the pale worm had twisted itself tightly round his silly neck,
and dragged him screaming and fluttering under the water.

Another day, when he was coming down by the break in the cliff, where
some great winter wave had bitten out such a slice that the top had come
tumbling down, he saw the monster sunning itself on the flat rock by the
side of its pool, like a huge nightmare spider.

The moment he appeared its great eyes settled on his as though it had
been waiting only for him. And when he stopped, with a feeling of
shuddering discomfort at its hugeness--for its body seemed considerably
over a foot in width, while its arms lounging over the rocks were each
at least six feet long, and looked horribly muscular--he could have
sworn that one of the great devil-eyes winked familiarly at him, as
though the beast would say, "Come on, come on! Nice day for a bathe!
Just waiting for you!"

He could see the loathsome body move as it breathed, swinging
comfortably in the support of its arms.

In a fury of repulsion he stooped to pick up a rock, but when he hurled
it the last tentacle was just sliding into the pool, and it seemed to
him that it waved an ironical farewell before it disappeared.

More than once fishing-boats hovered about his rock, but kept a safe
distance from the boiling underfalls, and he always lay in hiding till
they had gone.

But he saw more gracious and beautiful things than these.

As he lay one morning, looking over the ridge at the Sark headlands
shining in the sun--with a strong west wind driving the waves so briskly
that, Sark-like, they tossed their white crests into the air in angry
expostulation long before they met the rocks, and went roaring up them
in dazzling spouts of foam--his eye lighted on a gleam of unusual colour
on the racing green plain. It came again and again, and presently, as
the merry dance waxed wilder still, every white-cap as it tossed into
the air became a tiny rainbow, and the whole green plain was alive with
magical flutterings, of colours so dazzling that it seemed bestrewn with
dancing diamonds. A sight so wonderful that he found himself holding in
his! breath lest a puff should drive it all away.

That same evening, too, was a glory of colour such as he had never
dreamed of. The setting sun was ruby; red, and the cloud-bank into which
he sank was all rimmed with red fire that seemed to corruscate in its
burning brilliancy.

To Gard indeed, in the somewhat peculiar