D. K. Broster
Ships in the Bay (Historical Novel)
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2021 OK Publishing
EAN 4064066389437
Table of Contents
II. Odyssey of Mr. Martin Tyrrell
VII. “Danger’s Troubled Night”
“That mortal breathes not, and never will be born, who shall come with war to the land of the Phæacians, for they are very dear to the gods. Far apart we live in the wash of the waves, the outermost of men.”
Odyssey VI. 201-205
“You gwyne to have considable trouble en yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes yo’ gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes yo’ gwyne to git sick, but every time yo’ gwyne to git well again. Dey’s two gals flyin’ about in yo’ life. One uv ’em’s light en t’other is dark. . . . You want to keep away fum de water as much as you kin en don’t run no risks, ’kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to git hung.”
Huckleberry Finn, Chap. iv
TO
C. S. EVANS
whose unvarying kindness demands a better tribute, but whose name seems to make appropriate the dedication of this tale of the Principality.
I
THE DUTCH PRIZE
“We sail the ocean blue,
And our saucy ship’s a beauty
We’re sober men and true,
And attentive to our duty.”
Pinafore Act I
“But who is this, whose godlike grace
Proclaims he comes of noble race?
And who is this whose manly face
Bears sorrow’s interesting trace?”
Patience Act I
I
THE DUTCH PRIZE
(1)
The summer day had dawned very clear, and the wind, blowing light but steady from the north, promised not only fine, but brilliantly fine weather, most congenial, since hay harvest was upon them, to all the farmers of Western Pembrokeshire in this year of grace and war 1796. It swept over the wide, airy, almost treeless expanses of Dewisland, studded with innumerable white-washed farms, ruffling the young barley and wheat; the tall pink valerian on the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, down in the Vale of Roses, swayed to its passing; the little blue scabious in their thousands on the cliff saluted it, and the now fading thrift which the scabious had replaced: while the sea itself, on either side of the out-thrust fist of St. David’s, from Skomer Island off the one coast to Strumble Head on the other, was the livelier and the more azure for its passing.
Nor was the breeze displeasing to Miss Nest Meredith, driving her father, the Precentor, and an antiquarian visitor in a low pony-chaise towards the western shore, in order that the latter might inspect the ruins of the old chapel erected there to St. Justinian, the teacher of St. David himself. For the breeze not only tempered the heat in the high-banked and flower-bedecked channel which was the road thither, but to some extent kept away the flies from Patch, the fat, slowly-trotting old pony, who need hardly have been taken from his stable for so short an excursion but that Mr. Thistleton, lame from birth was dependent upon some means of transport.
The dust rose behind and drifted slowly on to the banks on either side—on to the troops of ferns, the hundreds of foxgloves, the recurrent patches of pink campion which harmonised so well with them and the yellow snapdragon which made so vivid a contrast, and on to the spires of the majestic, woolly-leaved mulleins planted at regular intervals, apparently by some celestial under-gardener, which were just beginning to twinkle into bloom. The distance from the Precentory to Porthstinian was less than two miles, yet Nest, as she drove, had time to feel sleepy with the heat and the dust-muffled clop-clop of Patch’s advance. Papa, she could hear, was talking to Mr. Thistleton about the restoration of the Cathedral’s west front, now in progress, but she did not listen. Soon, as she knew from past experience with visitors, they would be discussing with equal zest the curious chimney, alleged to be “Flemish,” of the farmhouse at Rhosson, which they would shortly reach and wish to stop at; indeed but a couple of minutes had elapsed before she caught the word “Flemings” already passing between the two gentlemen.
They were out of the lane now, and on their left Trefeiddan Pool, small and shallow, glittered in the stretch of moorland between them and the craggy eminence of Clegyr Boia, where the chieftain who made himself so objectionable to St. David was reputed to have had his fastness. Now a farmhouse sat beneath its slopes, just as Rhosson beneath another sudden hillock. Pool, moor and crag were all upon a small scale. A little further and they were at Rhosson; Nest pulled up Patch almost mechanically, Dr. Meredith and his guest alighted; the former pointed, they viewed; finally they entered the farmhouse.
Nest Meredith untied the ribbon of her big shady hat and fanned herself awhile with it, the sun glinting on her golden-brown ringlets. Patch stood with drooping head, only his long tail busy. The scent of hay was in the air, for one or two fields near Rhosson were already cut, though none was yet carried. In front, the rough road, rising slightly, cut off the view, but away to her right a strip of intensely blue water showed up the brown, seared promontory of St. David’s Head itself, shaped at that distance like an outstretched crocodile—not that Nest had ever seen a crocodile. She had only to turn round to see the great tower of the Cathedral emerging, with no sign of the building to which it was attached, from the hollow which held the shrine of Dewi Sant.
It had never occurred to Nest Meredith, the daughter of the Cathedral’s chief dignitary—for here at St. David’s, where there had never been a Dean, the Precentor or Chanter held that position—to criticise the unprecedented site which the Cathedral itself occupied, down in the valley of the river Alan, while the little town was grouped along the ridge above. She was too much accustomed to its unique position; indeed, rather proud of it. But her married sister Jane, when she came from her present home in Lincolnshire to visit them,