Monitress Merle by Angela Brazil (e book reader android TXT) 📗

if I do. Oh! I wish I'd never come! How am I going to get back?"

"There's only about a hundred yards like this," urged Mavis. "After that the path is all right again. Take my arm."

"No, no! I daren't! I can't go either backwards or forwards. I feel as if
I should faint!" sobbed Tattie, waxing quite hysterical.

Here was a dilemma! She must certainly be made to move one way or the other. With great difficulty Fay and Beata between them got her back to the path along which they had come, where she collapsed under the shelter of the wall, and sat down to recover.

"I'll be all right now," she said, wiping her eyes. "I can go home alone.
Don't let me keep any of you."

"We'll come with you," said Lizzie Colville. "Nan and I don't like walking so near the edge either. I wouldn't cross that place for worlds."

So it was arranged that the Ramsays and the Castletons and Fay should go on to St. Morval's Head, while the rest of the company turned back.

"It's a pity, but it's no good taking people who turn giddy," commented Mavis. "If they can't manage that piece of cliff, how would they scramble down into the cove?"

"They haven't got tennis shoes on for one thing," remarked Merle, "and boots are horribly slippery. You ought to have rubber soles for these rocks. It just makes all the difference. Mavis and I always wear them at Chagmouth."

"So do we. We learnt that at Porthkeverne. We're used to scrambling. As for Fay she's a real fairy. I believe she could fly if you gave her a push over the edge to start her off."

"Don't try, thanks, or I might turn into a mermaid instead of a fairy or a bird! I often think, though, I'd like a private aeroplane of my own. They're things that are bound to come sooner or later. I only hope I shan't be too old to use one when they do. What a view it is here!"

The difficult piece of cliff had led them round a corner, and they were now facing a magnificent sweep of coast-line. Below them, fixed to a buoy that floated on the water, a bell was ringing incessantly, its clanging sound floating over the sea like the knell of a mermaid's funeral.

"It's to warn the vessels off the rocks," explained Mavis. "They can hear it in a fog when they can't see quite where they are." Merle and I always call it 'The Inchcape Bell.' Oh, you know the story?

  'The worthy abbot of Aberbrothock
  Had fixed that bell on the Inchcape rock.
  On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
  And over the waves its warning rung.'

Then the pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover, goes and cuts it off, just out of spite, and sails away. Years afterwards his ship comes back to Scotland, and there's a thick fog, and he's wrecked on the very Inchcape rock from which he stole the warning bell.

  'Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair;
  He cursed himself in his wild despair.
  The waves poured in on every side,
  And the vessel sank beneath the tide.'"

"Serve him right too! It was a sneaking rag to play!" commented Merle.

"The bell makes me think of an old hermitage," said Romola. "I expect to see a monk walking along, telling his beads. Who was St. Morval? Didn't he have a little chapel on the cliffs here?"

"Romola always thinks of the Middle Ages," laughed Beata. "That's because she poses so much for Dad's pictures. It sounds like a church bell under the sea to me. When we lived at Porthkeverne we were close to the lost land of Lyonesse, and there was a lovely story about a mermaid. They said she used to come and sit on a broad flat stone outside the church and listen to the singing; and the priest heard of it, so one day he came out and talked to her, and asked her if she wouldn't like to be baptized, and she said she'd think about it. So she swam away; but she came back again and again, and it was decided that she was to be baptized on Easter Sunday. But on Good Friday there was a terrible storm, and the waves came up and swallowed the whole of the village, so that when the poor mermaid arrived she found the church sunk under the sea, and the priest and all the people drowned. There was nobody to baptize her, and there never has been since, and she swims about the water weeping and singing any little bits of the service that she can remember. The fishermen said if anybody was at sea and heard her it was bad luck, and a sign he would certainly be drowned before long."

"I love the quaint old legends!" said Mavis. "I shall always think of your mermaid now, when I hear the bell. This is our way down to the cove. It's a most frightful scramble. Can you manage it?"

The girls went first over grass and gorse, then climbed down a tiny track so narrow and slippery they were obliged to sit and slide, and finally, with some difficulty, scrambled on to the grim rugged rocks beneath. They were on a kind of platform, covered with seaweed and little pools, and with deep swirling water below.

Beata decided it would be a good place to fish, so they got out their log-lines. The first and most manifest thing to do was to find bait. There were plenty of limpets on the rocks, and with penknives they managed to dislodge some of them. It was only when a limpet was caught napping that it was possible to secure him: once he sat down tight and excluded the air from his shell, no amount of pulling could move him. The victims thus gathered were sacrificed by Beata and Merle, who acted as high priestesses, and chopped them up, and placed them upon the hooks, for neither Mavis nor Romola would touch them, and even Fay was not particularly keen upon this part of the fishing operations. They were ready at last, and cast their lines. Merle, unfortunately, through lack of experience, had not unreeled hers far enough, and the heavy weight sank deeply in the water and jerked the whole thing out of her hands into the sea.

"Oh, what a shame! And we've only just paid two and sixpence for it! What an utter idiot I was! I never thought it would pull like that. See, it's floating about down there!"

"I'll get it for you if I can," said Beata. With some manoeuvring she managed to fling her own line over it and drag it slowly in, losing it several times but rescuing it in the end.

After that mishap Merle was wiser, and threw with more discretion. Fay also tried her luck, and the girls sat waiting for bites. But alas! none came. There were several false alarms, but the lines when hauled in held nothing more exciting than hunks of seaweed. It was really most disappointing.

"I'm afraid they don't like the bait," said Beata at last. "If we could find a few lob-worms now, it might tempt them. They're evidently rather dainty."

"And I expect we don't know much about it!" said Mavis.

"Well, people have to learn some time, I suppose. You can't tumble to fishing by instinct!"

It was decided to go farther along and try to find lob-worms. The difficulty was to scramble down the rocks on to the sand. From above it looked quite easy and possible, but at close quarters the crags were very precipitous. At one point, however, they determined to venture. They sat on the edge of the sloping rock, let go, and then simply slid down, hanging on to pieces of ivy and tufts of grass. The cove, when they thus reached it, was worth the trouble of getting there. Sand-gobies were darting about in the pools, and came swimming up to fight for the pieces of limpet which the girls dropped in for them. They found a few lobworms and re-baited their hooks and cast their lines afresh, but met with no better success than before.

"I'm fed up with fishing!" announced Romola at last. "Let's go home!"

She had voiced the general opinion of the party. All immediately began to wind up their lines.

"The tide's coming in fast, and we're close to the blow-hole," said
Mavis. "It seems a pity not to stop and watch it."

The blow-hole was a curious natural phenomenon. The sea, pouring into a narrow gully, forced air and water to spurt through an opening at certain intervals. First a low groaning noise was heard, which waxed louder and louder until—so Beata declared—it resembled the snoring of Father Neptune. Then suddenly a shower of spray spurted from the aperture, the sunshine lighting it with all the prismatic colours of the rainbow. For a few seconds it played like a fountain, then died down as the wave receded. The girls were so interested in watching it that they quite forgot the sea behind them. While their backs were turned to it, the great strong tide was lapping and swelling in, moving higher and higher up the rocks, and covering the pools, and creeping into the cove, and changing the sand and seaweed into a lake. When Mavis happened to look round she found her basket floating. She started up with a cry. The one accessible spot where they had climbed down now had a deep pool under it.

"We must wade!" gasped Beata, and hurriedly pulling off her shoes and stockings she plunged as pioneer into the water.

She soon realised it was too dangerous a venture. The slimy seaweed underneath caused her to slip, and the strong swirl of the tide nearly swept her from her feet. With difficulty she splashed back again.

"We might swim it!" she suggested. "But what about our clothes?"

Mavis shook her head.

"We can't cross there till the tide goes down."

"Are we going to be drowned?" asked Romola, in a tremulous little voice.

"Certainly not!"—Mavis sounded quite calm and sensible—"we're safe enough here, but we're in a jolly nasty fix. We can sit above high-water mark, but it means staying till the tide goes down and that won't be for hours, and then it will be dark and how can we see to scramble up the cliffs?"

"I suppose we've got to wait till morning!" groaned Fay. "This is some adventure at any rate!"

"Rather more than most of us bargained for!" agreed Beata.

"I wouldn't care a nickel, only Mother'll be in such a state of mind when
I don't turn up!"

"And Uncle David will be waiting to go home in the car. I wonder what he'll do?"

"They'll have the fright of their lives!"

"And we shall have the colds of ours!" shivered poor Romola. "October isn't exactly the month you'd choose for camping out. I wish we'd brought some more biscuits with us. I'm hungry!"

"Don't talk of biscuits or eating! I'm just ravenous."

Five very disconsolate girls found a sheltered corner under the cliff and squatted down to watch the sunset. There was a glorious effect of gold and orange and great purple clouds tipped with crimson, but they were none of them quite in the mood to appreciate the beauties of nature, and would much have preferred the sight of a tea-table. It was beginning to grow very cold. They buttoned their sports coats about their throats, and huddled close together for warmth. The sun sank into the sea like a great fiery ball, and the darkness crept on. Presently the moon rose, shining over the sea in a broad spreading pathway of silver, that looked like a gleaming fairy track across the water to the far horizon, where a distant lighthouse glinted at intervals like a fiery eye. The waiting seemed interminable. Romola, who felt the cold most, had a little private weep.

"I've always been crazy on stories of shipwrecks and desert islands," said Fay, "but when you go through it yourself somehow it seems to take the edge off the romance. I don't want any more to be a Robinson Crusoe girl! I'd rather stay warm with pussie by the fire."

"If we'd had a box of matches with us we might have lighted a fire!" sighed Beata. "Why didn't we bring some?"

"Why didn't we look at the tide and get home in decent time? It's no good crying over spilt milk!" grunted Merle rather crossly.

After that