She looked and she looked—and then she shrieked with rage. She could not imagine by what miracle Primrose had escaped. All she could see was that the child would slip through her hands and reach the Lake, for he was getting near the top.
The Votaress had no time to fly to Share-spoil and confer with her sisters. In time of real trouble people don’t hold conferences. But she flew straight to her brother, the thunder-voiced bird Belleroo.
Belleroo’s nest was in a little bog on the Mountain, close to the furrow which ran round the Holy Lake. As he was an ill-tempered bird, he too could not cross the furrow, but the evil Things of the Mountain had appointed his place here on the boundary, so that he might trouble the peace of the Lake with his booming.
“Kinsman, brother, Belleroo,” the Votaress cried out to Belleroo, “there is a child coming up the path. Delay him here at the furrow with your booming, so that he may not escape me across the farrow to the Lake. I am going for the Fiery Dragon.”
No sooner had the Votaress said this than she flew like an arrow down the Mountain to fetch the Fiery Dragon, who was lying asleep in a deep gully.
As for Belleroo, he was always all impatience to be told to boom, because he was horribly proud of his loud voice.
Dusk was beginning to fall. It was evening. Nearer and nearer to the furrow came Primrose. Beyond the furrow he could see the Lake, and the chapel looming white on the Lake.
“Here I am at the end of the world; I have only to cross that furrow,” thought Primrose.
Suddenly the Mountain rang with the most awful noise, so that the branches swayed and the leaves trembled on the trees, and the rocks and cliffs re-echoed down to the deepest cavern. It was Belleroo roaring.
His boom was terrible. It would have scared the great Skanderbeg himself, for it would have reminded Skanderbeg of the boom of the Turkish guns.