tain, married a fortnight
before, rushed down into his cabin, drank a bottle of brandy, and was
seen no more. The country rings with cries of shame on the dastards of
Bude." A calmer eyewitness quite absolves the Bude men from all
blame--to render more help had been impossible. The vessel was being
steered skilfully to take the haven, but she was too large for its
mouth. But, unjust or not, we must love Parson Hawker. He tells of his
procedure when a corpse was reported: "I go out into the moonlight
bareheaded, and when I come near I greet the nameless dead with
the sentences 'I am the Resurrection and the Life,' &c.
They lay down their burthen at my feet--I look upon the
dead--tall--stout--well-grown--boots on, elastic, and socks--girded
with a rope round the waist. I give him in charge to the sexton and
his wife to cleanse, to arrange, to clothe the dead. I order a strong
coffin, and the corpse is locked in for the night. I write a letter to
the coroner and deliver it for transit to the police. And here the
misery begins." To every corpse discovered Hawker gave burial in
consecrated ground; it was not many years since the law had forbidden
this. The few graphic words quoted give us an idea of his days spent
on this lonely, pitiless coast--days which he varied by acts of
beneficence to his parishioners, and by the writing of much beautiful
poetry. Close to the mouth of this perilous haven is the low
breakwater, built to connect an outlying mass of rock that was
formerly insular with every tide. Carew (1602) speaks of this rock; he
says: "We meete with Bude, an open sandie bay, in whose mouth riseth a
little hill, by euerie sea-floud made an Iland, and thereon a decayed
chapell: it spareth roade only to such small shipping as bring their
tide with them, and leaveth them drie, when the ebb hath carried away
the salt water." He tells how Arundel of Trerice had a house here
named Efford, now the Bude vicarage; and how this gentleman "builded a
salt-water mill athwart this bay, whose causey serveth, as a verie
convenient bridge, to save the way-farers former trouble, let and
daunger." The present church stands near, built by Sir Thomas Acland
in 1835. The chapel on the islet, decayed even in Carew's time, was
dedicated to St. Michael, its dedication being transferred to the
present church; only a few faint traces of the old building can be
seen. It was this same Sir Thomas Ackland who constructed the
bathing-pool at the end