One stormy day, when a furious west wind was driving upon the land and bowling mountains of green water against the coast, it was noised that a vessel was visible scudding before the wind in dangerous proximity to the shore. The signal-rock was speedily crowded with anxious watchers. The coast-guardsman observed her attentively with his glass and said: “It is _The Pet_. The hatchways are all closed.” Eyes watched her bounding through the waves, now on the summit of a huge green billow, now deep in its trough, till she was lost to sight in the rain and spondrift. That was the last seen of _The Pet_; she, with old Daddy Tregellas and all on board, went to the bottom in that dreadful storm. Boscastle is a hamlet of quaint, gabled, weather-beaten cottages, inhabited by sailors, clinging to the steep sides of the hills that dip rapidly to the harbour, a mere cleft in the rocks, in shape like an S. The entrance is between huge precipices of black rock, one of them scooped out into a well; it is the resort of countless gulls, which breed along the ledges. The harbour is masked by an islet of rock covered by a meagre crop of sea-grass and thrift. Mr. Claud Hawker, the brother of the subject of this memoir, resided till his death at Penally in Boscastle. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV Mr. Hawker’s Politics—Election of 1857—His Zeal for the Labourers—“The Poor Man and his Parish Church”—Letter to a Landlord—Death of his Man, Tape—Kindness to the Poor—Verses over his Door—Reckless Charity—Hospitality—A Breakdown—His Eccentric Dress—The Devil and his Barn—His Ecclesiastical Vestments—Ceremonial—The Nine Cats—The Church Garden—Kindness to Animals—The Rooks and Jackdaws—The Well of St. John—Letter to a Young Man entering the University. MR. HAWKER in politics, as far as he had any, was a Liberal; and in 1857 he voted for Mr. Robartes, afterwards Lord Robartes.