Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall “Christmas Stories”edition , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
“And a mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as everI saw in all the days of my life!” said Captain Jorgan, lookingup at it.
Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village wasbuilt sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There wasno road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a levelyard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregularrows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting hereand there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long successionof stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbeddown the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, andmade of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laidaside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy,flourished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeystoiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal,and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancingfleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they gotso lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that theyseemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surfaceagain far off, high above others. No two houses in the villagewere alike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree,anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water, runningclear and bright. The staves were musical with the clatteringfeet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermenurging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen’s wivesand their many children. The pier was musical with the wash ofthe sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy flutteringof little vanes and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders ofwhich the pier was made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, werebrown with drying nets. The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded totheir extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflectedin the bluest water, under the clear North Devonshire sky of a Novemberday without a cloud. The village itself was so steeped in autumnalfoliage, from the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of thetopmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird’s-nesting,and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioningbirds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the rookwas very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wingswas fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping amongthe great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless inthe faith of his ancestors, and the Children in the Wood.
Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing himselfon the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some men dowhen they are pleased—and as he always did when he was pleased—andsaid,—
“A mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as ever Isaw in all the days of my life!”
Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come downto the pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look at itfrom the level of his own natural element. He had seen many thingsand places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and avigorous memory. He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,—aNew-Englander,—but he was a citizen of the world, and a combinationof most of the best qualities of most of its best countries.
For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coatand blue trousers, without holding converse with eve