Part 7 (1/2)

'I wouldn't,' said she.

'You are a strange young maid to refuse an upstanding young man like me,' he said, 'who has a house of his own, to say nothing of what is inside it. Why, dozens of fair young maidens up to Padstow would have me to-morrow if I was only to ax them.'

'Then ax them,' cried the beautiful maid, turning her proud young head, and looking out towards Pentire, gorgeous in its spring colouring.

'But I can't ask any of them to marry me when I love you,' cried the infatuated youth. 'You have bewitched me, sweet, and no other man shall have you. If I can't have you living, I'll have you dead. I came down to Hawker's Cove to shoot something to startle the natives of Padstow Town, and they will be startled, shure 'nough, if I shoot a beautiful little vixen like you and take home to them.'

'Shoot me if you will, but marry you I will not,' said the beautiful maiden, with a scornful laugh. 'But I give you fair warning that if you shoot me, as you say you will, you will rue the day you did your wicked deed. I will curse you and this beautiful haven, which has ever been a refuge for s.h.i.+ps from the time that s.h.i.+ps sailed upon the seas;' and her sea-blue eyes looked up and down the estuary from the headlands that guarded its mouth to the farthest point of the blue, winding river.

'I will shoot you in spite of the curse if you won't consent to be mine,' cried the bewitched young man.

'I will never consent,' said she.

'Then I will shoot you now,' he said, and Tristram Bird lifted his gun and fired, and the ball entered the poor young maiden's soft pink side.

She put her hand to her side to cover the gaping wound the shot had made, and as she did so she pulled herself out of the water, and where the feet should have been was the glittering tail of a fis.h.!.+

'I have shot a poor young Mermaid,' Tristram cried, 'and woe is me!' and he s.h.i.+vered like one when somebody is pa.s.sing over his grave.

'Yes, you have shot a poor Mermaid,' said the maid of the sea, 'and I am dying, and with my dying breath I curse this safe harbour, which was large enough to hold all the fighting s.h.i.+ps of the Spanish Armada and your own, and it shall be cursed with a bar of sand which shall be a bar of doom to many a stately s.h.i.+p and many a n.o.ble life, and it shall stretch from the Mermaid's Gla.s.s to Trebetherick Bay on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and prevent this haven of deep water from ever again becoming a floating harbour save at full tide. The Mermaid's wraith will haunt the bar of doom her dying curse shall bring until your wicked deed has been fully avenged;' and looking round the great bay of s.h.i.+ning waters, laughing and rippling in the eye of the sun, she raised her arms and cursed the harbour of Padstow with a bitter curse, and Tristram shuddered as he listened, and as she cursed she uttered a wailing cry and fell back dead into the pool, and the water where she sank was dyed with her blood.

'I have committed a wicked deed,' said Tristram Bird, gazing into the blood-stained pool, 'and verily I shall be punished for my sin;'

and he turned away with the fear of coming doom in his heart.

As he went up the cove and along the top of the cliffs the distressful, wailing cry of the Mermaid seemed to follow him, and the sky gloomed all around as he went, and the sea moaned a dreadful moan as it came up the bay.

When he reached Tregirls, overlooking the Cove, he stood by the gate for a minute and gazed out over the beautiful harbour. The sea, which only half an hour ago was as blue as the eyes of the seamaid he had shot, and full of smiles and laughter, was now black as ash-buds, save where a golden streak lay across the water from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay.

'The Mermaid's curse is already working,' moaned Tristram Bird, and he fled through the lane leading to Padstow as if a death-hound was after him.

When he reached Place House he met a little crowd of Padstow maids going out flower-gathering.

'Whither away so fast, Tristram Bird?' asked a little maid. 'You aren't driving a teem of snails this time, 'tis plain to see. Where hast thou been?'

'Need you ask?' said a pert young girl. 'He has been away shooting something to startle the maids of Padstow with! What strange new creature did you shoot, Tristram Bird?'

'A wonderful creature with eyes like blue fire,' returned the unhappy youth, looking away over St. Minver dunes towards the Tors--'a sweet, soft creature with beautiful hair, every wire of which was a sunbeam of gold, and her face was the loveliest I ever beheld. It clean bewitched me.'

'A beautiful maid like that, and yet you shot her?' cried all the young maids of Padstow Town.

'Yes, I shot her, to my undoing and the undoing of our fair haven,'

groaned Tristram Bird; and he told them all about it--where he had seen the beautiful Mermaid, of his bewitchment from the moment he saw her face of haunting charm looking up at him from the Mermaid's Gla.s.s, and of the curse she uttered ere she fell back dead into the pool.

All the smiles went out of the bright faces of the Padstow maids, as he told his tale.