Chapter I

Old Ben Rossiter’s cottage lay in a hollow of the cliff, where the heather ran down to the gorse, and Ben was sitting at his door in the evening sunlight, spinning yarns to the boy and girl who lay stretched at ease, their elbows in the heather and their chins in their hands as they watched Rossiter’s face.

Ben could remember much that had happened in the wildest days of Norland village—could invent when memory failed—and of all listeners he liked best these two who were known as Parson’s Twins to all the fisherfolk. They were twins in looks, though Nora’s face was like an elf’s and the boy’s was hardened by the free life of the coast. They were certainly twins in what Ben called “sheer devilment, just for love of it.”

“As I was saying, there _was_ a deal of smuggling in these parts, Master Dick. The best o’ them all, to my mind, was Black Garrowby, who hailed from Neasby-over-Bay yonder, though we can scarce see the headland now. True, there’s bad weather coming. It’s getting grey with the sundown.”

“But Black Garrowby?” asked Dick.

“Nay, it would fright Miss Nora here, if I told all I knew.”

“I like to be frightened, Ben. It tingles all down my back.”

“Well, this was the sort of lad he was, if you must know. There was a Preventive chap—name of Glendyke—and there wasn’t much love lost ’twixt him and Black Garrowby. No, there wasn’t much love lost.”

He paused to shift his quid of baccy from the left cheek to the right.

“They met on the cliff-top one moonlight night,” he went on. “The Preventive came on Garrowby just as he climbed up-cliff with a keg of brandy on his shoulders. There was a big moon rising over the moor, so they saw each other, plain as daylight almost. And the Preventive says to Garrowby, ‘We’re quits at last,’ says he. ‘We are,’ says Black Garrowby, and runs in and gets t’other’s cutlass out of his hand.”

Ben shifted his “wad” from the right cheek to the left. He liked to keep these two waiting, breathless, till he took up his tale again.

“As I said, the moon gave a fairish light to see by. Garrowby swung the cutlass twice, and then he clove the Preventive right through neck and all. And the head of the man bumped over-cliff, bumped down from rock to rock, it did, till all the sea-mews came out clattering to know what had tumbled in among ’em.”

“Nothing happens like that nowadays,” sighed Nora.

“It’s as well, may be. It does seem outrageous—the head of a man waking sea-birds from their sleep—and it couldn’t happen now, of course.”

Ben Rossiter glanced out to sea again, and his voice was sharp on the sudden.

“There’s dirty weather coming, so get home before you’re drenched. Parson has enough to say to me as it is about filling your heads with tales best forgotten.”

Dick was still sprawling in the heather, his eyes intent on Ben Rossiter. So Raleigh, in old Devon days, might have looked at the weathered sea-dogs of his time.

“Father is over at the Island,” he said, “and told us he couldn’t get back till late. There’s plenty of time for another tale.”

“Bless the boy, what sort of yarn does he want now?”

“A wrecking tale. They used to put lights on Norland Cliff to bring ships on the rocks.”

“To be sure they did,” broke in the old man gruffly, “but I like to forget all that. Smuggling was smuggling, fair and square. But to ’tice a good ship on the reef, and break her timbers, and drown the sailor-men aboard of her—it don’t bear thinking of.”

“What sort of light did they use, Ben?”

“Why, just a storm-lantern. When a ship’s in trouble on a black night, a littlish light on the cliffs shows very plain.”

“And nothing happens like that, either, nowadays,” said Nora, with the same wistful sigh. “It must have been fine to live then. Fancy the ship breaking up on the reef, the very minute the Preventive’s head bounded down—and Black Garrowby laughing on top of the cliff while he danced a jig.”

“It wasn’t fine to live then,” said Rossiter, “for _I lived then myself_, and I know. And now pack home, the two of you. There’s no more yarns to-night.”

They went reluctantly, knowing this mood of his. Rossiter watched them fade and dwindle into twilight of the heather, and wondered if he’d been harsh. A storm-lantern on the cliff—a broken ship below—it was all like an old-time story to Parson’s Twins. He should have been gentler with them, for they loved a tale.

He turned to look at the sea, churning into grey little ponies that would be white horses later on. On such a night as this he had seen terrible things, heard dreadful cries, and could not forget. Then he seemed to hear Nora’s voice again, saying that nothing happened like that nowadays. Rossiter knew that it might happen any time. Hard times had come to Norland village, and men were saying openly that if one way of earning bread-and-butter failed, another must be found.

“Old tales are well enough,” he grumbled. “I don’t want new ones of the Wreckers’ kind.”