138 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



before. I went across to the postal telegraph signalling 

 station on Beast Point, a mile from Lizard Town, and 

 could see nothing. ' Go to the cliff's edge,' said the 

 younger Skewes, the signalman. I went almost to 

 the edge, and still saw nothing. I took a step more, 

 and looked over the edge. 



There, two hundred feet below, was a great vessel 

 of perhaps three thousand tons burden lying as though 

 at anchor, her bowsprit touching the vertical cliff, her 

 keel, alas ! on the rocks. It was the North German 

 Lloyd steamer Mosel from Southampton, bound for 

 the port she never reached — New York. 



Happily, there w^as no loss of life ; passengers and 

 crew alike were safely landed. As a means of reach- 

 ing the Mosel, a basket had been slung on a hawser 

 made fast to the mast and carried some way up the 

 cliff. Looking down the precipice, I saw a young lady, 

 the daughter of a neighbouring vicar, promenading 

 below on so much of the deck as was not awash, 

 having adventurously essayed the basket in order 

 to experience how, in practice, that means of escape 

 felt. 



The Mosel had missed her way in a dense fog. The 

 merest quiver of the compass-card, a point south 

 instead of west, would have kept her clear of Beast 

 Point and the Man-of-War rocks, sent her safely 

 into Mount's Bay, and on her course for rounding the 

 Land's End. But it was not to be. She struck 

 under the signal-house at seven a.m. Mr. J. N. Cox, 

 son of the active postmaster, sitting in the signal- 



