And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard¹, if we meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.  
"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel Cove² and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."
 
It was indeed very delightful³. Directly after breakfast—and we are people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness—we went
 
"Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"
along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the remains⁴ of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a recess⁵ in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have examined, I know. But—we didn't do it. Some of us were content to rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute investigation⁷, and some of us were so eminently⁸ practical that "a good bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in the world.
 
So we wandered slowly on, rejoicing at having the place all to ourselves, when we came suddenly upon a tall black figure intently watching three other black figures, or rather dots, which were climbing slowly over Penolver.
 
It was our clerical friend of Kynance; with whom, in the natural and right civility of holiday-makers, we exchanged a courteous⁹ good morning.
 
"Yes, those are my girls up on the cliff there. They have been bathing, and are now going to walk to Cadgwith."
 
"Then nobody fell into the Devil's Throat at Kynance? They all came back to you with whole limbs?"
 
"Yes," said he smiling, "and they went again for another long walk in the afternoon. At night, when it turned out to be such splendid moonlight, they actually insisted on going launce-fishing. Of course you know about launce-fishing?"
 
I pleaded my utter ignorance of that noble sport.
 
"Oh, it is the thing at the Lizard. My boys—and girls too—consider it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar¹⁰ to these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows¹¹ in the sand just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles on wet sand, with a crooked¹² iron spear which you dart¹³ in and hook him up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with."
 
"Easy fishing," said I, with a certain pity for the sand-eel.
 
"Not so easy as appears. You are apt either to chop him right in two, or miss him altogether, when off he wriggles¹⁴ in the sand and disappears. My young people say it requires a practised hand and a peculiar twist of the wrist, to have any success at all in launce fishing. It can only be done on moonlight nights—the full moon and a day or two after—and they are out half the night. They go about barefoot, which is much safer than soaked shoes and stockings. About midnight they light a fire on the sand, cook all the fish they have caught, and have a grand supper, as they had last night. They came home as merry as crickets about two o'clock this morning. Perhaps you might not have noticed what a wonderful moonlight night it was?"
 
I had; but it would not have occurred to me to spend it in standing¹⁵ for hours up to the knees in salt water, catching¹⁶ unfortunate fish.
 
However, tastes differ, and launce-fishing may be a prime delight to some people; so I faithfully chronicle it, and the proper mode of pursuing it, as one of the attractions at the Lizard. I am not aware that it is practised at any other part of the Cornish coast, nor can I say whether or not it was a pastime of King Arthur and his Knights¹⁸. One cannot imagine Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot occupied in spearing a small sand-eel.
 
The bathing at Housel Cove was delightful as ever. And afterwards we saw that very rare and beautiful sight, a perfect solar rainbow. Not the familiar bow of Noah, but a great luminous¹⁹ circle round the sun, like the halo often seen round the moon, extending over half the sky; yellow at first, then gradually assuming faint prismatic tints²⁰. This colouring, though never so bright as the ordinary arched rainbow, was wonderfully tender and delicate. We stood a long time watching it, till at last it melted slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a sense of mystery, as of something we had never seen before and might never see again in all our lives.
 
It was a lovely day, bright and warm as midsummer, tempting²¹ us to some distant excursion; but we had decided²² to investigate the Lizard Lights. We should have been content to take them for granted, in their purely²³ poetical²⁴ phase, as we had watched them night after night. But some of us were blessed with scientific relatives, who would have despised us utterly²⁵ if we had spent a whole week at the Lizard and never gone to see the Lizard Lights. So we felt bound to do our duty, and admire, if we could not understand.
 
Which we certainly did not. I chronicle with shame that the careful and courteous explanations of that most intelligent young man, who met us at the door of the huge white building, apparently²⁶ quite glad to have an opportunity of conducting us through it, were entirely²⁷ thrown away. We mounted ladders, we looked at Brobdingnagian lamps, we poked²⁸ into mysterious machinery²⁹ for lighting³⁰ them and for sounding the fog-horn, we listened to all that was told us, and tried to look as if we took it in. Very much interested we could not but be at such wonderful results of man's invention, but as for comprehending! we came away with our minds as dark as when we went in.
 
I have always found through life that, next to being clever, the safest thing is to know one's own ignorance and acknowledge it. Therefore let me leave all description of the astonishing mechanism³¹ of the Lizard Lights—I believe the first experiment of their kind, and not very long established—to abler pens and more intelligent brains. To see that young man, scarcely above the grade of a working man, handling his instruments and explaining them and their uses, seeming to take for granted that we could understand—which alas³²! we didn't, not an atom!—inspired me with a sense of humiliation³³ and awe³⁴. Also of pride at the wonders this generation has accomplished³⁵, and is still accomplishing; employing the gradually comprehended forces of Nature against herself, as it were, and dominating her evil by ever-new discoveries and applications of the recondite³⁶ powers of good.
 
The enormous body of light produced nightly—equal, I think he said, to 30,000 candles—and the complicated machinery for keeping the fog-horn continually at work, when even that gigantic blaze became invisible—all this amount of skill, science, labour, and money, freely expended³⁷ for the saving of life, gave one a strong impression of not only British power but British beneficence. Could King Arthur have come back again from his sea-engulfed Land of Lyonesse, and stood where we stood, beside the Lizard Lights, what would he have said to it all?
 
Even though we did not understand, we were keenly interested in all we saw, and still more so in the stories of wrecks³⁸ which this young man had witnessed even during the few years, or months—I forget which—of his stay at the Lizard. He, too, agreed, that the rocks there, called by the generic³⁹ name of the Stags, were the most fatal of all on our coasts to ships outward and homeward bound. Probably because in the latter case, captain and crews get a trifle careless; and in the former—as I have heard in sad explanation of many emigrant⁴⁰ ships being lost almost immediately after quitting port—they get drunk. Many of the sailors are said to come on board "half-seas over," and could the skilfullest of pilots save a ship with a drunken crew?
 
Be that as it ............