Most dramatic was the wreck of the steamship _Marana_, in the wild blizzard of March 9th, 1891. As night closed down upon the wild scene off the Start, the lighthouse-keeper’s wife, looking forth from behind a window, upon that seething world of torn sea and whirling snowflakes, thought she saw a vessel drive through the smother of it, under the lighthouse. No help was possible, and the vessel was gone like a ghost. The tale that was afterwards told was a pitiful one. Just before the vessel struck, and was broken in two, amidship, the crew made for shore, twenty-two of them in the lifeboat and four others in a smaller. The surf in Lannacombe Bay was so great that they dared not attempt a landing, and made for Prawle, where the lifeboat was smashed to pieces on the Mag Ledge. Most of the unfortunate sailors were drowned, only four surviving to tell the tale. A fifth, who had managed to drag himself, bruised and bleeding, from the rocks to land, lay down, exhausted, for shelter, and died out there in the snow. It was not until a fortnight later that his body was found. It was on the same occasion that the _Dryad_ was totally wrecked at the extremity of the Start at midnight, and all hands lost. One survivor was seen at daybreak, clinging to a rock, but before help could reach him he was washed away. The neighbourhood of the Start is an unsatisfactory place to be in on a day threatening rain, for it is outside roads, and the more than knee-high bracken of the coastguard paths is at such times a supersaturating growth. And the way up-along and down-along and round this way and that, past Pear Tree Point, where there are not any pear-trees (and I dare swear there never were any) is toilsome. Beyond the Point is the yellow strand of Lannacombe, famous for Lannacombe Mill and its miller, who, when French privateers were here, there, and everywhere in the old rumbustious days and visited him one night, flung his money-bag out of window and found it, safe enough, the next morning, suspended in an elder-bush. The guide-books tell how the ruins of the mill may be seen, but they shyly hide themselves from some, and the other Lannacombe Mill, up the combe, which may not be historic in this small sort, is at any rate picturesque enough to be excused a story. If one were not afraid of getting wet through on a moist afternoon, here by the clucking water-wheel and the moss-grown walls and the clear-running mill-leat should some hours be whiled away. [Illustration: CHIVELSTONE: A RAINY DAY.] But the day that had gloomed at length grew damp, and necessity compelled a double-quick to the most accessible village: that of Chivelstone. On the way to it, that fine rain characteristic of Devonshire came down like smoke from the hills. “’Tes what us carls a miz-wet,” said a farm-labourer, trudging home contentedly beneath a thick covering of potato-sacks; and they do not call it amiss, for the mist is undeniable, and there is no mistaking the wetness of it.