Part 4 (1/2)

'It is the noise of water breaking on Padstow Doombar,' he said, as the little Piskey looked frightened.

'I thought it was Giant Tregeagle howling,' gasped the little Piskey.

'He hasn't tried to lift his sand-ropes yet, and he won't begin his howl of rage till he finds how brittle they are,' said the Little Bargeman.' And a very good thing for you,' he added; 'for he will be far too angry to tell you whether he has seen your laugh when the ropes of sand break in his great hand. There! we are close now to the great outer sea,' he cried, as the thunder of waves broke more loudly on their ears, and they saw the light of many stars through a narrow opening; and the next minute the little Barge came out into Trebetherick Bay.

'You only have to go up across the hillocks,' said the little old Bargeman, helping the little Piskey out of the barge, 'and if you follow your nose you will soon get to where the Giant is busy making sand-ropes.'

'Thank you for bringing me,' said the little Piskey; but he never knew whether he was heard or not, for the Tiny Bargeman and his ancient Barge vanished as he spoke.

The Piskey made haste to follow his nose, and he scrambled up a sand-bank, and hastened as fast as his feet could take him over the sandy common, till he came to the place where Giant Tregeagle was sitting making sand-ropes to bind his trusses of sand which lay all around him. He was sitting by a hillock, his great head showing just above it, when the Piskey came near.

The little Piskey climbed nearly to the top of the hillock, and when he got close to the Giant's ear he shouted:

'I am the little Piskey who told you he had lost his laugh. Please stop making sand-ropes for a minute and tell me if you have seen it.'

But the big Giant took no notice of the tiny voice, and went on making his ropes of sand.

The little Piskey then got into his ear and poked his red-capped head into the hollow of it, and again shouted:

'I am the little Piskey who told you he had lost his laugh, and----'

'Ah! the d.i.n.ky little fellow who tried to help me to find my soul,'

interrupted the great Giant, in a voice almost as loud as the waves breaking on the Padstow Doombar.

'Yes,' answered the Piskey, 'and a d.i.n.ky Little Bargeman brought me from Dozmare Pool to Trebetherick that you might answer my question.'

'I know who you mean--Merlin, the little old Master of Magic,' cried the Giant in evident astonishment, pausing in his work of making a rope of sand to stare at the little Piskey. 'Fancy his bringing a tiny brown fellow like you from Dozmare Pool to Trebetherick Bay in his Magic Barge! Pigs will fly and sing after this!'

'He saw me helping you to dip the pool dry, and said that one kind deed deserved another,' said the Piskey as meek as a harvest-mouse. 'So he brought me all the way down to St. Minver to know if you had seen my laugh. Have you seen it, Mister Giant?'

'No, I have not seen it,' answered the Giant. 'Nothing so cheerful as a Piskey's laugh would come near such a mountain of misery as I am; and if by an evil chance it did come, it would flee far from my dark shadow.'

'Do you know anyone else who has seen my laugh?' asked the little Piskey piteously.

'Not one; unless your cousins, the Night-riders, have,' answered the Giant, looking at the sand-ropes he had just finished, lying at his feet. 'I must now begin to bind my trusses of sand.'

He stooped to lift them as he spoke, and as he tried to take them up they fell to pieces in his hand. As they crumbled away his face was awful to see, and he began to howl and roar, and his cries of rage rang out over the sand-hills and over Trebetherick Bay, and were heard above the noise of waves breaking on the Padstow Doombar.

Those roars of rage and anger so frightened the people living in the villages in the neighbourhood of the common that they shook in their beds, and as for the little Piskey, he was so terrified by what he had heard and seen that he tumbled over the hillock up which he had climbed to get into the Giant's ear.

When he had picked himself up, Giant Tregeagle was flying away like an evil bird towards the south.

The dawn broke soon after the Giant had gone, and as Piskeys always hide by day, he hid himself under a clump of tamarisk, and stayed there till the dark and the stars came again. When he came out he remembered what the Giant had said--that perhaps his cousins, the Night-riders, had seen his laugh. The moon being several days older than when the kind little Lantern Man had taken him to Dozmare Pool, it was now s.h.i.+ning brightly over the common, and he knew if the Night-riders were in the neighbourhood of the sand-hills they would soon be riding over the common.

As he was gazing about with wistful eyes a young colt came galloping along with scores of little Night-riders astride his back, and as many more hanging on to his mane and tail.

The Night-riders, who were little people no bigger than Piskeys, and quite as mischievous, had taken the colt from a farmer's stable close to the common, and were enjoying their stolen ride as only Night-riders could.

As they and the colt drew near, the little Piskey stood out in the moons.h.i.+ne and shouted: