The tall man came and sat down at the desk again, playing with a pencil between his fingers. 'Who is there that you would call sir? '

'Well, nobody really. Only the masters at school.'

'Perhaps I am one of their masters,' Mr Hastings said.

'But they aren't at school.'

'I think you would not really understand, Barnabas. In fact there are a great many things that you do not understand. I wonder what stories that great-uncle of yours has put into your head. He has told you that we are bad and wicked, no doubt, and that he is a good man?'

Barney blinked at him, and took another bite of his sandwich.

Mr Hastings smiled grimly. 'Ah, but of course you do not know what I am talking about. You haven't the slightest idea.' The heavy irony in the deep voice made Barney wrinkle his nose. 'Well, let us forget that, just for a moment, and pretend, just pretend, that you do know what I mean. You have been led to believe, I think, that my friends and I are everything that is evil. That we want to follow up the clues in the map because we can do bad things with what we find. You have nothing to go on but your great-uncle's word, and perhaps one or two strange things that Polly or Norman Withers may seem to have done.'

The voice dropped until it was silky and very gentle. 'But just think, Barnabas, of the strange things your great-uncle does. Coming out of nowhere and vanishing again ... he has vanished again today, has he not? Well no, of course, you can't answer me, because we are only pretending that you know what I am talking about. But this is not the first time he has unexpectedly disappeared, I think, and it will not be the last.'

He stared at Barney, dark eyes penetrating and level from beneath the overhanging brow. Barney ate his sandwich a little more slowly, unable to take his own gaze away. 'As for our being evil... well, now, Barnabas, do I strike you as being a bad man? Have I done you any harm? There you sit, eating and drinking quite happily, certainly not looking alarmed. Are you frightened of me?'

'You had me kidnapped,' Barney said flatly.

'Oh come now, that was just a little joke of Polly's. I wanted to talk to you, that's all.'

Mr Hastings sat back in his chair and spread his arms wide, with the tips of his fingers just touching the edge of the desk. 'Now look, my boy, I will make a bargain with you. I will tell you what is actually behind everything that has been going on these last days, and you will stop playing this game of not having seen the map.'

He did not wait for Barney to say anything. 'We are indeed hunting the same thing that your great-uncle is hunting, my friends and I. But whatever story he has spun you about it is, quite frankly, a lot of moonshine. Your great-uncle is a scholar, and an outstanding one. Nobody would dispute that, and I probably know it better than you. The trouble is that he himself knows it, and thinks about it much too much.'

'What d'you mean? ' said Barney indignantly.

'When a man is famous for being a very great scholar he wants very much to go on being famous. You found this old manuscript, you and your brother and sister, and when you told your great-uncle about it he realised, as you did not, how important it was. When he saw it he was even more certain. Now I, Barnabas, am the curator, that means the director, of one of the most important museums in the world. I have been hunting the manuscript that you found, and especially what it leads to, for a very long time. They are both very important to the people who study such things, and could make a lot of difference to the total knowledge there is in the world. And your great-uncle knew that I was hunting them.

'But when you found the manuscript he saw that he had a chance of achieving the quest himself. The more he thought about this, the more attractive an idea it seemed. He has always been famous as a man who knows a great deal about the part of history these things are connected with. If he were to find them, he would know more than anyone else in the world. People would say, what an amazing man Professor Lyon is, to know so much, there's no one like him anywhere ...'

'To know how much ? ' Barney said.

'You would not understand the details,' Mr Hastings said shortly. Then his voice dropped again to the same deep persuasive note. 'Don't you see, Barnabas? Your great-uncle is concerned only with his own fame. Do you think for one moment that when you have ended the hunt, any of the credit will go to you children? It will all go to him ... Whereas I and my museum, and the people I employ, believe that all knowledge should be shared, and that no one man has the right to it alone. And if you were to help us, we should take care that you had whatever credit was due to you. The whole world should know what you had done.'

In spite of himself Barney had forgotten his sandwich and milk. He sat listening, troubled; trying to understand the truth for himself. Yes, Great-Uncle Merry was strange, often, not like other men; but all the same ...

He said, slow and perplexed, 'Well, I don't know - all this just doesn't sound like Great-Uncle Merry. Surely he couldn't do anything like that?'

'But I assure you -' Mr Hastings jumped to his feet and began walking to and fro between the desk and the door. He seemed unable to keep still any longer. 'Many people one knows well, often most excellent people, can prove capable of the most curious acts. I do realise that you may be surprised, and shocked. But this is the truth, Barnabas, and it is very much more simple than you have been led to believe.'

Barney said: 'So we ought to give the map to you, and let you find the -' Just in time he caught the word 'grail'. Through the whole conversation there had been no mention of what the map led to. Perhaps they knew less than they said they did. Perhaps that was one of the things they wanted to trap him into telling them.

Mr Hastings paused for a second. Yes? ' he said.

'Well, and let you find whatever it leads to.'

Barney picked up his glass of milk again and drank reflectively. 'Because then you would put whatever it is in your museum and everyone would be able to know about it.'

Mr Hastings nodded gravely. 'There you have it, Barnabas. All knowledge is sacred, but it should not be secret. I think you understand. This is something you should do - that we should do - in the name of scholarship.'

Barney looked down into his milk, swishing it gently round the glass. 'But isn't that what Great-Uncle Merry's doing?'

'No, no !' Mr Hastings swung impatiently on his heel, striding impatient and very tall up and down the room. 'Whatever he does he is doing in the name of Professor Lyon, and that is all. What else would he do anything for?'

Barney never knew afterwards what put the words into his head; he spoke before he thought, almost as if someone else were speaking through him. He heard himself saying clearly, 'In the name of King Arthur, and of the old world before the dark came.'

The tall dark figure stopped abruptly, completely still, with its back still turned. For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. It was as if Barney had pressed a switch that would any moment bring an avalanche thundering down. He sat motionless and almost breathless in his chair. Then very slowly the figure turned. Barney gulped, and felt a prickling at the roots of his hair. Mr Hastings was at the darker end of the room, near the door, and his face was hidden in shadow. But he seemed to loom taller and more threatening than he had ever done before, and when he spoke there was a different throb in the deep voice that paralysed Barney with fright.

You will find, Barnabas Drew,' it said softly, 'that the dark will always come, and always win.'

Barney said nothing. He felt as if he had forgotten how to speak, and his voice had died for ever with his last words.

Mr Hastings did not take his eyes off him. He reached out beside him and tugged twice at a cord hanging down from the ceiling beside the door. Within seconds the door swung open and Mr Withers slipped noiselessly inside. He had washed the dark-brown stain from his arms and face.

'Is everything ready? ' said the deep voice.

Yes, sir,' Mr Withers hissed obsequiously. 'The car is at the side door. The girl has changed. She will drive again.'

'You will drive with her. I shall follow in the closed car with the boy. Bill has it ready? '

The engine is running already ...'

'Where are you taking me?' Barney's voice rose shrill in fright, and he jumped down from his chair. But he could not run out of the room, past the tall figure that still held his gaze.

'You are coming with us to the sea,' said the voice behind the dark intent eyes. You will cause no trouble, and you will do whatever I say. And when we are on the sea, Barnabas, you are going to tell us about your map, and show us where it leads.'

Chapter 13

The Grey House was as calm and empty as it had been when they left. 'Barney!' Simon shouted up the stairs. 'Barney? ' His voice dwindled away uncertainly.

'He can't be inside,' Jane said. 'The key was still in its hiding-place. Oh Simon, what can have happened to him?' She turned back anxiously to the open front door, and stared down the hill. Simon came back down the dark, shadowy hall to join her in the pool of sunlight. 'He must have missed us in the harbour.'

'But surely he'd have come back here after that? There isn't a soul about down there now, they've all gone after the band. That awful Bill passed us - you don't think -'

'No,' Simon said hastily. 'Anyway Barney's got Rufus with him. He can't get into much trouble. You wait, he'll be back soon. I expect he's found Gumerry and they're looking for us.'

He was turning back into the house when Jane suddenly shouted joyfully: 'Look! You're right!'

Rufus was loping up the hill towards them, a swift streak of red on the grey road. But they could see no one behind him. Jane called, and he raised his muzzle and trotted more quickly up the steps, between their legs and into the house. Then he stood facing them, his long ribbon of a tongue dangling over his jaws. But his tail was down, and there was none of the bouncing, barking delight with which he usually came home.

'No sign of Barney.' Jane came slowly in from the doorstep. She looked down at Rufus. 'What is it, then? What's happened?'

The dog took no notice of her. He stood there apathetically, his eyes blank. Even when they had given him a drink of water and taken him into the room overlooking the harbour, he still gave no sign that he knew he was home. It was as if he were thinking of something quite different.

'I expect it's the heat,' Simon said. He sounded unconvinced. 'Come on, there's nothing we can do except wait. The yacht's still down in the harbour, anyway.'

'That doesn't mean anything,' Jane said miserably.

'Well, it does mean -' But Simon had no chance to explain. Jane had clutched his arm nervously. He saw that she was staring at Rufus.

They could never explain it afterwards. It was as if Rufus had been lying there listening for something, and had at last caught the thing he was waiting for; though they knew that they had heard no sound at all. He raised his head, his eyes so wide open that the whites were showing, and stood up slowly in a way more like an old man than a dog. His ears were pricked and his muzzle raised high, pointing straight at something they could not see. He began to walk, very slowly and deliberately, towards the door.

Mesmerised, Simon and Jane followed. Rufus went out into the hall until he reached the front door, and stood waiting. He did not turn his head. He simply stood there rigid, looking ahead at the door, as if quite certain that they knew what he wanted them to do.

Simon reached forward, glancing nervously down at the long, straight red back, and opened the door; and they stood on the step watching in complete bewilderment as Rufus stalked with the same ageless confidence straight ahead across the road. When he reached the other side he leapt up with a quick light flurry to stand erect on the wall which kept the road from the sheer sixty-foot drop down to the harbour side. He seemed to be looking out at the sea.

'He's not going to jump?' Jane jerked in alarm, but found that she was whispering.

And then they heard the noise that they never afterwards forgot.

Barney knew, dimly, that he had been taken out of the big silent house and driven away in a car; and that now they were walking in a group with the noise of the sea somewhere near. But he was not certain how many of them there were, or where they were taking him. Since the moment in the shadowy room when those blazing dark eyes had glared into his face, he had been conscious of nothing except that he was to do what he was told. He no longer had any thoughts of his own; it was a strange, relaxed feeling, as if he were comfortably half asleep. There could be no argument now. No fighting. He knew only that the tall dark figure walking at his side, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, was his master.

Master ... who else had used the word that day?

'Come, Barnabas,' said the deep voice above him. 'We must hurry. The tide is going out, we must reach the yacht.'

Reach the yacht, said Barney dreamily to himself, we're going on the sea ... that was the sea he could smell, the water lapping beside them at the edge of Trewissick harbour.

Far away, as if it came from a great height, he heard Polly Withers's voice say urgently: 'Anyone could see us from the road up by the house. They'll see us, I know they will -'

'Polly,' said the deep slow voice, 'I am the one who sees. If our old Cornish friend has done her work well, there will be no one there. And if the other two children have been let slip . .. well, are they a match for us? '

Somewhere Mr Withers laughed, soft and sinister.

Barney walked on, like a machine. The air was warm and thick; he could feel the sun fierce on his face. He had heard them talking ever since they left the house, but nothing they said seemed to have meaning for him any more. He was not frightened; he had forgotten Simon and Jane. He was somehow floating outside himself, watching with mild interest while his body walked along, but feeling nothing at all.

And then, like the sudden snapping of a bow, the noise came. Into the air over their heads, a dog howled: a long weird note so unexpected and anguished that for a moment they all stopped dead. It echoed slow through the harbour, a freezing inhuman wail that had in it all the warning and terror that ever was in the world. Even Mr Hastings stood listening, paralysed.

And the Barney who was outside Barney, floating half detached in the air, felt the noise wake him up with a savage jolt. He looked up, and saw Rufus standing above him, outlined red against the sky, with the sound still throbbing from his throat. And suddenly he knew where he was, and that he must get away.

He swung round on his heel, ducked under the arms that grabbed too late to catch him, and raced along the quay towards the road. The hill was empty, drained of people by the carnival procession, and he was twenty-five yards clear of the confused group on the quay before they could properly begin to give chase. He heard the shouts and pounding feet behind him, and flung himself up the hill towards the Grey House.

Simon and Jane stared in amazement from the steps. Suddenly there had been Rufus's blood-chilling howl; now suddenly Barney, with four threatening figures at his heels. They ran instinctively down the steps towards him, and then swung back in alarm at the worst sound of all. Behind them, the door of the Grey House had slammed; and the key was inside.

Barney staggered up to them, and Rufus came bounding down from the wall. Jane said, panic-stricken: 'Which way?'

Simon turned frantically to the great wooden door in the wall which was the Grey House's side entrance; often it was kept locked. He pressed the latch, his heart thumping. Relief flooded over him in a wave as the door opened, and he pushed it wide. 'Quick!' he yelled.

The four figures pounding grim and intent at Barney's heels were only a few steps behind. Jane and Barney shot inside the door, with Rufus a swift red flurry among their feet. The wall itself seemed to shake as Simon slammed the door shut and hurriedly pushed home the three big iron bolts. They ran up the cold, narrow alley between the side of the Grey House and the house next door, and paused at the far end. Outside, footsteps skidded up to the door. They saw the latch rise as someone on the other side pressed it. It rattled angrily, and there was a thump against the door. Then there was silence.

'Suppose they climb over the wall? ' Jane whispered fearfully.

'They couldn't possibly,' Simon whispered back. 'It's too high.'

'Perhaps they'll break the door down!'

Those bolts are jolly strong. Anyway people would see them and get suspicious ... Listen. They've gone away.'

They all strained their ears. There was no sound from the door at the other end of the alley. Rufus looked up at them inquiringly and whined, whistling plaintively through his nose.

'What are they doing? They must be up to something ...'

'Quick!' Simon said decisively. 'We've got to get away from the house before they have time to get round the back. They'll have it surrounded soon.'

In panic they ran into the little back garden, and up through the knee-high grass to the hedge at the top. Rufus bounded round them cheerfully, jumping to lick Barney's face. He seemed to have forgotten the uncanny impulse that had made him utter that one long, lost howl, and now he was behaving as if everything were just a great game.

'I hope that dog's going to keep quiet,' Jane said anxiously. Simon peered through the gap in the hedge.

'He will,' Barney said. He bent down and cupped one hand gently over Rufus's long red muzzle, murmuring to him under his breath.

Simon straightened. 'It's all clear. Come on.'

One by one they slipped out of the garden into the road that curved round behind the houses from the harbour, along the edge of Kemare Head.

'Oh,' Jane said in sudden anguish, 'if only we knew where Gumerry had gone.'

Barney said, horrified, 'Didn't you find him? What about Mrs Palk? '

'No, we didn't find him. We did see Mrs Palk, but we couldn't get to her through the crowd. Didn't you see him? Why were they chasing you? Where did you come from? We thought something awful must have happened when Rufus came back on his own, but we didn't know where to look for you.'

'Wait a minute,' Barney said. The shock of waking from his bewitched daze was turning into an enormous sense of urgency. A dozen things that he had heard in the last hour were dodging about in his mind; and as he began to see their meaning he was feeling more and more alarmed.

'Simon,' he said earnestly, 'we've got to get the grail. Now. Even without Great-Uncle Merry. There isn't time to look for him, or wait, or anything. I think they're very nearly on to it. Only not quite, that's why they wanted me.'

'First thing is to get away from here.' Simon looked about him wildly. 'They could come up either way from the harbour. We'll have to get off the road and hide in that field at the back of the headland. The land doesn't slope there, we ought to be able to keep hidden.'

They crossed the road and came out into the fields at the bottom of Kemare Head. The sun blazed high up in the sky still, beating down with a heat that pressed on them like a giant hand. But not even Jane was worrying about the chances of sunstroke now.

As they reached the hedge on the far side of the first field, they heard voices. They scrambled hastily through the hedge, without pausing to look round, and flattened themselves in the long grass on the other side. Barney slid his arm apprehensively over Rufus's back, but the dog lay quiet, with his long pink tongue lolling out.

Nobody saw quite where they came from, but suddenly the figures were standing there on the road. Mr Withers, slight and stooping a little, darting his head about like a weasel; the boy Bill, walking wary and belligerent in his bright shirt; and towering over them both, the tall menacing figure in black, a dark gash across the heat-wavering summer day. Watching, Simon thought suddenly of the desperate day when threatening feet were pounding after him, down a lonely road; and he turned his eyes away from the man.

'The girl's not there,' Barney hissed. 'She must be watching the front, in case we tried to come out that way again.'

Down on the road the little group stood for a moment irresolute. Bill turned and peered across the field, straight towards the hedge. The three children flattened themselves closer to the ground, hardly daring to breathe. But Bill looked away again, apparently satisfied. Withers looked across the field as well, and said something to him. The boy shook his head.

The tall figure in black had been standing a little way apart, motionless. It was difficult to tell which way he was looking. All at once he raised his arm, pointing seaward to the rising bulk of Kemare Head. He seemed to be talking earnestly.

'What are they going to do?' Jane whispered. Cramp was beginning to gnaw agonisingly at her right leg, and she was longing to move.

'If they're going to the end of the headland we're sunk,' Simon said, low and strained.

'How many more of them are there, for goodness' sake? That tall man ...' Jane stared at him through the erratic leaf-starred gaps in the hedge. She could not see his face, but a cold sense of familiarity was beginning to grow in her mind. Then, as she gazed, he took of his wide black hat for a moment to brush his hand across his forehead, and suddenly she knew the shape of the head with the thick dark hair. The pattern of twigs and grass and sunlight swirled before her eyes, and she clutched at Simon's arm.

'Simon! It's him again! It's -'

'I know that,' Simon said. 'The moment he came round the corner I knew. I thought you did.'

'He's the boss of all of them,' Barney whispered in the same urgent undertone. 'His name's Hastings.'

That's right,' Jane said faintly. 'Hastings. The vicar.'

Barney wriggled a little in the grass to stare at her. 'He's not the vicar.'

'He is. I saw him at the vicarage. Oh, you remember ...'

'Is it a big rambling sort of house, all neglected?' Barney said slowly. 'With a long drive, and a room full of books? '

It was Jane's turn to stare. 'I remember saying about the books, but not about the drive. How did you -'

Barney said, with the utmost conviction: 'I don't care what you say, he isn't the vicar. I don't know what he is, but it isn't that. He can't possibly be. There's something perfectly beastly about him. He's like everything Gumerry said about the other side, you can sort of feel it, looking at him. And he says things ...'

'Keep down!' Simon said abruptly. They all dropped their heads into the grass, and lay silent for a long moment while the sun beat down on their backs and scorched the skin behind their knees, and the cool long grass along the edge of the hedge tickled their cheeks. Rufus stirred and grunted and was quiet again. He had fallen asleep.

In a little while Simon nervously raised his head a few inches from the ground, hearing nothing but the call of one far-away gull high up in the sky. He had seen the three figures turn and move across the field and for a moment he had thought they were caught in a trap. But there was no one now on the road where they had stood, and no one in the silent stretch of the field.

'They've gone!' he whispered exultantly. Barney and Jane raised their heads too, slowly and cautiously.

'Look!' Jane propped herself on one elbow, and pointed out to the coast. There they were, the tall black striding figure and the two smaller ones, one on either side, bobbing out of sight along the side of Kemare Head.

'Oh!' Barney rolled over on his back and groaned with despair. 'We're cut off! How can we get out on the headland now?'

Jane sat up, wincing as she stretched her cramped legs. She said despondently, 'I don't see what there is to get worked up about. We can't do anything. We found where the grail is, but we can't get at it anyway. If there is a bottom entrance, it's under the sea, and the hole we found at the top is too narrow to get through even if we had a rope.'

Barney said, yelping, 'But they'll be able to. I know they will. That man can do anything, he seems to have things planned before he even knows they're going to happen. And if they find the hole in the rocks ...'

'But they couldn't go down any more than we could,' Jane said reasonably. 'And they couldn't get in from the bottom either, unless they've got diving suits on the yacht. Anyway,' she added without much conviction, 'we aren't really absolutely sure the grail's there at all.'

'But we are, you know we are!' Barney's anxious frustration was mounting unbearably. 'We've got to stop them. Even if we can't do anything ourselves, we've got to stop them!'

'Don't be a silly little boy,' Jane said, irritated by disappointment. 'We'll just have to let them go, and keep out of their way till we find Great-Uncle Merry. There isn't a thing we can do.'

'There is one thing,' Simon said. His voice sounded muffled and rather gruff, as it always did when he was trying not to be excited. They looked at him, and Jane raised an eyebrow sceptically. Simon said nothing. He was sitting hugging his knees, frowning out across the field.

'Well, go on then.'

'The tide.'

The tide? What d'you mean?'

The tide's out.'

'Well, what's so marvellous about that? I know it is,' Barney said, wonderingly. You could see the mud down in the harbour.'

But Simon was not listening. 'Jane, you remember what Mr Penhallow said down in the harbour. About the tide being low.'

'Oh yes.' Jane began to look less gloomy. Yes, that's right. It goes very low today, he said ... spring tide ... right round the rocks ...'

'You can walk right round the rocks,' Simon said.

'So what? ' demanded Barney.

'If we could walk right round the rocks,' Simon said with careful patience, 'we could walk right round the bottom of Kemare Head.'

Jane interrupted, catching him up, 'And the cave, the underwater entrance - when we heard the noise of the sea coming up the hole this morning, the tide was high. So the waves were still coming over the entrance. But don't you see, Barney, with this special low tide - if it uncovers all the rocks down there, it may uncover the entrance as well, and we should be able to get in.'

Barney's face was a comical mixture of expressions; blankness dissolving into excitement, and then into alarm. 'Gosh! Come on then, let's get down there!' He jumped to his feet, and then wailed. 'But we can't! There's one of them watching the harbour, and the other three out on the headland - how can we get down there without being seen?'

'I've thought of that too.' Simon was pink with importance.

'Just a minute ago. There's the other side. The bay on the other side of the headland, where we bathe from. We can get across the fields to it from here without them seeing us, unless they're actually up by the standing stones looking down in that direction. If they look down we've had it, but it's the only way I can see.'

'They won't be,' Jane said confidently. 'They wouldn't expect us to go down there. They'd be watching the harbour side.'

'Come on, we've got to be quick. Quicker than ever now. The tide was still going out when we were up over the harbour, I think, but it may turn any moment. I wish we knew exactly when.'

Barney, with Rufus roused and leaping round him again, was already several yards across the field. He halted suddenly, looking troubled, and turned slowly back. 'There's still Great-Uncle Merry. He'll never find us now. He'll be worried stiff.'

'He didn't bother much about worrying us stiff when he disappeared this morning,' Simon said shortly.

'Oh, but all the same -'

'Look,' Simon said, 'I'm the oldest, and I'm in charge. It's got to be Gumerry or the grail we look for, Barney, there isn't time for both. And I say we go after the grail.'

'So do I,' Jane said.

'Oh well,' said Barney, and he went on over the field, secretly relieved to be able to accept commands. He felt he had had enough of being the lone hero that day to last him for years - so that his private dreams of acting solitary bold knights in shining armour would never be quite the same again.

They were all three hot and breathless by the time they reached the beach in the next bay from Trewissick, on the other side of Kemare Head. But they saw to their relief that the tide had obviously not yet begun to come back in.

The sea seemed to be miles away, over a vast stretch of silver-white sand unscarred by footprints under the sun, and as they looked eagerly along the side of the headland they could see rocks uncovered at its foot. Before, the waves had always washed up against the cliff, even at the lowest tide.

Their feet sank into the soft dry sand at the top of the beach. Barney flopped down and began to unstrap one sandal. 'Wait a minute, I want to take my shoes off.'

'Oh come on,' Simon said impatiently, 'you'll only have to put them back on again when we get to the rocks.'

'I don't care, I'm taking them of now all the same. Anyway I'm tired.'

Simon groaned, and whacked the telescope case against his knee in exasperation. More than ever now he was determined to carry the manuscript wherever they went, and the case was hot and damp in the palm of his hand.

Jane sat down on the sand beside Barney. 'Come on, Simon, have a rest  just for five minutes. It won't hurt, and I'm jolly hot as well.'

Not altogether unwillingly, Simon let his knees give way and collapsed to lie flat on his back. The sun blazed down into his eyes, and he turned over quickly. 'Golly, what a day. I could do with a swim.' He looked longingly out at the sea; but his eyes swivelled at once back to the rocks.

'There's even more uncovered than I thought there would be. Look, it's going to be easy as anything to walk round the cliff. It looks pretty wet in places, where the tide's left some water behind, but we can get through that easily enough.'

'So you'll have to take your shoes of as well,' said Barney triumphantly. He hung his sandals round his neck by their straps and wiggled his toes luxuriously in the sand, looking up at the gulls wheeling and faintly calling high over the beach. Then he stiffened. 'Listen!'

'I heard that too,' Simon said, looking up curiously. 'Funny, it sounded like an owl.'

'It was an owl,' Barney said, peering up at the towering side of the headland. 'It came from up there. I thought you only heard owls at night.'

'You do. And if they come out in the day-time they get mobbed by all the other birds, because they eat their young. We did it at school.'

'Well, the gulls don't seem to be taking any notice,' Barney said. He looked up at the dark specks lazily sailing to and fro over the sky. Then he glanced round the beach. 'Hey, where's Rufus?'

'Oh, he's around somewhere. He was here just a minute ago.'

'No, he isn't.' Barney stood up. 'Rufus! Rufus!' He whistled, on the long lilting note that the dog always answered to. Behind them they heard a bark, and they looked up the beach towards the sloping field to see Rufus on the edge of the grass, facing away from the sea but with his head turned to look back at them.

Barney whistled again, and patted his knee. The dog did not move.

'What's the matter with him?'

'He looks frightened. Has he hurt himself?'

'I hope not.' Barney ran up the beach and took Rufus by the collar, fondling his neck. The dog licked his hand. 'Come on, boy,' Barney said softly. 'Come on, then. There's nothing wrong. Come on, Rufus.' He tugged gently at the collar, moving back towards Simon and Jane. But Rufus would not move. He whined, straining away from the beach; his ears were pricked uneasily, and when Barney pulled more impatiently at his collar he turned his head and gave a low warning growl.

Puzzled, Barney relaxed his grip. As he did so, the dog suddenly jerked as if he had heard something, growled again, and slipped out of his grasp to trot swiftly away over the grass. Barney called, but he went on without a pause, head bent, tail between his legs, loping away in a straight line until he disappeared round the side of the headland.

Barney came slowly back down the beach. 'Did you see that? Something must have frightened him - I bet he's run all the way home.'

'Perhaps it was that owl,' Simon said.

'I suppose it might have been - hey, listen, there it is again!' Barney looked up. 'It is up on the headland.'

This time they all heard it; the long husking wail drifting softly down : 'Whooo-oo . . .'

As she listened, Jane felt all her warning instincts mutter deep in her mind. For a moment she could not understand. She looked up, troubled, at the looming mass of Kemare Head, and the tops of the standing stones outlined against the sky.

'Stupid bird,' Simon said idly, lying down on his back again. Thinks it's night-time. Tell it to go back to bed.'

As if something exploded inside her head, Jane remembered. 'Simon, quick! It's not a bird at all. It's not an owl. It's them!'

The others stared at her.

Jane jumped to her feet, the lulling warmth of sun and sand forgotten in a sudden new panic. 'Don't you remember - that night, up on the headland, by the standing stones. We heard some owls hoot, and that was why Gumerry went off to look, because he thought they didn't sound right. And it wasn't owls, it was the enemy. Oh quick, perhaps they've seen us! Perhaps that was a signal from one of them to tell the others we're here!'

Simon was up on his feet before she had finished. 'Come on, Barney. Quick!'

Away from the revealing emptiness of the beach they dashed towards the rocky side of the headland, the sand squeaking against their feet as they ran. Barney's sandals bounced about on his chest, kicking him. Jane lost the hair-ribbon from her pony-tail, and her hair flowed loose, tickling the back of her neck. Simon ran clutching the telescope case grimly like a relay-runner's baton. They made straight for the cliff, and paused under its great grey height to look fearfully back at the grassy slope rising behind the beach. But there was no sign of anyone coming after them, and they heard no owl cry.

'Perhaps they didn't see us after all.'

'I bet they can't really see this beach from anywhere on the top of the headland.'

'Well, we've got to hurry all the same. Come on, or the tide will turn and beat us to it.'

They were still running on sand, along the side of the cliff, towards the end of the headland and the sea. Then they came to the rocks, and they began to climb.

The rocks were perilous to cross. At first they were dry, and fairly smooth, and it was easy to scramble from one grey jagged ridge to the next, skirting the small pools where anemones spread their tentacles like feathered flowers among seaweed leaves, and shrimps darted transparent to and fro. But soon they came to the rocks that were uncovered only at the lowest spring tides. Great masses of seaweed grew there, shining, still wet in the sun; slippery brown weed that squelched and popped under their feet, giving way sometimes without warning to drop them into a pool.

They came to a long stretch of water left trapped in the rocks. Barney, still determinedly barefoot, was trailing some way behind the other two. They waited at the edge of the water as he picked his way gingerly towards them. 'Ow!' he said, as he trod on a winkle.

'Do put your sandals on,' Jane said imploringly. 'It doesn't matter about getting them wet, ours are sopping already. You might step on anything in this pool and cut your feet to bits.'

Barney said, with surprising meekness due to having stubbed three toes, 'All right.' He perched on a jutting rock and unhooked his sandals from round his neck. 'Seems silly to put your shoes on to go paddling, instead of taking them off.'

'You can call it paddling,' Simon said darkly. 'There might be all sorts of ravenous deep-sea fish left in here. Mr Penhallow says the sea's terrifically deep just of the headland.' He gazed into the mass of bulbous brown seaweed floating on the surface of the pool. 'Oh well, here goes.'

They splashed through the weed, keeping close to the cliff and catching nervously at the rock to keep their balance. Simon, first, in line, reached out warily with his forward foot, stirring the water so that the seaweed swirled cold and clammy against his skin. The bottom of the pool seemed fairly smooth, and he went more confidently, with the others following behind. Then suddenly his probing foot met no resistance, and before he could throw his weight backwards he had slipped down waist-deep in water. Jane, last in line, squealed involuntarily as she saw him drop. Barney held out a hand to Simon, suddenly a much shorter figure than himself.

'It's all right,' Simon said, more surprised than damaged. After the first shock the water felt pleasantly cold on his sunbaked legs. He moved carefully forward, and after a couple of steps felt rock against his knees under the water of the pool. He hauled himself up, splashing like a stranded fish, and in a few moments was only ankle-deep in water again.

'It's a sort of underwater trough. It goes right up to the cliff. Be careful, Barney. Feel with your toes a bit further out and see if there are any footholds there. There might be some sticking up under the water, like stepping-stones. I went down before I had a chance to feel. If there aren't any you'll just have to come across the way I did. Only slower.'

Barney prodded carefully about with one foot beneath the water and its swaying carpet of seaweed, but even farther away from the cliff he could feel only the edge of the underwater ridge, and beyond it nothing. 'I can't feel anything to tread on at all'

'You'll have to go down, then. Lower yourself into it.'

'We might as well have gone swimming after all,' Barney said nervously. He crouched with both hands on the bottom until he was sitting in the water with his legs dangling over the hidden crevasse, and let himself slip down.

The water was almost over his shoulders when he felt his feet on firm rock; he had forgotten how much taller Simon was. He waded across and Simon hauled him out into the shallow water. Barney's shorts, wet and dark, clung heavily to his thighs, and he bent to detach odd fronds of seaweed that had twined themselves round his legs. Almost at once he felt the heat of the sun begin to dry his skin, leaving behind only the rasp of salt. Jane followed in the same way, and together they splashed across the last few shallow feet of the pool to where the rocks jutted out dry among the brown mounds of seaweed again.

'I do wish we knew about the tide,' Simon said anxiously to Jane. Barney had gone eagerly slipping and slithering over the rocks ahead of them.

Jane looked towards the sea. It lapped mildly against the edge of the rocks a few yards away, leaving a natural pathway all round the bottom of the cliff.

'It certainly hasn't moved. It might even be going out still. I shouldn't worry yet, we must be nearly there.'

'Well, keep an eye on it. It's that deep bit I'm worried about. When the water does start coming in it'll come into the pool first of all, and it wouldn't have to fill up far for us not to be able to get back the way we came. It'd be over Barney's head in no time.'

Jane blanched, and looked ahead at her younger brother, now scrambling on all fours. 'Oh Simon. D'you think we should have left him behind?'

Simon grinned, 'I'd like to have seen you try. Don't worry, it'll be all right. Just so long as we watch the tide.'

Looking back, Jane suddenly realised how far they had come. They stood now on the rocks at the very tip of the headland The small distant sounds of the land no longer drifted out from the beach, and there was nothing but the gentle sigh of the sea. It was almost as if they were cut off already.

Then Barney yelled in excitement. 'Hey look! Quick! Come here! I've found it!'

He was standing close to the cliff, some yards ahead, almost hidden by a rock. They could see him pointing towards the cliff face. In an instant they had forgotten the tide, and they jumped and slithered over pools and rocks towards Barney, bladder-wrack popping under their feet like machine-gun fire.

'It's not very big,' he called as they came up. Simon and Jane saw the deep cleft in the rock only when they were very close. It was not the kind of cave they had pictured in their minds. Narrow and triangular, it rose barely high enough for Barney to stand upright inside, and they themselves would certainly have to crouch to go in. Rough boulders lay heaped round the entrance, and water dripped from wet green weed coating the roof. They could not see very far inside.

Jane said doubtfully, 'Are you sure this is it?'

'Of course it is,' Barney said positively. 'There couldn't be more than one.'

'I don't see why not.'

'Neither do I,' Simon said, 'but I think this is the one all right. Look up above - you can just see a sort of green triangle at the top of the cliff where the grass grows over the edge by the rocks. We must be almost directly in line with the place where that hole comes out up there.'

Jane looked, and looked down again quickly, shaken by the unnerving height of the cliff leaning over them out of the sky.

'I suppose so.'

Barney peered into the darkness. 'It isn't a cave at all really, just a hole, like at the top. Pouf' - he sniffed critically - 'it smells all seaweedy and salty. And the sides are all wet and green and dripping. Good job we're wet already.'

'I don't like it,' Jane said suddenly, staring hard at the dark entrance so small in the vast mass of the cliff.

'What d'you mean, you don't like it? '

'It gives me the creeps. We can't go in there.'

'You can't, you mean,' Simon said. You'll have to keep watch in case the tide turns. But I can.'

'What about me?' Barney demanded indignantly. 'I found it.'

'D'you want to? ' said Jane in horror.

'With the grail in there? Who wouldn't? Be much better if I tried,' he said persuasively to Simon, 'I'm the smallest, and it's jolly narrow. You might get stuck, and never get out again.'

'Oh don't,' said Jane.

'If you go in, I'm going in after you,' Simon said.

'Okay,' Barney said cheerfully. He had been so unutterably relieved ever since he found himself free of the clutches of the sinister Mr Hastings that nothing else, in comparison, seemed frightening at all. 'I wish we'd brought a torch, though.' He gazed speculatively into the cave. Within a few feet of the entrance it was black and impenetrable.

'I wish we'd brought a rope,' Jane said unhappily. 'Then if you did get stuck I could pull you out.'

Simon put his hands in his pockets looking up at the sky, and began to whistle nonchalantly. They stared at him.

'Well?'

'What's the matter with you?'

'Good job someone in the family's got brains,' Simon said.

'Who? You?'

'I don't know what you'd do without me.'

'Oh come on,' Jane said impatiently, 'you haven't got a rope or a torch, so don't pretend you have.'

'I jolly nearly have.' Simon delved into the pocket of his shorts. 'You know when we went through our pockets up there this morning to see if we had some string, and we only had that cotton of yours - well, I thought we ought to be a bit better equipped just in case. So when we were back at the house I pinched some of Father's fishing-line. He didn't take it all with him.' His hand emerged from his pocket clutching a tight-wound wad of thin brown line. 'That's as tough as any rope.'

'I never thought of that,' Jane said, with new respect.

'I've still got that old bit of candle too. But I bet you haven't still got your matches.'

Jane groaned. 'No, I haven't. They were in my duffle, and I left it at home. Oh bother.'

'I thought you would,' Simon said, and with the smug flourish of a conjurer he produced a box of matches and the candle stump from his shirt pocket. Then his face fell. 'Oh gosh, they've got wet. They must have been splashed when I slipped in that pool. The wick of the candle's soaking, it won't be any good. Still, the matches are all right.'

'They'll do fine,' Barney said encouragingly. That's smashing. Come on.'

Simon took the telescope case from where he had tucked it under his arm and handed it to Jane. 'You'd better take charge of the manuscript, Janey. If I dropped it in there we'd never find it again.'

He looked out again at the sea. The rocks where they stood were even more like a causeway here, stretching out almost flat from the base of the cliff into the water. Only one hump of grey rock stood alone near the entrance of the cave.

The water still lapped gently at the edge six or seven yards away, no nearer and no further than it had been when they first left the beach. Simon wondered nervously how much time was left before the tide would turn. 'I reckon we've got about half an hour,' he said slowly. 'After that we shall have to get away quick before the tide catches us. Come here, Barney, and hold still.'

He found the loose end of the roll of fishing-line and tied it securely round Barney's waist. 'If you're going to go first I can hold on to the line behind you.'

'D'you think he ought to? ' Jane said.

Barney turned round and glared at her.

'Well, I'm not awfully keen on the idea,' said Simon, 'but he's right about its being narrow, and he may be the only one who can get properly inside. It's all right, I won't lose him. Here -' He handed Jane the roll of line. 'Don't let it go slack.'

'And don't keep it too tight,' said Barney, making for the entrance, 'or you'll cut my middle in half.'

Jane looked at her watch. 'It's nearly five o'clock. When you've been in there ten minutes I'll pull on the line twice to tell you.'

'Ten minutes!' said Barney in scorn. 'We may have to go in for miles.'

'You might suffocate,' said poor Jane.

'That's a good idea,' Simon said quickly, glancing at her face. 'You pull twice, and if I pull back twice, it means we're all right but we're staying in there. If I pull three times, it means we're coming out.'

'And if I pull three times it means you've got to come out, because the tide's turned.'

'Fine. And four pulls from either end means a distress signal - not,' Simon added hastily, 'that there's going to be any need for it.'

'All right,' Jane said. 'Oh dear. Don't be long.'

'Well, we shall have to go slowly. But don't get in a flap, nothing's going to go wrong.' Simon patted her on the back, and followed as Barney, straining eagerly at the line round his waist like a dog on a leash, waved one hand briefly and disappeared into the mouth of the cave.

Chapter 14

Barney blinked at the darkness. As his eyes grew accustomed to being out of the sunlight, vague objects took shape in the dark. He realised that the light from the entrance penetrated further inside than they had realised; and for the first few yards at least he could see the faint shine of the slimy green weed covering the walls and roof of the cave, and the glint of water lying along the bottom in a shallow unmoving stream.

He moved warily forward, one hand up touching the roof and the other stretched out to one side. He could feel a slight steady pull on the line round his waist from Simon holding it behind him. Very loud in the enclosed silence of the cave he could hear the splash of their feet through the water, and his brother breathing.

'Go carefully,' Simon said, behind him. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper, but the cave echoed his voice into a husking mutter that filled the space all around them.

'I am.'

'You might bump your head.'

'You might bump yours. Mind this bit here, it comes down lower. Put your hand up on the roof and you'll feel it.'

'I can,' Simon said fervently. His neck was bent uncomfortably downwards; taller than Barney, he had to stoop slightly all the while to avoid hitting his head on the slimy rock above. Occasionally a large cold drop of water dripped down inside his shirt collar.

'Isn't it cold? '

'Freezing.' Barney's shorts were clinging clammily to the tops of his legs, and he felt the air chill through his shirt. He was finding it more and more difficult to make out any shapes around him, and soon he paused uneasily, feeling the darkness close in as if it were pressing on his eyes. Groping upwards, his fingers could no longer feel the roof. Ahead of him it rose out of reach, and he clutched at air.

'Wait a minute, Simon.' His voice came eerily back at him from all sides. 'I think it gets higher here. But I can't see a thing now. Have you got those matches? '

Simon felt his way along the line to where Barney stood. He touched his shoulder, and Barney felt more comforted at the contact than he would have admitted even to himself.

'Don't move. I'm letting go of the line for a minute.' Simon groped in his pocket for the matches and opened the box, feeling the edges carefully to make sure he had it the right way up. The first two matches grated obstinately on the box as he tried to strike them, and nothing happened. The third flared up but broke as it did so, burning Simon's fingers so that he dropped it with an exclamation before they could blink away the dazzle of the sudden light. There was a small hiss as it dropped into the water around their feet.

'Buck up,' said Barney.

'I'm going as fast as I can ... ah, that's it.'

The fourth match was dry, and rasped into flame, flickering. Simon cupped his hand to shelter it. 'Funny, there must be a draught in here. I can't feel one.'

'The match can. That's good, it means there must be an opening somewhere at the other end. So it is the right cave after all.'

Simon's hand hid the dazzle of the little flame, and Barney peered hastily round in the wavering light. Their shadows danced huge and grotesque on the wall. He looked up, and took a few careful steps forward. 'Hold it up ... hey, come on, the roof does go up higher here, you'll be able to stand upright.'

Simon stepped cautiously towards him, bent over the match, and straightened his back with a gasp of relief. Then the match burned his fingers, and he dropped it. At once the darkness wrapped them like a blanket again.

'Hang on, I'll light another one.'

'Well, wait a minute, we don't want to waste them. I could see a bit of the way ahead when it went out, so we can go that far before you light the next.'

Barney shut his eyes. Somehow, even though the cave was just as dark when his eyes were open, he found shutting them gave him a sense of being safer. Still touching the slippery wall with his finger-tips, he moved two or three paces forward. Simon followed him with one hand on his shoulder, staring ahead into the darkness but seeing as little as if a thick black curtain were hanging close before his face.

They went on into the cave for what seemed a long time. Every few moments Simon struck a match, and they moved forward while the dim light lasted, and for the few remembered paces after it flickered out. Once they tried to light the candle stump, but it only spluttered obstinately, so Simon put it back in his pocket.

The air was cold, but fresh on their faces. Although there was a smell all round them of salt and seaweed, as if they were under the sea, it was not difficult to breathe. The silence, like the darkness, seemed almost solid, broken only by their own footsteps, and an occasional echoing musical plop as water somewhere dripped from the roof of the cave.

As Simon was standing still, fumbling with the match-box again, Barney felt the line round his waist jerk tight and dig into him; once, twice. 'There's two pulls on the line. It must be Jane. Ten minutes. Gosh, I thought we'd been in here for hours.'

'I'll signal back,' Simon said. He struck a match and saw the line thin and taut in its light. Taking firm hold of it he gave two slow steady pulls on the direction from which they had come.

'Funny to think of Jane on the other end,' Barney said.

'I wonder how much there is left? '

'Gosh - d'you think we shall run out? How much line was there?'

'Quite a lot,' said Simon, more optimistically than he felt.

'We've been going awfully slowly. Ow!' The match burned down to his fingers, and he dropped it hastily.

There was no hiss as it fell. As they moved on, groping, Simon suddenly realised that he had been listening for the noise.

'Stop a tick, Barney.' He scuffed at the ground with one foot and peered down. 'The floor's not wet any more.'

'My shoes still squelch,' Barney said.

That's the water inside them, idiot, not outside.' Simon's voice boomed hollowly round the cave, and he hastily dropped it to a whisper again, half afraid that the noise might bring the roof down on them.

'The sides aren't slimy here either,' Barney said suddenly. 'It's dry rock. It has been for some time actually, only I hadn't really taken any notice.'

Another match fizzed alight as Simon held it to the one dying in his fingers. He held the flame close to the wall. They saw bare grey granite, veined here and there with a white sparkling rock, and no seaweed. The ground, when Barney stooped to touch it, was covered with a kind of dusty sand.

'We must be going uphill.'

The sea can't ever have come in this far.'

'But we heard it booming about from up the top, this morning. Does that mean we've come past the opening of the chimney bit? ' Barney craned his neck back to look at the roof.

'I don't think so,' Simon said uncertainly. 'The noise would carry a long way. Hey, look ahead quick, this match is going out.'

Barney peered forward at the now-familiar picture that he was never afterwards to forget: of narrow shadow-swung walls tunnelling into the dark, holding them in a cramped, unfriendly grip. And in the second before the darkness came down on them again he thought he saw the curtain of shadow at the end nearer than it had been before.

He moved hesitantly forward, and then some instinct told him to stop. He put out his hand in the silent darkness. It met solid rock a few inches from his face. 'Simon. It's a dead end.'

'What?' Incredulity and disappointment rose in Simon's voice. He struggled with the matches; he could feel the bottom of the box through them now, and realised that there could not be many left.

In the flickering light it was difficult to tell shadow from darkness, but they saw that the cave had not actually come to an end. Instead it changed, just in front of them, to a far narrower passage: tall and thin, with a great boulder wedged between its sides about three feet from the ground. Above their heads, out of reach, the cleft was open to the roof; but there was no way of climbing up to it. The boulder blocked their path.

'We'll never get through that,' Simon said in despair.

There must have been a fall of rock since the Cornishman went through.'

Barney looked down at the forbidding dark gap that remained at the bottom of the cleft, jagged and sinister through the dancing shadows, and swallowed. He was beginning to wish very much that they were back in the sunlight again.

Then he thought of the grail, and then of Mr Hastings's face. 'I can get through underneath, if I crawl.'

'No,' Simon said at once. 'It's dangerous.'

'But we can't go back now.' Barney gained confidence as he began to argue. 'We've got this far, we may be just a few feet away from it. I'll come out again if it's too narrow. Oh come on, Simon, let me try.'

The match went out.

'We haven't got many left,' Simon said out of the darkness.

'They'll run out soon. We've just got to make that candle light, or we shall be stuck in the dark. Where are you?'

Groping his way along the line towards Barney, he took his hand and put the match-box into it. Then he felt in his own pocket for the stump of candle, rubbing its wick hopefully on his shirt to dry it. 'Now light one of the matches.'

There was a noise behind them in the darkness, like a stone falling; a grating, rattling noise and then silence again. 'What was that?'

They listened nervously, but could hear only the sudden violent thumping of their own hearts. Barney struck a match, his hand shaking. The cave sprang into light again round them, with only the darkness pressing mockingly from the direction of the noise.

'It wasn't anything,' Simon said at last. 'Just a stone we must have brushed loose. Here.' He held the candle stub to the flame. The match burned right down, but still the candle wick only spluttered as it had before. They tried again, holding their breath, and this time the wick caught, and burned with a long smoking yellow flame.

'Hold these,' Barney said with determination. 'I'm going in there.' He gave Simon back the last few loose matches and took the candle. 'Look,' he said, shielding the smoking flame from the draught with his other hand. 'It's not so low really, I can go on my hands and knees.'

Simon peered at the entrance unhappily. 'Well ... for goodness' sake be careful. And pull at the line if you get stuck, I'll keep hold of it.'

Barney went down on his hands and knees and crawled into the dark opening beneath the wedged rock, holding the dangerously flickering candle in front of him. The draught seemed to be stronger now. The rock brushed his body on all sides, so that he had to keep his head down and his elbows in, and for a moment he almost panicked with the sense of being shut in.

But before the panic could take hold, the shadows looming round the one point of light changed their shape, and he raised his head without hitting the rock. He crawled a little farther, the floor rough and gritty under his knees; and found not only that he could stand upright but that the cave was much wider. The pool of light cast by his carefully guarded flame did not even show the walls on either side.

'Are you all right?' Simon's anxious voice came muffled through the opening behind him.

Barney bent down. 'It's okay, it widens out again here, that must be an entrance ... I'm going on.'

He felt the line at his waist tighten as Simon jerked an answer and he set off slowly across the cave. The darkness opened before him in the small light from his inch of candle, already burning down and dripping hot wax over his finger-nails. When he glanced back over his shoulder he could no longer see the entrance from which he had come.

'Hallo,' Barney said tentatively into the darkness. His voice whispered back at him in a sinister, eerie way: not booming and reverberating round as it had in the narrow tunnel-like cave they had come through, but muttering far away, high in the air. Barney swung round in a circle, vainly peering into the dark. The space round him must be as big as a house - and yet he was in the depths of Kemare Head.

He paused, irresolute. 'The candle was burning down, soft between his fingers. The thought of the towering dark man in his strange empty house came back to him suddenly, and with it all the feeling of menace that surrounded their pursuers, the enemy, who so desperately wanted to keep them from finding the grail.

Barney shivered with fright and sudden cold. It was as if they were all round him in the silent darkness, evil and unseen, willing him to go back. His ears sang; even in the great empty space of the cave he felt that something was pressing him down, calling him insistently to turn away. Who are you to intrude here, the voice seemed to whisper; one small boy, prying into something that is so much bigger than you can understand, that has remained undisturbed for so many years? Go away, go back where you are safe, leave such ancient things alone ...

But then Barney thought of Great-Uncle Merry, whose mysterious quest they were following. He thought of all that he had said, right in the beginning, of the battle that was never won but never totally lost. And although he saw nothing but the shadows, and the blackness all around his small lonely pool of yellow light, he suddenly had a vivid picture of the knight Bedwin who had begun it all when he came fleeing to Cornwall from the east. In full armour he stood in Barney's mind, guarding the last trust of King Arthur. Chased by the same forces that were now pursuing them.

And Barney remembered the story that Bedwin was buried on Kemare Head, perhaps directly above the cave where he stood, and he was not frightened. There was friendliness round him in the dark now as well as fear.

So Barney did not turn back. He went on, sheltering his small dying light, into the dark that gave back in whispering echoes the sound of his own steps. And then, above his head, he became aware of a noise stranger than anything he had ever heard.

It seemed to come from nowhere, out of the air; a husky, unearthly humming, very faint and far-away, yet filling the whole cave. It wavered up and down, high and then low, like the wind that sings in the trees and telegraph-wires. As the thought flickered through Barney's mind, he held the candle up and saw that over his head the roof opened into a kind of chimney, rising up and up and out of sight. He thought for an instant that he saw a point of light shining down, but his own light dazzled his eyes and he could never be sure. And he realised that the noise he could hear was the wind, far above, blowing over the hole in the rocks that they had found that morning. The singing down in the cave was the singing of the wind over Kemare Head.

It was almost by accident, as he was looking up, that he saw the ledge. It jutted out from the rocky side of the chimney at the end of the cave; a bump of rock beneath a hollow, like a kind of natural cupboard, just within his reach. Inside it, he saw the glint of candlelight reflected back from a shape that was not part of the rock.

Hardly daring to breathe, he reached up and found his hand touching the side of something smooth and curved. It rang beneath his finger-nail with the sound of metal. He grasped it and took it down, blinking at the dust which rose from the ledge as he did so. It was a cup, heavy and strangely shaped; swelling out from a thick stem into a tall bell-shape like the goblets he had seen pictured in his books about King Arthur. He wondered how the artists could have known. He could hardly believe that this, at last, must be the grail.

The metal was cold in his hand; dusty and very dirty, but with a dull golden sheen underneath the dirt There was nothing else on the ledge.

The candle flickered suddenly. The wax felt soft and warm, and Barney guessed with a shock that it would burn for only a few moments more before he would be left alone in the dark. He turned away from the ledge to the direction from which he had come, and realised how lost he would have been without the line tied to his waist. The vast round chamber of the cave stretched out all round him into the dark; only the line, straight and thin, told him the way to go.

He walked towards it; the line dropped to the ground and then drew taut again. Simon must be pulling it in. Barney clutched the grail to him with one hand and held up the candle, now almost burned away, with the other. Excitement bubbled away any of the fears he had felt before. 'Simon!' he called. 'I've found it!'

There was no answer but his own voices whispering back at him from the empty cave. 'Found it ... found it ...' ... a dozen voices, each his own, from every side. -

And the light flickered, and went out.

The line stayed taut as Barney put his hand on it and walked slowly forward. 'Simon?' He said uncertainly. Still there was no answer. For a moment he saw in his mind a terrible picture of Simon overpowered and helpless. And on the other side of the narrow passage in the rock, the tall sneering figure of Mr Hastings, taking in the line as if he were playing a fish on a hook, and waiting ...

Barney's throat felt suddenly dry. He held the grail tighter to him in the darkness, his heart thumping. Then he heard Simon's voice, low down in the darkness before him and very muffled.

'Barney! ... Barney?'

Barney put out his hand and felt the rock where the roof dropped suddenly to the narrow part of the cave. 'I'm here ... Simon, I've found it, I've got the grail!'

But all the muffled urgent voice said was, 'Come on out, quick.'

Barney went down on his hands and knees, wincing again at the pressure of the sharp edges of the rock. Carefully he crawled into the crevice that separated the two parts of the cave, bumping his head in the dark on the low uneven roof. He held the grail upright before him, but it knocked against the side of the rock and rang out, to his surprise, with a long musical note as clear and true as a bell.

He saw a dim glow lighting the farther end of the crack, and then the bright star of a match, and Simon crouching low and pulling in the line with his free hand. The shadows made his eyes look big and dark and alarmed. He stared as Barney emerged, forgetting everything at the sight of the tall cup.

Simon had been growing more and more anxious, and only the feel of Barney still moving at the other end of the line had stopped him from squeezing through the narrow gap himself. He had stood alone in the dark, straining for every sound, longing for light but forcing himself to keep the six remaining matches in his pocket for the journey back. It had seemed a very long time.

He took the cup from Barney's hands. 'I thought it would be a different shape, somehow ... what's this inside? '

'Where?'

'Look -' Simon felt inside the cup and brought out what looked at first like a short stick, almost as dark with age as the cup itself. It had been wedged between the sides, and Barney had not seen it in his haste.

'It's very heavy. I think it's made of lead.'

'What is it?'

'A kind of tube. Like the telescope case, only a lot smaller. It doesn't seem to unscrew, though. Perhaps it just fits together.' - Simon pulled experimentally at the tube, and suddenly one end of it came of like a cap; and wound in a roll inside they saw something very familiar indeed.

'It's another manuscript!'

'So that's what he meant when he said -' Simon broke of. He had taken hold of one end of the rolled parchment in an attempt to pull it out of the tube, and the edge had crumbled away at his touch. With sudden caution he jerked his hand away, and in the same instant remembered why he had called so anxiously for Barney to come out.

'We can't touch it, it's too old. And Barney, we've got to get out as quick as we can. Jane gave three pulls on the line just before you came back. The tide must be coming in. If we don't get out soon we shall be cut off.'

As the boys disappeared into the mouth of the cave Jane had settled herself to lean against the lone standing rock, amongst the wet pillows of seaweed and the grey-green sweep of flat granite causeway round the cliff. She tucked the telescope case carefully under her arm. Even though she had always been with Simon when he was carrying it about, she felt a peculiar unnerving sense of responsibility at the thought of what was inside.

Gradually she paid out the thin fishing-line from the neatly wound wad in her hand. The pressure on it was uneven, as if inside the cave the boys were moving forward and then stopping every few moments. She had to concentrate to keep the line from either pulling too tight or dropping loose on the ground.

It was very hot. The sun beat down over the towering grey cliff, and she felt the heat prickling along her skin. Even the rock she leant on was baked by the sun, and she could feel the warmth of it through her shirt on her back. Behind her, the water swished gently as it washed the edge of the uncovered rocks. There was no other sound anywhere, at the lonely foot of the headland with the sea stretching all around, and without the line moving in her hands Jane could have believed that she was the only person in the world. The land, and the Grey House, seemed very far away.

She wondered idly if their parents had come back from Penzance yet, and what they would think when they found the house completely empty, with nothing to show where anyone had gone.

She thought of the three figures they had seen striding out over Kemare Head, led by the frightening Mr Hastings black and long-legged like some giant insect. Instinctively she looked up at the cliff. But there was no sound, no movement, only the great grey sweep of rock that leant over her in permanent unmoving menace, with the green cap of grass on the headland at the top, two hundred feet above.

And then Great-Uncle Merry followed them into her mind. Where was he? Where had he gone this time? What, so near the end of the quest, could possibly have been important enough to take him away? Never for one moment did Jane think that he could have come to any harm, or have been captured by the enemy. She remembered too clearly the utter confidence with which Great-Uncle Merry had swept her into his arms on the midnight headland: 'They dare not follow if I am here ...'

'I wish you were here now,' Jane said, aloud, shivering a little in spite of the hot still air. She was not happy with Simon and Barney deep in a darkness where anything might be lurking, where they might get lost and never get out, where the roof might fall in...

Great-Uncle Merry would have made sure that nothing like that could happen.

Jane looked at her watch. It was twelve minutes past five, and still the line in her hands was moving slowly and irregularly into the cave. She gave two strong deliberate tugs on the line. After a pause she felt it move twice in reply; but faintly. The line was two-thirds unwound; she wished she had measured it as she let it go. Time dragged by; still the line pulled insistently out of her hand, moving into the dark entrance more slowly now. The sun blazed down immovable out of the empty blue sky, and a small breeze sprang up from nowhere to lift the edges of Jane's long loose hair.

She leant against the rock and let her senses drift, feeling the heat of the sun on her skin, breathing the sea-smell of the wet rocks and seaweed, and listening to the gentle lap-lap of the sea. Then in a kind of sleepy daze, with only her fingers awake, she became aware that the sound of the sea had changed.

She jerked to her feet and swung round. To her horror, the piles of seaweed nearest the sea were swaying up and down in a swell that had not been there before. Waves were washing over what had been the edge of the rocks; nearer her, she thought, than they had been. The tide was on the turn.

Jane felt panic begin to rise within her. The last few loops of the line were loose in her hand now: the boys must be an alarming way inside the cave. She took a firm hold of the line, winding part of the slack round her hand and going right up to the dark mouth of the cave, and jerked it hard one, two, three times.

Nothing happened. She waited, listening to the regular swash of the waves creeping in. Then just as tears of fright were beginning to prickle in her eyes she felt the answering signal; three faint tugs on the line pulling at her hand. Almost at once the strain lessened, and the line began to fall slack. Jane let out a great breath of relief. The line came towards her as she pulled at it; slowly at first and then more easily, faster than she had paid it out. Then at last, Simon and Barney, blinking at the daylight behind hands raised to shield their eyes, came stumbling out of the narrow entrance of the cave.

 'Hallo,' Simon said foolishly, sounding dazed. His matches had run out five full minutes before they reached the light, and the last part of the way had been a nightmare journey in the pitch dark, walking blind and trusting to the feel of the line to tell them that the way ahead was clear. He had made Barney let him go first. All the time he felt that every next step might bring him crashing against rock, or face to face in the dark with some nameless Thing, and he would not have been surprised when they emerged to find that all his hair had turned white.

Jane only looked at him with a small wry grin and said as he had, 'Hallo.'

'Look!' Barney said, and held up the grail.

Jane felt her grin widen with delight. 'Then we've beaten them! We've got it! Gosh, I wish Gumerry were here.'

'I think it's made of gold,' Barney rubbed at the metal. Out in the sunlight, the grail seemed far less magical than in the mysterious darkness of the cave; but a bright yellow gleam showed here and there through the dirt on its side. There's a sort of pattern scratched all over it, too,' he said. 'But you can't see properly, without cleaning it up.'

'It's terribly ancient.'

'But what does it mean! I mean, everyone's trying like mad to get hold of it, because it can tell them something, but when you look at it there doesn't seem to be anything it could possibly tell anyone. Unless that pattern's some sort of message.'

'The manuscript,' Simon said.

'Oh gosh, yes.' Barney took the small, heavy lead tube from the cup, and showed Jane the manuscript inside. 'This was wedged in the grail. It must follow on from where our manuscript leaves off. I bet it's tremendously important. I bet it explains everything. But it breaks up almost as soon as you look at it.' He carefully fitted the cap back on the tube.

'We've got to get it home safely,' Simon said. 'I wonder if there's room ... wait a minute.' He took the telescope case from under Jane's arm and unscrewed it. Their own familiar manuscript stood up from the lower half, fitting it closely. Simon took the dark leaden cylinder and dropped it carefully inside the centre of the parchment in the telescope case. 'There. Got a hanky, Jane?'

Jane took her handkerchief from her shirt pocket. 'What for? '

'Like that,' Simon said, fitting the handkerchief in a tight ball inside the top of the parchment roll. 'It'll keep the new one steady. We'll have to run if we're going to get of before the tide catches up with us, and it'll get bounced about a lot.'

Automatically Jane and Barney turned to look again at the sea. And at exactly the same moment each of them gasped, with a noise of pure strangled fright. Simon had bent his head to screw the two halves of the case back together. He looked up quickly. The waves were lifting the seaweed now within six feet of where they stood. But that was not what was wrong. Jane and Barney, arrested in mid-movement, were looking further out to sea.

For a moment, the one jutting rock obscured Simon's view. Then he too saw the tall sweeping lines of the yacht Lady Mary, under full sail, come round the end of the headland towards them. And he too saw the tall dark figure standing in the bow with one arm raised, pointing.

'Come on, quick!' He grabbed at Barney and Jane as they stood motionless with shock, and pushed them ahead of him. They jumped and slithered over the seaweed-cushioned rocks, away from the cave and the pursuing yacht. Barney clutched the grail in one hand as he ran, his arms outstretched to keep his balance, and Simon held the manuscripts in their case grimly to his chest. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the great white mainsail of the yacht crumpling down on to the deck, and a small dinghy being lowered over the side.

Barney slipped and fell, and nearly brought them both down on top of him. Even as he fell the grail did not leave his grip, but struck the rock once more with the same clear bell-like note as before. It rang out over the sound of their splashing hasty feet.

He struggled up again, biting his lip at the sting of salt eating into a graze on his knee, and they hurried on. They were splashing through water all the while now. The waves had grown, and were washing right over the rocks with every pulse of the rising tide. The water marked the pools and hollows with drifting brown weed, and glossed the bare rock with a swirling coat that would turn, soon, into a current strong enough to dislodge their quick desperate feet.

Barney slipped again, and fell with a splash.

'Let me take it.'

'No!'

He scrambled for a foothold, Jane pulling him up by his free arm, and the frenzied nightmare of a race drove them faster, zig-zagging in wild blind leaps over the wave-washed rocks. Simon glanced back again. Two figures in a small dinghy were paddling fast towards them from the yacht. He heard the yacht's engines cough into life.

'Go on, quick!' he gasped. 'We can still do it!' They hastened on, half stumbling, kept on their feet only by their own speed. Still there was no sight of the beach round the headland, but only the sea on one side and the great wall of the cliff rising on the other. And before them, dwindling into the tide, the long path of rocks and weed.

'Stop!' A deep voice rang out across the water behind them.

'Come back! You stupid children, come here!'

'They won't catch us,' Simon panted, catching Barney as he almost fell a third time, and jerking him back to his feet. Jane at his side was sobbing for breath at every step, but running and stumbling with the same desperate haste. Then round the headland in front of them something else came into sight, and dropped their hopes like stones to the bottom of the sea.

It was another dinghy, broad as a tub, breasting the waves like a barge. The boy Bill sat at a chugging outboard motor in the stern, and Mr Withers was leaning eagerly forward in front of him, his long dark hair blowing in the wind. He saw them and shouted with triumph, and they saw an unpleasant grin break on the boy's face as he turned the boat's nose towards the rocks in their path.

They skidded to a halt, appalled.

'Which way?'

'They'll cut us off!' - 'But we can't go back. Look! The others are going to land!'

With the edge of the water creeping round their feet they looked distractedly back and forth. Not ten yards ahead, the boat with Mr Withers evilly smiling was heading to cut of their path, and behind them the other dinghy was bobbing almost at the edge of the rocks. They were caught, neatly, in a trap.

'Come over here!' the deep voice called to them again. You will not get away. Come here!'

Mr Hastings was standing up in his dinghy, a tall black figure, one arm flung out towards them. With his legs planted apart to keep him balanced, swaying with the boat's rise and fall on the swell, he looked as if he were straddling the sea.

'Barnabas!' The voice dropped lower, to a hypnotic monotone. 'Barnabas, come here.'

Jane clutched at Barney's arm. 'Don't go near him!'

'No fear.' Barney was frightened, but not bewitched into obedience as he had been before. 'Oh Simon, what can we do? '

Simon stared up at the cliff, wondering for a wild moment if they could climb to safety. But the sheer granite face towered implacably up, far, far above their heads. They could never have found footholds there even to climb out of reach, and they would have fallen long before they reached the top.

'Barnabas,' the voice came again, gentle, insidious. 'We know what it is you have in your hand. And you too, Simon. Oh yes, Simon, especially you.'

Simon and Barney each closed a hand instinctively tighter round the manuscripts and the grail.

They are not yours,' the voice rose, more roughly. 'You have no right to them. They must go back where they belong.'

Mr Hastings was watching them intently, poised in the dinghy waiting for the right moment of the swell to jump across to the rocks. Only the heaving mounds of seaweed, masking the edge, made him hesitate. At the tiller, Polly Withers was struggling to control the boat in the rising waves.

Barney shouted suddenly: 'You can't have them. They're not yours either. Why do you want them anyway? You haven't really got a museum, I don't believe all the things you said.'

Mr Hastings laughed softly. The noise echoed eerie and spinechilling over the gentle murmur of the sea.

'You'll never win properly,' Simon called defiantly. 'You never do.'

'We shall this time,' a lighter voice said behind them. They swung round again. It was Withers. The outboard motor had cut out, and quietly the other dinghy was edging nearer to them as the boy Bill groped for the rock with an oar.

They drew closer together with their backs against the cliff, pressed as far away as they could; but on either side the boats crept closer towards them. The Lady Mary was edging slowly along of the headland. They could hear her engines thrumming faintly, though they could see no one on board

'If only we had a boat,' Jane said in despair.

'Couldn't we swim for it? '

'Where to?'

'There must be something we can do!' Barney's voice rose frantically.

'There is nothing at all you can do.' Withers's light sneering voice came over the rocks to them. He was less than five yards away in the bow of the tossing dinghy. 'Give us the manuscript Give it to us and we will take you off safely. The tide is rising very fast now. You must give it to us.'

'What if we don't? ' Simon called rebelliously.

'Look at the sea, Simon. You can't get back now the way you came. Look at the tide. You're cut off. You can't get away unless you come with us.'

'He's right,' Jane whispered. 'Look!' She pointed. Further along the rocks the sea was already washing the foot of the cliff.

'Where's your boat, Simon?' called the mocking voice.

'We'll have to give in,' Simon said, low and angry.

'Take your time, Simon. We can wait. We've got all the time in the world.'

They heard the boy snigger on the other side of the boat.

'They've got us.'

'Oh think - think - we can't give it up now.'

'Think of Great-Uncle Merry. 'It's a pity we ever thought of him in the first place,' Simon said fiercely. 'It's no good, I'm going to say we give in.'

'No!' Barney said urgently, and before they realised what was happening he had snatched the manuscript case from Simon and splashed forward over the wet rocks to the edge of the sea. He held up the long glinting case in one hand and the grail in the

other, and gazed furiously at Mr Hastings. 'If you don't pick us up and let us take them home I shall throw them in the sea.'

'Barney!' Jane croaked. But Simon held her back, listening.

Mr Hastings did not move. He stood looking across with immense calm arrogance at Barney's small bristling figure, and when he spoke the deep voice was colder than any voice they had ever heard. 'If you do that, Barnabas, I shall leave you and your brother and sister here to drown.'

They had no doubt that he was speaking the truth. But Barney was carried away with a passionate indignation, and he was determined never again to believe anything that Mr Hastings said. If once he did, he knew he would be under the spell again.

'I will, I will! If you don't promise, I will!' He raised the grail higher in his right hand, flexing his muscles to throw it. Simon and Jane gasped.

The whole world seemed to stop and centre round the towering black-clad man and a small boy: one will against another, with Barney saved by his own fury from the full force of the commanding glare driving into his eyes. Then Mr Hastings's face twisted, and he let out a strangled shout. 'Withers!'

And from that moment, for the children, the world cracked into unreality and there seemed no reason in anything that happened.

From either side, Norman Withers and Mr Hastings made a dive for Barney. Simon shouted, 'Barney, don't!' and dashed towards him to clasp his outstretched arm. Withers, nearer, made a great leap on to the rocks from his boat, setting it swaying wildly with Bill clinging frantically to the tiller. But as his lunging foot came down where, the rock should have been, they saw the viciousness in his face change to alarm, and he flung up his arms and disappeared under the water.

He had jumped down on the masked pool among the rocks: the gap where the retreating sea had left deep water, and which now was filled far deeper by the incoming tide. Jane, cowering back against the cliff, chilled with horror as she realised that they would all three have gone headlong into it if they had run another yard further on.

Withers surfaced again, coughing and spluttering, and Barney hesitated, the grail still held over his head. Mr Hastings had leapt across to the rocks without falling, and was coming at him from the other side with long loping strides, his dark brows a menacing bar across his face and his lips drawn back in a horrible unlaughing grin. Simon dived desperately, and was brushed aside by the sweep of one long arm; but in falling he grabbed at the man's nearest leg and brought him crashing down full length on the wet slippery rocks.

For all his height, Mr Hastings moved like an eel. In a moment he was on his feet again, with one big hand clasped round Simon's arm, and in a swift cruel movement he pulled the arm round behind Simon's back and jerked it upwards so that he cried out with pain. The girl in the boat laughed softly. She had not moved since the beginning. Jane heard, and hated her, but stood transfixed by the look of concentrated evil cruelty on the face above her. It was as if something monstrous blazed behind Mr Hastings's eyes, something not human, that filled her with a horror more vast and dreadful than anything she had felt before.

'Put it down, Barnabas,' Mr Hastings panted. 'Put down the manuscript, or I'll break his arm.' Simon wriggled in his grasp and kicked backwards, but then gasped and went limp as his arm was jerked savagely higher and pain shot through him like water boiling in his blood. But before Barney, his face twisted with concern, could even move, a great yell rang out over the water from the yacht. A rough voice shouted, in anguished warning, 'Master'

In the same moment they heard a new noise over the low throb of the yacht's waiting engines: a high-pitched drone that grew louder and nearer. Suddenly round the corner of the headland from Trewissick, they saw a glittering arc of spray shooting up from the bows of a big speed-boat. It was moving tremendously fast, swinging out round the seaward side of the yacht towards the place where they stood. And in a glimpse through the spray, they saw the only figure they knew that could tower as tall as Mr Hastings, and above it the familiar blowing tousle of white hair.

Jane let out a shout high with relief. 'It's Gumerry!'

Mr Hastings snarled and released Simon suddenly, making a desperate lunge forward at Barney where he stood wavering on the edge. Just in time Barney saw him and ducked away backwards under his hand.

Bill, in his dinghy, ripped at the outboard motor and set it roaring; then jumped, slithering on the rocks but landing safe. Chunky and menacing beside the giant height of the man in black, he faced them, crouching slightly. Like dancers in a minuet the two moved forward, groping slowly for the treacherous footholds, and the children shrank back against the cliff.

The speed-boat roared up in a great flurry of spray. Within seconds it was alongside the headland. The engine's note changed to a deeper throb and the boat lurched slowly closer. Looking fearfully over Bill's advancing shoulder Jane could see Great-Uncle Merry standing erect, beside the blue-jerseyed figure of Mr Penhallow crouching over the controls.

Forgetting everything in the overwhelming surge of relief, she dashed forward to the edge of the rocks, taking the boy by surprise so that he grasped at her too late and overbalanced against Mr Hastings. The man snarled at him angrily and made a last reach for Barney as he stood pressed and staring helplessly against the cliff, his arms hanging down now limp.

But Simon, twisting up the last of his strength, snatched the grail and the long cylinder of the telescope case from his brother and slipped out of reach, dodging round him to the edge of the waves.

He shouted urgently, 'Gumerry!' As his great-uncle turned, he raised his arm and flung the grail with all his might towards the speed-boat, watching agonised to see if it could cross the gap. At the controls, Mr Penhallow wrestled to hold the boat steady. The strange bell-like cup wheeled through the air, flashing golden in the sun, and Great-Uncle Merry shot out one arm sideways like a slip fielder and caught it as it curved over towards the water.

'Look out!' Barney yelled. Mr Hastings pivoted towards Simon as he drew back his arm to send the manuscript after the cup, darting sideways to keep out of reach. He threw: but as the case left his hand Mr Withers, rising dripping to his feet in the dinghy, lunged out with an oar in a clumsy attempt to intercept it.

Jane screamed.

The oar struck the case in mid-flight. Withers let out a shout of triumph. But in his throat it changed to terror, as the long unwieldy case spun off the oar with the force of Simon's throw and came apart in the air. The two halves spiralled out away from the boat, scattering fragments of the familiar manuscript that they had studied so often: they saw the small lead case from the cave fall out and splash like a stone into the sea; and almost at the same moment the two halves of the telescope case, with their disintegrating parchment, hit the water and disappeared. The broken pieces of parchment did not float; they were gone at once, as if they had dissolved. Nothing was left but Jane's handkerchief, bobbing forlornly on the waves.

And then their blood stood still and cold within them, as an inhuman sound like the howl of an animal rang out over the sea. It was the second long howl that they had heard that day, but it was not the same as the first. Mr Hastings put back his head like a dog, and gave a great shriek of pain and fear and rage. With two long bounds he leapt from the edge of the rocks, and dived with a mighty splash into the rippled water where the case had gone down.

They stared at the sunlight dancing on the water that had closed over his head, and but for the mutter of the engines and the sea there was no sound. A movement by the yacht caught their gaze, and they saw the girl being pulled aboard, with her dinghy left bobbing below.

Bill stood as immobile as the children, gazing open-mouthed at the sea turning golden now under the late sun. Then Withers shouted at him, lurching towards the outboard motor in the remaining dinghy, and as the boat moved off the boy flung himself aboard.

The children still stood watching. No one moved either aboard the speedboat, as it swayed towards the rocks on the swell. The dinghy moved out, buzzing like an angry wasp and then beside it they saw a dark head break surface, and heard the rasp of desperate gulping breaths. The dinghy slowed, and the man and boy in it heaved the tall black figure aboard. It held nothing in its hand.

Mr Hastings lay in the bottom of the boat, choking and gasping for breath, but as they watched he raised his head, the dark wet hair flattened over his forehead like a mask, and put out a hand to Withers to pull himself up. With rage and hatred twisting his face, he looked back at Great-Uncle Merry.

Great-Uncle Merry stood in the speed-boat with one hand on the wind-shield and the other holding the grail, the sun behind him blazing in his white hair. He drew himself so tall and erect that he looked for a strange moment like some great creature of the rocks and the sea. And he called across the water, in a strong voice that rang back from the cliffs, some words in a language that the children could not understand, but with a note through it that made them suddenly shiver.

And the dark figure in the other boat seemed to shrink within himself at the sound, so that the menace and power were all at once gone out of him. Suddenly he looked only ridiculous in the skin-wet black clothes, and seemed smaller than he had been before. All three in the boat cowered down, making no move or sound, as the dinghy crossed back to the yacht.

The children stirred. 'Gosh!' Barney whispered. 'What did he say?'

'I don't know.'

'I'm glad I don't know,' Jane said slowly.

They watched as the three figures swung themselves aboard the yacht, and almost at once the engine throbbed higher and the Lady Mary's long white hull slipped away. The broad outboard dinghy trailed forlorn behind, but the other remained, bobbing and drifting empty on the waves.

The yacht headed out across the bay, past Trewissick harbour and down the coast, until she was only a small white shape on the sun-gilded sea. And by the time they had all climbed aboard the speedboat, and looked again, she was gone.

Epilogue

The sound of clapping echoed through the glossy pillars of the long museum gallery, and Simon, very pink in the face, threaded his way back to Barney and Jane through the crowd of gravely smiling scholars and dons. The crowd began to move about again, and voices rose in a general chatter all round them.

A bright-eyed young man with a notebook materialised at their side. 'That was a very nice speech, Simon, if I may say so. This is Jane and Barnabas, is it?'

Simon blinked at him, and nodded.

'I'm from the Press Association,' said the young man briskly. 'Can I just ask you how large a cheque the curator presented you with? '

Simon looked down at the envelope in his hand, put his finger nervously in the flap and tore it open. He took out the neatly folded cheque, gazed at it for several moments, and without a word passed it across to Jane.

Jane looked at it, and swallowed. 'It says, one hundred pounds.'

'Gosh!' said Barney.

'Well, that's nice,' said the young man cheerfully. 'Congratulations. Now then, what will you do with it? '

They looked at him blankly.

'I don't know,' said Simon at last.

'Oh, come now,' the young man persisted. You must have some idea. What are the things you've always most wanted to buy? '

The children looked at one another helplessly.

'Young man,' said Great-Uncle Merry's deep voice beside them, 'if you were suddenly presented with a hundred pounds, what would you buy? '

The reporter looked taken aback. 'Well - er - I-'

'Precisely,' said Great-Uncle Merry. 'You don't know. Neither do these children. Good afternoon.'

'Just one more thing,' said the young man, unabashed, writing rapid shorthand squiggles in his notebook. 'What were you actually doing when you found the thing? '

'The grail, you mean,' Barney said.

'Well, yes, that's what you like to call it, isn't it?' said the young man lightly.

Barney glared at him indignantly.

'We just happened to be exploring a cave,' Simon said hastily. 'And we found it on a ledge.'

'Wasn't there talk of someone else having been after it?'

'Moonshine,' said Great-Uncle Merry firmly. 'Now look here, my boy, you go off and talk to the curator, just over there. He knows all about it. These three have had enough excitement for one day.'

The young man opened his mouth to say something else, looked at Great-Uncle Merry, and shut it again. He grinned amiably and disappeared into the crowd, and Great-Uncle Merry steered the children into a quiet corner behind a pillar.

'Well,' he said, 'you'll have your pictures in all the papers to-morrow, you'll be written about in books for years to come by a lot of distinguished scholarly gentlemen, and you've been given a hundred pounds by one of the most famous museums in the world. And I must say you all deserve it.'

'Gumerry,' Simon said thoughtfully. 'I know there'd be no point in telling people the real story behind finding the grail, but wouldn't it be a good thing at least to warn them about Mr Hastings? I mean, he got hold of Mrs Palk and that boy Bill and made them bad, and there's nothing to stop him going round doing it to everyone.'

'He has gone,' Great-Uncle Merry said. Two owl-like men in heavy spectacles, passing, bowed respectfully to him, and he nodded vaguely.

'I know, but he might come back.'

Great-Uncle Merry looked down the long gallery, over the heads, and the old closed look came back into his face. 'When he does come back,' he said, 'it will not be as Mr Hastings.'

'Wasn't his name really Hastings at all? ' Simon said curiously.

'I have known him use many different names,' Great-Uncle Merry said, 'at many different times.'

Jane slid one foot unhappily to and fro over the smooth marble floor. 'It seems so awful that a vicar should be so bad.'

'He must have kidded all the bishops and things into thinking he was good,' Simon said. 'Same as he kidded everyone in Trewissick.'

'Not at all,' Great-Uncle Merry said.

Simon stared at him. 'But he must have ... I mean, they must have heard him preaching sermons on Sundays.'

'No one heard him preach on Sundays. And I doubt if he has ever met a bishop in his life.'

Now they were all staring at him, in such baffled amazement that the sides of his mouth twitched into a half-smile. 'It's quite simple. What they call the power of suggestion. Our Mr Hastings was not the vicar of Trewissick, nor anything to do with him. I know the real vicar slightly, he is a tall man as well, though rather thin and about seventy years old ... his name is Smith.'

'But Mr Hastings lived in the vicarage,' Barney said.

'It was the vicarage, once. Now it's let out to anyone who wants to rent it ... the parish council decided years ago that it was much too big for Mr Smith to live alone in it like a pea in a pod, and they found him a little cottage on the other side of the church.'

'And when I went to find him,' Jane said slowly, trying to remember, 'I didn't ask anyone where he lived, I just said to an old man by the church, is that the vicarage, and all he said was yes ... he was a rather bad-tempered old man, I think ... And do you know, Gumerry, I don't think Mr Hastings actually told me he was the vicar, I just took it for granted when he said something about his replacing Mr Hawes-Mellor there. But he must have known I thought he was.'

'Oh yes. He wasn't going to disillusion you until he'd found out what you were up to. He knew perfectly well who you were.'

'Did he really? '

'From the moment he opened his front door.'

'Oh,' said Jane. She thought about it, and felt cold. 'Oh.'

'So from that moment we all went on thinking he was the vicar,' Simon said, 'and if ever we mentioned him to anybody like Mr Penhallow they must have thought we meant the real vicar ... but Gumerry, didn't you know? '

Great-Uncle Merry chuckled. 'No. That's what I thought as well. For some time - well, right up to the last - I entertained the most terrible suspicions of poor harmless Mr Smith.'

Barney said unexpectedly: 'But if you've been against Mr Hastings before, surely you couldn't mistake anybody else for him?'

'He changes,' Great-Uncle Merry said vaguely, deliberately looking away again. 'There is no knowing what he will look like ...'

And there was a finality in the ring of his voice that forbade any further question; as they knew there would always be when they tried to ask more about the mysterious enemy of their days in Trewissick. This was one of the things from Great-Uncle Merry's secret world, and even though they had been so much involved, they knew he would keep his secrets as he always had.

Simon looked down at the cheque in his hand. 'We found the grail,' he said. 'And everyone seems frightfully excited about it. But it isn't any use on its own, is it? The Cornishman said, if whoever found it had other words from him, on the second manuscript that we didn't even have a chance to look at, then they'd be able to understand what was written on the grail and know the secret of it all. But we shan't ever know, because the manuscripts are at the bottom of the sea.'

Barney said, gloomily, 'We failed, really.'

Great-Uncle Merry said nothing, and when they looked up at him, hearing only the hum of voices from the crowd, he seemed to be towering over them as tall and still as the pillar at his side.

'Failed? ' he said, and he was smiling. 'Oh no. Is that really what you think? You haven't failed. The hunt for the grail was a battle, as important in its way as any battle that's ever been fought. And you won it, the three of you. The powers behind the man calling himself Hastings came very near to winning, and what that victory would have meant, if the secret of the grail had been given into their hands, is more than anyone dare think. But thanks to you the vital secret they needed is safe from them still, for as many centuries perhaps as. it was before. Safe - not destroyed, Simon. The first manuscript, your map, will certainly have disintegrated at once in the sea. But that was no more use to anyone once it had led you to the second, and the grail. It might have made my colleagues even more excited' - he glanced round the room, and chuckled - 'but that's no matter. The point is that the second manuscript, down under the sea, is sealed up in its case - which will resist seawater indefinitely if it's made of lead. So the last secret is safe, and hidden. So well hidden at the bottom of Trewissick Bay that they could never even begin the long business of searching for it without our being able to find out, and to stop them. They have lost their chance.'

'And so have we,' Simon said bitterly, seeing again the picture that had never properly left his mind. He thought of the glinting brass telescope case, with both precious manuscripts sealed inside, flying from his desperate hand and then, only yards from Great-Uncle Merry's safe grasp, jerking away from the raised oar to break and plunge its contents for ever into the sea.

'No, we haven't,' said Jane unexpectedly. She was thinking of the same moment, and she was out of the cool marble vastness of the museum, back on Kemare Head in the excitement and the scorching sun. 'We do know where it is. I was standing by the only thing that could mark it - that deep pool in the rocks. I was just on the edge, and the lead case went down right in front of me. So we should know where to look if we ever went back.'

For a moment Great-Uncle Merry looked really alarmed. 'I had no idea of that. Then the others will have noticed the same thing - and they will be able to go straight to the spot, dive for the manuscript, and be away with it before anyone has time even to notice they are there.'

'No, they won't,' Jane said, pink and earnest. That's the best thing of all, Gumerry. You see, we only noticed that pool in the first place because we came across it when the tide was at its lowest. By the time we were on our way back to the beach the water had covered it again. Mr Withers fell into it, but he didn't know he had. So if there was ever a tide as low as that again, we should be able to look for the pool and find the second manuscript. But the enemy wouldn't, because they don't know about the pool at all.'

'Can we go back?' Simon said eagerly. 'Can we go back, Gumerry, and have someone dive for it? '

'One day, perhaps,' Great-Uncle Merry said; and then before he could say any more a group of men from the murmuring crowd all round them had turned towards him: 'Ah, Professor Lyon! If you have a moment, might I introduce you to Dr Theodore Reisenstatz -'

'I am a great, great disciple of yours,' an intense little man with a pointed beard said to Great-Uncle Merry as he took his hand. 'Merriman Lyon is a name much honoured in my country ...'

'Come on,' Simon said in an undertone; and the children slipped away to stand on the edge of the crowd, while the bald heads and grey beards wagged and chattered solemnly. They looked across the shimmering floor to the lone glass case where the grail stood like a golden star.

Barney was gazing into space as if he were coming out of a trance.

'Wake up,' Jane said cheerfully.

Barney said slowly, 'Is that his real name? '

'Whose name?' 'Great-Uncle Merry - is he really called Merriman? '

'Well, of course - that's what Merry is short for.'

'I didn't know,' Barney said. 'I always thought Merry was a nickname. Merriman Lyon ...'

'Funny name, isn't it?' said Simon lightly. 'Come on, let's go and have another look at the grail. I want to see what it says about us again.'

He moved round the edge of the crowd with Jane; but Barney stayed where he was. 'Merriman Lyon,' he said softly to himself. 'Merry Lyon ... Merlion ... Merlin ...'

He looked across the room to where Great-Uncle Merry's white head towered over the rest; slightly bent as he listened to what someone else was saying. The angular brown face seemed more than ever like an old, old carving, deep eyes shadowed and mysterious above the fierce nose.

'No,' Barney said aloud, and he shook himself. 'It's not possible.' But as he followed Simon and Jane he glanced back over his shoulder, wondering. And Great-Uncle Merry, as if he knew, turned his head and looked him full in the face for an instant, across the crowd; smiled very faintly, and looked away again.

All the way up the immense gallery, over its glistening stone floor, row upon row of identical glass cases stretched into the distance, with pots, daggers, coins, strange twisted pieces of bronze and leather and wood all shut quiet inside like butterflies caught on pins. The case which held the grail was taller than the rest; a high glass box in a place of honour in the centre of the great gallery, with nothing inside it but the one shining cup, cleaned now to brilliant gold, poised on a heavy black plinth. A neat silver square beneath was engraved with the words: Gold chalice of unknown Celtic workmanship, believed sixth century. Found in Trewissick, south Cornwall, and presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew.

They moved round the case, looking at the grail. Its curved, engraved sides had been meticulously cleaned; and now that the beaten gold was free of the dirt left by centuries in the cave under Kemare Head, every line of the engraving was clear.

They saw that it was divided into five panels, and that four of the five were covered with pictures of men fighting : brandishing swords and spears, crouching behind shields, dressed not in armour but in strange tunics ending above their knees. They wore helmets on their heads; but the helmets, curving down over the backs of their necks, were like no shape the children had ever seen before. Between the figures, interweaving like pictures on a tapestry, words and letters were closely engraved. The last panel, the fifth, was completely covered in words, as close-written as the scrawled black lines had been on the manuscript. But all these words on the golden grail, the children knew, were in a language nobody, from Great-Uncle Merry to the museum experts, had been able to understand.

Behind them, they heard two men from the crowd come up deep in discussion, looking down into the glass case.

'... quite unique. Of course the significance of the inscription is difficult to estimate. Clearly runic, I think - strange, in a Roman ambience ...

'But my dear fellow - ' The second man's voice was loud and jolly; glancing round, Barney saw that he was red-faced, enormous beside his small bespectacled companion. 'Emphasising the runic element surely presupposes some Saxon connection, and the whole essence of this thing is Celtic. Romano-Celtic if you like, but consider the Arthurian evidence -'

'Arthurian?' said the first voice in nasal disbelief. 'I should have to have greater proof for that than Professor Lyon's imaginative surmise. Loomis, I think, would have grave doubts ... but indeed a remarkable find none the less, remarkable ...'

They moved away again into the crowd.

'What on earth did all that mean?' said Jane.

'Doesn't he believe it's about King Arthur?' Barney glared resentfully after the little man. Then they heard voices from another group passing the show-case.

'Surely all the theories will have to be revised now; it throws a new light on the entire Arthurian canon.' The voice was as solemn as the rest, but younger; and then it chuckled. 'Poor old Battersby - all his vapourings about Scandinavian analogues, and now here's the first evidence since Nennuis of a Celtic Arthur - a real king -'

'The Times asked me for a piece, you know,' said a deeper voice.

'Oh really, did you do that? Bit strong, wasn't it? - "a find to shake the whole field of English scholarship"-'

'Not at all,' said the deeper voice. 'It's undoubtedly genuine, and it undoubtedly gives clues to the identity of Arthur. And as such it can't be overpraised. I'm only sorry about that last panel.'

'Yes, the mysterious inscription. A cipher, I think. It must be. Those strange Old English characters - runic, old Battersby claims, absurd of course - personally I'm sure there was once a key to them. Lost long since, of course, so we shall never know ...'

The voices faded like the rest.

'Well, that sounds better,' Simon said.

They all seem to treat it as a kind of relic,' Jane said sadly. 'I suppose it's what Gumerry said, that the real meaning of it wouldn't have been known unless the enemy had got hold of it, and then it would have been too late.'

'Well, the enemy can come and look at it as much as they like now,' said Simon, 'but it won't mean anything to them without the manuscript. I suppose that was the key to the ciphers in the last panel that the man was talking about just now.'

Jane sighed. 'And it won't mean anything to us either. So we shan't know the real truth about King Arthur, about the - what did the manuscript call him? - the Pendragon.'

'No. We shan't know exactly who he was, or what happened to him.'

'We shan't know what his secret was, that Gumerry talked about and the enemy wanted.'

'We shan't know about that other odd thing the manuscript said - the day when the Pendragon shall come again.'

Barney, listening to them, looked again at the mysterious words engraved on the gleaming side of the grail. And he raised his head to stare across the room at Great-Uncle Merry's tall figure, with the great white head and fierce, secret face.

'I think we shall know,' he said slowly, 'one day.'

"Dark is Rising" series by Susan Cooper

Book 1       Over Sea, Under Stone

Book 2       The Dark is Rising

Book 3       Greenwitch

Book 4       The Grey King

Book 5       Silver on the Tree