arose from a thing he called
the "Gulf-stream", rushing up Channel suddenly. He said it was hot
water, almost fit for a man to shave with, and it threw all our cold
water out, and ruined the fish and the spawning-time, and a cold spring
would come after it. I was fond of going to Lynmouth on Sunday to hear
this old man talk, for sometimes he would discourse with me, when nobody
else could move him. He told me that this powerful flood set in upon our
west so hard sometimes once in ten years, and sometimes not for fifty,
and the Lord only knew the sense of it; but that when it came, therewith
came warmth and clouds, and fog, and moisture, and nuts, and fruit, and
even shells; and all the tides were thrown abroad. As for nuts he winked
awhile, and chewed a piece of tobacco; yet did I not comprehend him.
Only afterwards I heard that nuts with liquid kernels came, travelling
on the Gulf stream; for never before was known so much foreign cordial
landed upon our coast, floating ashore by mistake in the fog, and (what
with the tossing and the mist) too much astray to learn its duty.

Folk, who are ever too prone to talk, said that Will Watcombe himself
knew better than anybody else about this drift of the Gulf-stream,
and the places where it would come ashore, and the caves that took the
in-draught. But De Whichehalse, our great magistrate, certified that
there was no proof of unlawful importation; neither good cause to
suspect it, at a time of Christian charity. And we knew that it was a
foul thing for some quarrymen to say that night after night they had
been digging a new cellar at Ley Manor to hold the little marks of
respect found in the caverns at high-water weed. Let that be, it is none
of my business to speak evil of dignities; duly we common people joked
of the "Gulp-stream," as we called it.

But the thing which astonished and frightened us so, was not, I do
assure you, the landing of foreign spirits, nor the loom of a lugger at
twilight in the gloom of the winter moonrise. That which made as crouch
in by the fire, or draw the bed-clothes over us, and try to think of
something else, was a strange mysterious sound.

At grey of night, when the sun was gone, and no red in the west
remained, neither were stars forthcoming, suddenly a wailing voice rose
along the valleys, and a sound in the air, as of people running. It
mattered not whether you stood on the moor, or crouched behind rocks
away from it, or down among reed