They call it three and a half miles from Dartmouth to Dittisham; we made it, I should say, about eight; but there is no occasion for any one who essays to follow our route to emulate this shocking example. Those eight miles were all either up or down hill. A spirit-level wouldn’t get the ghost of a chance anywhere along these lanes, for, the moment you get atop of a hill, it begins to descend again.

We had just reached the bottom of a long hill when we met a countryman of whom we inquired the way.

“Did ye coom from oop yon?” said he.

“Yes,” we replied, with forebodings of disaster.

“Then you’ve coom aout of y’r way,” he said; “ye’ll have to go oop and take th’ next turn to th’ right.”

We took his directions, and were rewarded by presently coming into Dittisham, in receipt, by the way, of a sudden and startling view of Torquay and Marychurch, eight miles away as the crow flies, and yet perfectly clear and distinct.

Down through Dittisham lanes we went, past the great grey tower of the church, with its sun-dial, on to the beach of the river at ebb. Here were several plum trees, loaded with plums; a small variety, dark blue, more like damsons, and hard, and not too sweet. We, I grieve to say, plucked many of these plums and ate them; but there was a Nemesis attendant on the act.

The beach was practicable for some distance, until the water on one side, and a high padlocked gate decorated with spikes and nails on the other, seemed to bar all further progress. We carefully scaled the gate, and dropped into the meadows on the other side, leaving a record of our progress in the shape of a fragment of the Wreck’s clothing fluttering aloft in the breeze. A toilsome climb through many fields and thick hedges brought us to a vantage point, whence we could see our goal—Dittisham Quay—below, situated on a narrow isthmus beside the Dart, where the river doubled on its course. Close beside it miraculously appeared the village we had left. We had painfully traversed three miles of this promontory, instead of crossing the narrow neck of land that alone separated village and quay.

Tea was a grateful meal indeed after this. We took it at the open windows of an inn that looked upon the water, and when the meal was done the sun went down. The air grew intensely chill, and the mists crept along the face of the water. I had just touched in the last notes of Dittisham Quay, when the whistle of the steamer sounded up river, and the vessel came swiftly round the Point. We were the only passengers from Dittisham, and were soon put aboard. This steamer was one of the smaller boats that ply on the Dart, with furnace and boiler-covering on deck. We sat on the hot iron, the Wreck and I, and felt happy as the heat worked through. Now and again the crew (two all told) would open the furnace door, and the light from the glowing coals would shine on their faces with a ruddy glow, intensified by the steely-blue water and the dark background of hills, until they looked like so many devils from hell.

We nearly ran down in the darkness a small launch, whose occupant had (one of the crew observed) suddenly “shifted his hellum”—whatever that may mean, and then we ran alongside the Britannia and the Hindostan training-vessels, with their lights streaming brilliantly through many ports on to the tide.

Those two sturdy old line-of-battle ships, with their lofty sides and long ranges of ports, tier over tier, are of types more seemly, more impressive, than the wallowing masses of ironmongery that to-day are in the forefront of our navy. They recall the days when England was well defended against tremendous odds by her wooden walls, superseded in these days by intricate machinery, inconstant and uncertain in time of need, and misdirected from Westminster by wooden heads that unluckily show no signs of supersession.

The moon had risen over Kingswear when our throbbing cockle-shell stopped her heart-beats and was warped gently against the pontoon, and the shine tipped every little ripple in the harbour with silver, making silhouettes of Kingswear houses and hills. Two red lights shone from the landing-stage, and a number of other lights glimmered yellow by comparison with the moon’s rays; other hills were of a velvety blackness, and against them stood out the slim white masts and spars of the many yachts anchored out in mid-stream. The little pencillings of light that played upon the water added to the charm of the scene and the witchery of it. You cannot convey a sense of its beauty by words; it cannot, indeed, be conveyed at all. Take the charmingest effect of stage scenery that you have ever seen, and add a Shylock-like percentage, then you are by way of a conception of the surpassing beauty of Dartmouth harbour on a summer’s night.