Norman Invasions by John Norman Read Free Book Online

near the edge of the cliffs, the waters roiling in the wind and tide below.
    â€œDon’t move!” I called to her. I was uncertain if she understood where she was. “Don’t frighten her!” I called to Gavin. “She is close to the cliff’s edge!” Then I called out to the girl. “Stay where you are,” I called. “We are friends. We mean you no harm. Come back with us to the house. We will see that you get home safely. Have you been attacked? Have you been robbed? Are you frightened? Come back with us. You will be all right! Things will be all right. Don’t run! Stay where you are! We’ll make tea! Have you eaten? Please! I have a blanket!”
    While I was trying to keep a distance from the girl, who crouched in the grass, coaxing her to trust us, doing my best to avoid alarming her, Gavin had been approaching more closely.
    Go back, now. Leave us! Go! Now!
    Gavin raised his lantern, and shook his head, negatively. I did not understand his gesture.
    What is wrong with him, I wondered.
    He took another step, tentatively, toward the girl, the lantern raised, his other hand extended out to her, as though she might grasp it, and be led to safety.
    â€œDon’t be afraid,” I called to the girl.
    Perhaps the wind drowned out my voice.
    She backed away from Gavin, her hand held out, as though to fend him away.
    It is not he, little fool.
    She looked wildly about, as though she had heard something. Perhaps Gavin had spoken to her, though I saw no indication of that in the storm.
    He reached quickly toward her, and she stepped backward, and I cried out “Beware!” and, with a scream, she had twisted backward in the storm, and plunged from the cliff toward the cold, violent waters and cruel rocks below.
    Gavin cried out with misery and ran to the edge of the cliff, holding up the lantern. I stood transfixed where I was, with horror. Those were not waters in which things were likely to live.
    Suddenly behind Gavin there materialized a mighty, angry shape, yards in height, as though created from lightning and the storm itself. The shape was that of a monstrous horse, or horselike beast, and its eyes blazed, and it reared, and Gavin was suddenly, the lantern cast aside, his arms raised, beneath those plunging, anvil-like hoofs. He slipped backward and, as had the girl, plunged downward, in that terrible descent to the sea.
    I threw aside the blanket, and ran to the cliff’s edge and looked down.
    The beast had disappeared.
    I tore off my shoes, and dove from the cliff. I am a strong swimmer, but I had few allusions about this place, and the dangers. It was not a place one chooses to swim, even in summer, in daylight, in the best of weather. The waters were cold, the currents treacherous. But the girl had fallen, and Gavin had fallen. If there was a possibility of saving them, or one of them, I would seize it. I had waited a moment for a flash of lightning to illuminate the sea below me, before diving, to avoid, as I could, the large, scattered rocks some hundred or so feet below. Then I dove. Some of the rocks, I knew, might be just below the surface, invisible from above, in the night, but this was a risk I elected to accept. There was no time to make my way back, by the path, down to the beach, to enter the water and return to the point where the girl and Gavin had disappeared. In a moment the cold waters had closed over my head. I had missed the rocks. I tried to stroke my way to the surface, to see if I might see any sign of the girl or Gavin. I broke the surface, gasping. I felt myself swept to the side, and then back, away from the cliff. I tried to fight against the current. But I was being swept outward, away from the cliffs. Then, to my horror, I felt myself being drawn beneath the surface, almost as though by hands. It was one of the undertows in the area that made swimming so hazardous. I struggled to come again to the surface, to get my head out of the