The launch is naturally more independent of the weather than the sailing-boats, but even she has been known to come to grief in a high gale, and has been ignominiously towed in by a trawler; and if you do venture out in her when there is a lot of sea on, she may take up or land her mails and yet refuse to run the risk of landing _you_. Mails can be thrown, but you cannot; and her dinghy does not long keep its coat of royal blue paint amongst the rocks around St. Agnes. The whole past history of this island is one of a series of shipwrecks; and we cannot wonder at this when we see the gaunt and grim monsters that lie in wait for storm-driven or befogged vessels to the west and south-west. The very names of some of them are significant: Hellweathers, Old Wreck Ledge, Tearing Ledge, and the Crim Rocks (I am told that “crim” in Cornish means a creeping, trembling, shuddering feeling, as from fear). But who would ever expect to be wrecked on islets bearing the innocent names of Daisy and Great and Little Rose? And yet these rocks have also had their toll of human lives; in fact, there is scarcely one but serves as tombstone to some poor fellow--a tombstone which has brought him to the grave it marks. Heath makes a quaint comment on the frequency of wrecks near this island; “which,” says he, “makes the Inhabitants of it some Amends for their Forlornness of Abode.” There are stories that in the old days the islanders recognised so keenly the value of this “Amends” that they would drop propitiatory pins down St. Warna’s Well, praying to her to “send a wreck before morning.” This Saint, who is said to have come all the way from Ireland in a coracle of wicker and hides, was supposed to be instrumental in sending the wrecks, and generally to preside over and direct the good fortune of the islanders. She seems a much more suitable patron-saint for the stormy little island than the meek St. Agnes with her lamb. But how came this bold, adventurous dame to be accredited with such a weakness for pins? There are stories still more sinister: of ships lured to their destruction by false lights; of a lantern tied between the horns of a cow to lead mariners astray by its wandering gleam; and of other devices of the devotees of St. Warna, who evidently believed in the maxim of Æschylus, that the gods help those who help themselves. But whatever strange and wild doings there may have been in the past, nowadays none are more ready than the men of St. Agnes to risk their own lives in endeavouring to save others. They have a life-boat of their own, which is launched from a slip just below the church--a slip which they claim to be the longest in the world!