POOLE HARBOUR 65 



of the tide on the cables, the cries of the coast-birds 

 could be heard the familiar noises of Neptune's 

 poultry-yard, feeding round the threshold of the deep. 

 At the end of the great frost of the beginning of 

 the year 1895 ^ P a ^ another visit to the harbour; 

 this time approaching it from the east, along the 

 Bournemouth and Branksome sands, and following 

 the coast-line to the extreme point of the sand-hills 

 at the harbour entrance. Race-horses, frozen out 

 from Newmarket Heath, were training on the edge 

 of the sand, under the yellow cliff ; the sun was bright 

 and hot under the shelter of the pines, and the sea 

 was slipping in in waves so tiny that they barely rose 

 to the height of the horses' fetlocks. They were the 

 merest pretence and fiction of waves sportive, illusive 

 yet where the long sand-dam joins the upper cliff, 

 and shuts in the right-hand haven of Poole from 

 the sea, where the entrance would be, and may have 

 been, before the sand-hills grew, was the fresh wreck 

 of a thousand ton ship, her paint new, her fittings 

 perfect, except the bulwarks, and her name still legible 

 upon the stern. She had tried to make the entrance 

 of Poole harbour, when caught in the gale, the effects 

 of which upon the sea-fowl have been described 

 in a previous chapter. 1 The Swanage life-boat came 

 out gallantly through the " Race " which runs round 

 "Old Harry Rock" at St. Alban's Head, but the 

 boat was swamped and the coxswain drowned. Then 



1 The Sea-Fowl and the Storm, p. 17. 



