So much indeed was there to beguile them that, if after sunset the Pool
had not been a haunted place, they would have lingered there till
nightfall. Sometimes indeed they did miscalculate the distance they had
come and finding themselves likely to be caught by twilight they would
hurry with eyes averted from the grey water lest the kelpie should rise
out of the depths and drown them. There were men and women now alive in
Nancepean who could tell of this happening to belated wayfarers, and it
was Mark who discovered that such a beast was called a kelpie. Moreover,
the bar where earlier in the evening it was pleasant to lie and pluck
the yellow sea-poppies, listening to tales of wrecks and buried treasure
and bygone smuggling, was no place at all in the chill of twilight;
moreover, when the bar had been left behind and before the coastguards'
cottages came into sight there was a two-mile stretch of lonely cliff
that was a famous haunt of ghosts. Drowned light dragoons whose bodies
were tossed ashore here a hundred years ago, wreckers revisiting the
scene of their crimes, murdered excisemen . . . it was not surprising
that the boys hurried along the narrow path, whistling to keep up their
spirits and almost ready to cry for help if nothing more dangerous than
a moth fanned their pale cheeks in passing.
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