“This is really very elaborate,” Sir Clinton commented. “Evidently your ancestors liked the view, if they took so much trouble to put up this affair.”
He moved across the paved space, leaned on the balustrade, and looked down into the depths.
“I don’t wonder you fenced that in with barbed wire on each side,” he said. “It’s a nasty drop down there—well over a fifty-foot fall at least.”
“It’s nearer a hundred, really,” Cecil corrected him. “The height’s a bit deceptive from here. And a fall into that pool would be no joy, I can tell you! It’s full of sharp spikes of rock jutting up from the bottom. You’d get fairly well mauled if you happened to drop on any of them. You can’t see them for that green stuff in the water; but they’re all present and correct under the surface.”
Sir Clinton looked down at the weed-grown little lakelet. The dense green fronds gave the water an unpleasant appearance; and in some tiny backwaters the surface was covered with a layer of scum.
“Why don’t you get all that stuff cleared out?” he demanded. “It looks rather beastly. Once you got rid of it you could stock the pool with trout or perch, easily enough. I see there’s some flow of water through it from a spring at the east end.”
Cecil seemed to have no interest in the suggestion.
“If you want some fishing,” he said, “we’ve got quite a decent stream that runs through another part of the grounds. This place used to be kept in good order; but since the war and all that, you know, the fine edge has been rather off things hereabouts. It’s in a bad state, right enough. Just a frog-pond.”
“Is the water deep?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“Oh, ten to fifteen feet in parts. Quite deep just in front of the cave at the bottom of the cliff below here. We used to have great times playing robbers and so forth when we were kids. There’s our old raft at the far end. It was well tarred and I see it’s still afloat. It was the only way of getting at the cave-mouth, you see.”