“We rounded the Land’s End,” he said, “that night all well, and came up Channel with a fair wind. The captain turned in. It was my watch. All at once, about nine at night, it began to blow in one moment as if the storm burst out by signal; the wind went mad; our canvas burst in bits. We reeved fresh sails: they went also. At last we were under bare poles. The captain had turned out when the storm began. He sent me forward to look out for Lundy Light. I saw your cliff.” [This was a bluff and broken headland just by the southern boundary of my own glebe.] “I sang out, ‘Land!’ I had hardly done so when she struck with a blow and stuck fast. Then the captain sang out, ‘All hands to the maintop!’ and we all went up. The captain folded his arms and stood by silent.” Here I asked him, anxious to know how they expressed themselves at such a time, “But what was said afterwards, Le Daine?” “Not one word, sir; only once, when the long boat went over, I said to the skipper: ’sir, the boat is gone.’ But he made no answer.” How accurate was Byron’s painting!— “Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave.” “At last there came on a dreadful wave, mast-top high, and away went the mast by the board, and we with it, into the sea. I gave myself up. I was the only man on the ship that could not swim; so, where I fell into the water, there I lay. I felt the waves beat me and send me on. At last there was a rock under my hand. I clung on. Just then I saw Alick Kant, one of our crew, swimming past. I saw him lay his hand on a rock, and I sang out, ‘Hold on, Alick!’ But a wave rolled and swept him away, and I never saw his face more. I was beaten onward and onward among the rocks and the tide, and at last I felt the ground with my feet. I scrambled on. I saw the cliff, steep and dark, above my head. I climbed up until I reached a kind of platform with grass; and there I fell down flat upon my face, and either I fainted away, or I fell asleep. There I lay a long time, and when I awoke it was just the break of day. There was a little yellow flower under my head; and, when I saw that, I knew I was on dry land.” This was a plant of the bird’s-foot clover, called in old times, Our Lady’s Finger. He went on: “I could see no house or sign of people, and the country looked to me like some wild and desert island. At last I felt very thirsty, and I tried to get down towards a valley where I thought I should find water. But before I could reach it I fell and grew faint again; and there, thank God, sir, you found me.”