So occupied was she with looking into the purses, and asking herself whether she ever could take the poor little imprisoned fairy across the bog country that night—for she knew it would have to be to-night if she took her at all—that she forgot all about the tide, which by this time had reached its lowest ebb, and was flowing in again.
The sea grew rough as it turned, and began to rush up the great beach and beat on the outer rocks with a terrible roar.
When Gerna had glanced into the last of her purses she looked about her, and found to her consternation that the sea was a long way up the bar, and the rock on which she sat was almost surrounded by angry water.
It was now quite impossible for her to get to the sands, and the only place not cut off by the sea was a tiny cove—a mere gash in the cliff midway between the two hawns, Pentire and Pentire Glaze. As it was, it was her only place of safety—at least, for a time—and she went to it at once, and sat down, white and frightened, under the cliff that towered darkly above her.
After a few minutes she stood up and shouted with all her might for someone to come to her help, but her shouts were drowned in the loud thunder of the breakers. She shouted until she was hoarse—for she did not want to be drowned, poor child, and she knew there was no way out of the cove except by the cliff, which it was quite impossible for her to climb—and then she again sat down and wept bitterly.
As she was crying and sobbing, a strange noise above her made her look up, and there in a tiny hole in the face of the cliff a few feet above her head she saw the grinning face of a little Dark Man!
‘You are caught in a trap,’ he said, with a cough, ‘and you will surely be drowned if we do not come to your help.’
‘Will you help me, dear little Mister Spriggan?’ cried Gerna, hope dawning in her eyes.
‘Yes, if you will bring back to our goog, when the sea goes out, that precious purse which we know you have found.’
‘I cannot do that, ‘cause I promised I wouldn’t, whatever happened,’ said the child, greatly distressed.