On this Sunday we stayed at Salcombe, and with due Sabbatical languor explored the fantastic pinnacles of Bolt Head, beautiful with the lowering beauty of a dark and sullen savagery. It is a wild and storm-tossed promontory on the seaward side of a beautiful estate belonging to the Earl of Devon--a place bearing the singular name of The Moult. Down in the bottom, where the Moult homestead stands sheltered, the tall elms grow straight and comely; but on the hillside, trees of all kinds cling tenaciously in gnarled, twisted, and stunted forms, all bent in the direction in which stormy winds most do blow. Down beside the water, facing the entrance to the harbour, stand the remains of Salcombe Castle, washed with the waves of every high tide. Salcombe Castle was the scene of a four months’ defence against the beleaguering Roundheads, and when it at last surrendered, the garrison marched out with all the honours of war, “with thire usuall armes, drumes beating, and collars flyinge, with boundelars full of powder, and muskets apertinable.” XLVIII. We were up early this morning, in order to catch the Kingsbridge Packet, which called here on its way to Plymouth, and was timed for eight o’clock. But we need not have hurried over our breakfast to reach the quay, for when we walked aboard on the stroke of eight, the amphibious-looking crew were still busily loading up with the fragments of machinery and steam-pipes salved from a neighbouring wreck, and it was not until nearly an hour later that we were steaming out of the harbour toward the open sea. Meanwhile we secured as decent seats as might be on this grimy cargo-steamer of the old-fashioned paddle description, and watched with considerable amusement the frantic efforts of crew and loafers to push her off from the quay walls. The captain, not, I think, a skipper of coruscating brilliancy, took the wheel, and shouted himself hoarse down the speaking-tube with contrary directions, among which we distinguished such choice expressions as, “Stop her, damn you!” “Easy turn ahead!” “Full turn astern!” while the paddle-box ground horribly against the projecting corners of the quay, and the crew and the crowd of loafers jabbed away violently with long poles. At last we swung clear, and steamed into the fairway, where we stopped and took two sailing vessels in tow. When we had made all fast we started in earnest, and came out of Salcombe round by Bolt Head with much straining and slackening of hawsers, as the two vessels astern pitched and wallowed in the heavy seas. The morning was chill and misty, and inclined for rain. The rocks of Bolt Head, although we were so near to them, could only now and again be even partially seen through shredded vapours, and all around was a ghostly wall of opalescent fog. The pilot took charge of the wheel--a statuesque figure, silent, impassive, shrouded in gamboge-coloured oilskins, and steadfastly gazing ahead with set eyes under shaggy eyebrows.