A neighbour can be persuaded,
terrified, forced; but London is always a long way off, and London
lawyers are the devil. I say freely that (knowing no more than they
did, or I) these two gentlemen followed a reasonable policy.
But, after we had fitted Sir Nicholas with our common story, and as I
was mounting my horse in Clowance courtyard, Mr. Saint Aubyn came close
to my stirrup and said this by way of parting:
"You will understand, Mr. Tonkin, that to-day's tale is for to-day.
But by God I will come and take my share--you may tell your master--and
a trifle over! And the next time I overtake you I promise to put a
bullet in the back of your scrag neck."
For answer to this--seeing that Master Porson stood at an easy distance
with his eye on us--I saluted him gravely and rode out of the courtyard.
Now the manner of the wreck was this, and our concern with it.
So nearly as I can learn, the _Saint Andrew_ came ashore at two hours
after noon: the date, the 20th of January, 1526, and the weather at the
time coarse and foggy with a gale yet blowing from the south-west or a
good west of south, but sensibly abating, and the tide wanting an hour
before low water.
It happened that Mr. Saint Aubyn was riding, with twenty men at his
back, homeward from Gweek, where he had spent three days on some private
business, when he heard news of the wreck at a farmhouse on the road to
Helleston: and so turning aside, he, whose dwelling lay farthest from
it, came first to the cove.
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