The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart

Author:Mary Stewart [Stewart, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2011-02-16T13:00:00+00:00

12

. . . One clear day when brighter sea-wind blew

And louder sea-shine lightened, for the waves

Were full of god-head and the light that saves . . .

SWINBURNE: Thalassius

The water was smooth and gentle, but with an early-morning sting to it, and a small breeze blew the salt foam splashing against my lips. The headland glowed in the early sunlight, golden above the dark-blue sea that creamed against the storm beach at its feet.

Here, where I swam, the water was emerald over a shallow bar, the sunlight striking right down through it to illumine the rock below. It threw the shadow of the boat fully two fathoms down through the clear, green water.

Psyche rocked softly at her old moorings, orange and blue. I swam up to her, and threw an arm over the side. She tilted and swung, but held solid, squatly built and fat bellied, heavier than she looked. I waited a moment to get my breath, then gripped and swung myself in.

The boat rocked madly, bucked round on her rope, then accepted me. I thudded down on the bottom-boards, and sat there, dripping and panting, and rubbing the salt drops from my eyes.

I had had no reason for coming out to Stratos’ boat, except that a boat anchored in a bay is a natural challenge to an idle swimmer. I sat on the broad stern seat, resting in the sun, and reflecting that this was as good a place as any from which to watch the hotel.

If I had had any doubts about the innocence of Stratos’ fishing trip last night, one look at the boat would have dispelled them. There was no hiding place for anything larger than a puppy, and nothing to be seen except the small-boat clutter that one might expect; oars, carefully laid along the sides, a baling tin, a rope basket for fish, a kind of lobster pot – the scháros pot, I supposed – made of cane, a coil of rope, some hollow gourds for use as floats, and a folded tarpaulin. The only things strange to me were the fish-spear – a wicked double trident, with five or six barbed prongs set in a circle – and the glass. This was a sort of sea-telescope, a long metal tube with a glass the size of a dinner-plate set in the end. The fisherman lies in the bows, pushes this thing under water as far as it will go, and watches the depths.

I fingered it curiously, then lifted it, and lay down on the flat boarding behind the big brackets that hold the lights. I carefully lowered the glass into the sea, and peered down through it.

You might, in a simpler world, have said it was magic. There was the illuminated rock of the sea bed, every pebble clear, a living surface shifting with shadows as the ripples of the upper sea passed over it. Sea weeds, scarlet and green and cinnamon, moved and swayed in drowsy patterns so beautiful that they drugged the eye.

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