Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

The sun was low in the sky, almost directly in our eyes, as we came along the road above Whitesand Bay heading south to Sennen. I saw a spectacular stretch of sandy beach about a mile long and curving. Sir Jelbart was full of local folklore. It was here, apparently, that the Saxon King Athelstan landed during his attempt to conquer the Celts of Cornwall. It was here that the Pretender Perkin Warbeck came ashore from Ireland in his vain attempt to seize the English Crown. The sea was calm now, but our guide told us that it usually came rolling shoreward in long breakers.

“There is a small craft out there by that point,” observed Holmes. “It seems to have a curious engine fitted on its stern.”

Sir Jelbart glanced toward it. It was anchored at the north end of the bay, the opposite end of the large bay to the location of Sennen Cove.

“That’s Aires Point.” He screwed up his eyes to focus on the point. “Ah, that is young Harry Penwarne’s boat.”

“What’s he doing?”

“No idea. He’s a bit of an inventor. Amateur, of course. He once explained it all to me. The Penwarne place is just by Aire’s Point at Tregrifnan. Sad history.”

“Why so?” asked Holmes.

“The Penwarnes are one of the old families in these parts, but young Harry’s father was a gambler. He lost most of the family fortune. Shot himself while young Harry was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris about ten years ago. Harry returned here and has tried to keep Tregrifnan House going. Inventive young man. Full of all these modern technological ideas, but he worries too much. Frequently seen him with bloodshot eyes. Burning the midnight oil, what?”

Chy Trevescan was certainly a large house in anyone’s estimation. But it was an ugly house. Squat and brooding, thickset, just like the granite countryside. As we drove up to the main door, we noticed that a small pony and trap stood outside. It was a single horse, twowheeled affair. Standing on the step was a solemnfaced man whose black broadcloth proclaimed him as a minister.

“Sir Jelbart,” the man greeted him even before he descended, “I do not approve of this enterprise. I have heard that your brother is sailing on the Torrington Lass tonight, and I do not approve.”

“Our local minister, Mr. Neal,” explained Sir Jelbart under his breath. Then aloud: “I fail to see what business it is of yours, sir. You have abrogated your responsibility to your flock by not demonstrating that what is happening on the Tribbens Rocks is not the Devil’s work. Now my brother and I must take matters into our own hands.”

Mr. NeaFs face was distorted in anger. “As your minister, I forbid it. You have no right to interfere with matters of the otherworld. It is God’s wish that these vessels be stricken down, for their crews must be debauched. They are being punished for their sins; otherwise God would intervene and save them from their doom! I tell you, it is God who drives those ships on the Tribbens Rocks! Their vines are vines of Sodom, grown on the terraces of Gomorrah; their grapes are poisonous, the clusters bitter to the taste….”

“Deuteronomy!” snapped Holmes suddenly, the sharpness of his voice causing the minister to stop, blinking. “But hardly appropriate. God would surely not waste his time organizing shipwrecks, Mr. Neal, in order to punish those souls who have met their fate on those rocks.”

“I warn you, sir,” cried the minister, “do not attempt to interfere or you, too, will be doomed-the way of the wicked is doomed….”

“But the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,” replied Holmes solemnly, quoting from the same psalm.

The minister turned toward his governess’s cart. “You have been warned!” he cried as he climbed into his pony and trap and disappeared down the driveway.

Sir Jelbart bade us come inside for refreshment while he sent for the local fisherman whom he trusted. Holmes suggested that only he and myself, together with the boatman, need set out on the expedition to examine the rocks. The boatman’s name was Noall Tresawna, a simple, thickset man. Holmes explained what he wanted, and the man made no demur. When Holmes asked him if he had heard about the supernatural phenomenon, Tresawna nodded.

“Are you not a little apprehensive, my friend?” asked Holmes. “We must rely on your nerve and experience in a little boat out there among’the rocks.”

“I do be a Godfearing man, master,” Tresawna replied. “I say my prayers and keep the commandments, and I place my fate in God’s hands. For it is written in the Good Book:

Happy is the man

who does not take the wicked for his guide

nor walk the road that sinners tread

nor take his seat among the scornful…

Holmes broke in:

… the law of the Lord is his delight

the law his meditation night and day .

Tresawna looked impressed. “Aye, master, that do be so, and thus I be not afear’d of specters.”

Toward midnight, Tresawna met us at the kitchen door of the house and led us by the light of a storm lantern across fields to a cliff top, which was a point overlooking the Tribbens. The point was called Pednmendu, which Holmes afterward told me meant “the head of black stone.” A dangerous stairlike path descended to where he had moored his boat. The night was a dark blue velvet. Bright white stars winked in the sky, and the moon was only in its first quarter and thus shedding little illumination.

Once inside the boat, Tresawna extinguished the lantern, for he knew the seas around the coast better in what little natural light there was than by artificial means.

Holmes bent close to me as we sat in the stern. “Have you brought your revolver as I requested, Watson?”

“I have. But do you expect me to shoot at a twelvefoothigh naked dancer?” I inquired sarcastically.

“Not quite, old fellow. I expect a more tangible, fleshandblood target to present itself.”

The little boat rocked its way through the calm, dark seas along the tower cliffs of Pednmendu, out to a point where we could see the line of white surf breaking along the stretch of Whitesand Bay.

“There be the Tribbens now, sir,” called our boatman, pointing toward the black shadows that were looming up ahead of us. We could hear the whispering seas sighing and crashing gently against them.

“They don’t look so menacing,” I ventured.

“Not to us in this small boat, sir,” Noall Tresawna agreed. “But a large vessel with a lower keel could be ripped open by the hidden jagged rocks that be just a few feet below us.”

“Is that what happened to the vessels that have been sunk here?” asked Holmes.

“That’s about it, sir. A good skipper can take his vessel up between Talymen and Kettle’s Bottom to the west or between Kettle’s Bottom and the Peal on the east. After that, it is a straight run between Shark’s Fin and the Tribbens and out across the bay. But I hear tell from those who have survived that the curiosity to see the dancing lady caused them to steer too close to the rocks on their starboard and before they knew it, the ship’s keels were sheared away, like a knife going through butter.”

“Is it a deep bottom here?”

“Not too deep as happens, but deep enough.”

“What do you think is the cause of these vessels foundering? Do you think it is wreckers?”

“Not for me to say, sir. I wouldn’t say so. If it were wreckers, why choose a place where the ships aren’t driven ashore so that you could pick up the cargoes? That’s what they did in the old days. But here, the ships go down and lay on the bottom. There’s no currents to bring anything ashore.”

The rocks were now closer. The one closest to the cliffs was almost an island in its size, and this, Tresawna told us, was called Cowloe. Beyond these rocks were two other large pinnacles jutting from the sea.