The shadows or clouded here and there with great 

 Tides, splatches of purple-brown ; and, again, to the 

 left through the near calm heave of deep 

 water so blue that as a child I could not 

 understand why the shells which were washed 

 up from it were not blue also : to right and to 

 left I saw the sudden furtive motions of the 

 flowing tide. I had often watched the blind- 

 worm move thus through the coarse sea-grasses, 

 and again and again had seen the adder dart 

 through the bracken like one of those terrible 

 living arrows of Faerie of which I had heard : 

 often, too, I had followed the shadow-swift 

 underwave glide of the hunting seal : and once, 

 in a deep brown pool in Morven, when I was 

 looking with trembling hope for the floating 

 hair or dim white face of a kelpie, I had seen 

 an otter rise from the depths . . . rise like a 

 fantastic elfin face and half-human figure in a 

 dream . . . make a soundless sinuous plunge 

 and in less than a moment vanish utterly, still 

 without sound or the least ruffling of the brown 

 depths. So, it was natural that I should 

 associate those mysterious gliding things of 

 the sea with these sinuous things of the grass 

 and heather and the shadowy pool. They, 

 too, I thought, were furtive and sinister. 

 There was something as of the same evil 

 enchantment in their abrupt and inexplicable 



38 



