Needless to say, the Sennan boat did not return for him that day, nor that evening; no, nor not on the next, nor the next, nor the next. Not till a week had run did the weather allow a boat of any kind to get near the Cam Bras. Poor man! let us hope he made the best of his incarceration; any way, it is recorded that he was not afterwards heard to complain of the keepers’ foresight in ordering in a good stock of provisions at a time, a store that would leave a little margin in case of accident. Those who have read James Cobb’s fascinating story, _The Watchers on the Longships_, will notice how strangely the present orderly management of the lighthouse, and of everything connected with it, contrasts with the happy-go-lucky arrangements for maintaining the light that existed in the lawless days when first it was established. The philanthropic schoolmaster who lived hard by the Land’s End, and by whose exertions the Longships lighthouse was established, was no creature of the author’s imagination; and, with the recollection of Killegrew’s struggle against popular prejudice fresh in our minds, we can well believe that Cobb’s powerful picture of life and sentiment amongst the Cornish wreckers is not over-painted. [Illustration: THE WRECKER.] No man did more to fight against this terrible ‘custom’ than the late Rector of Morwenstow, a desolate seaside village on the coast of North Cornwall. When he came there some sixty years ago, he found that not only the fishermen, but the small farmers whose farms lay near the coast, looked to the wrecks that happened to supply them, to a great extent, with food and household necessaries, and they regarded anything which would lessen shipwreck more or less as an interference with their just rights and privileges. Worse than this, they did not hesitate to procure shipwreck. The men and women of Morwenstow were wreckers, and nothing better. It was right, they argued, to till their ground to get as fat a harvest as they might, and it was fair to lure ships to destruction, so as to make the most of the harvest the sea would bear them. The rector’s servants had a good store of wrecking and smuggling stories to tell; some of them not reflecting too much credit on his predecessors in the rectory. Here is one of them:— At Morwenstow and many other seaside parishes in Cornwall it was the rule, if a shipwreck happened near by in service time, to bring word of it to the parson, who generally announced the fact to the congregation, and they, be it said, did not remain much longer to worship.