Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
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page 15 of 263 (05%)
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for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the
spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic - Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!' 'Splendid,' said Dan, but Una shuddered. 'I'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go away?' Una asked. 'Different things. I'll tell you one of them some day - the thing that made the biggest flit of any,' said Puck. 'But they didn't all flit at once. They dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. Most of them were foreigners who couldn't stand our climate. They flitted early.' 'How early?' said Dan. 'A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they began as Gods. The Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought more when they landed. They were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they |
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