insensible."
"What a terrible story!" Le Neve exclaimed, with a face of horror,
recoiling instinctively from the edge of the cliff that had wrought this
evil. "Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on him," the coastguard
went on, with the calm criticism of his kind. "His only son--and all in a
minute like, as you may term it--such a promising young gentleman! It
was rough, terrible rough on him. So from that day to this, whenever
Trevennack has a holiday, down he comes here to Gunwalloe, and
walks about the cliffs, and looks across upon the rocks by Penmorgan
Point, or stands on the top of Michael's Crag, just over against the spot
where his boy was hurted. An' he never wants to go nowhere else in all
England, but just to stand like that on the very edge of the cliff, and
look over from atop, and brood, and think about it."
As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve's mind at once that
Trevennack's voice had quivered with a strange thrill of emotion as he
uttered that