It was getting dusky before our launch appeared, and the Cornish shore, where lay the modern town of Torpoint, was become a great grey bank, featureless in the twilight. Great ships lay anchored in the fairway: the transports _Hindostan_ and _Himalaya_, white painted and beautiful, and several hideous battle-ships, of the latest type, black, and lying low in the water. We could hear the ships’ bells strike the hour in that curious nautical fashion which I, for one, do not understand. To a landsman it was seven o’clock; on board it was “six bells.” Presently lights were hung out aloft, and the ports began to throw gleams upon the hurrying tide. Sheer hulks, lying up river at their last moorings, cast no responsive ray, but, wrapped in darkness, fretted at their buoys and chains, as they have done for long, with every tide. Some one afloat sang the “Larboard Watch,” ashore a bugle sounded; night fell, the stars came out; the name of England, her might and majesty, the glory and the terror of her, filled our hearts too full for words. Presently the launch came alongside the landing-stage and we went aboard. The voyage was chill with evening winds blowing down the valley of the Tamar. We passed a silent fleet of Tartarean looking torpedo-boats, moored, silent and deserted, in a long line, with great white numbers painted on their bows, and towering war-ships, with tall masts and heavy spars, and armoured sides--a type just becoming obsolete, or already become so, we move so fast nowadays. We ran past hulks, scarlet painted, with stores of gunpowder and gun-cotton aboard; past the Government powder wharf; then to the landing at Bull Point, and soon to Saltash pontoon. We came off the steamer into Saltash streets. Giant piers of Saltash Bridge loomed impressively overhead, and cottages beneath crouched humbly in crowded ways. A piano-organ was discussing interminable strings of curly chords and flourishes, to whose din children were dancing by the light of a waterside public. The sights and sounds effectually vulgarised time and place. We thought, as we toiled up the steep street, that Saltash was an abominable hole, and wished ourselves anywhere else. Calling at the post-office for letters lying there for us, we chanced to hear of good rooms; so, with only the trouble of walking to the last house but one in the town, we were speedily suited with a resting-place. XLIX. Now were we in Cornwall, the land of fairies and piskies, and of prodigious saints and devils; the land of “once upon a time”--delightful period of twilight vagueness. According to John Taylor, who wrote in 1649--