'Yes, you have shot a poor Mermaid,' said the maid of the sea, 'and I am dying, and with my dying breath I curse this safe harbour, which was large enough to hold all the fighting ships of the Spanish Armada and your own, and it shall be cursed with a bar of sand which shall be a bar of doom to many a stately ship and many a noble life, and it shall stretch from the Mermaid's Glass to Trebetherick Bay on the opposite shore, and prevent this haven of deep water from ever again becoming a floating harbour save at full tide. The Mermaid's wraith will haunt the bar of doom her dying curse shall bring until your wicked deed has been fully avenged;' and looking round the great bay of shining waters, laughing and rippling in the eye of the sun, she raised her arms and cursed the harbour of Padstow with a bitter curse, and Tristram shuddered as he listened, and as she cursed she uttered a wailing cry and fell back dead into the pool, and the water where she sank was dyed with her blood. 'I have committed a wicked deed,' said Tristram Bird, gazing into the blood-stained pool, 'and verily I shall be punished for my sin;' and he turned away with the fear of coming doom in his heart. As he went up the cove and along the top of the cliffs the distressful, wailing cry of the Mermaid seemed to follow him, and the sky gloomed all around as he went, and the sea moaned a dreadful moan as it came up the bay. When he reached Tregirls, overlooking the Cove, he stood by the gate for a minute and gazed out over the beautiful harbour. The sea, which only half an hour ago was as blue as the eyes of the seamaid he had shot, and full of smiles and laughter, was now black as ash-buds, save where a golden streak lay across the water from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay. 'The Mermaid's curse is already working,' moaned Tristram Bird, and he fled through the lane leading to Padstow as if a death-hound was after him. When he reached Place House he met a little crowd of Padstow maids going out flower-gathering. 'Whither away so fast, Tristram Bird?' asked a little maid. 'You aren't driving a teem of snails this time, 'tis plain to see. Where hast thou been?' 'Need you ask?' said a pert young girl. 'He has been away shooting something to startle the maids of Padstow with! What strange new creature did you shoot, Tristram Bird?' 'A wonderful creature with eyes like blue fire,' returned the unhappy youth, looking away over St. Minver dunes towards the Tors--'a sweet, soft creature with beautiful hair, every wire of which was a sunbeam of gold, and her face was the loveliest I ever beheld. It clean bewitched me.' 'A beautiful maid like that, and yet you shot her?' cried all the young maids of Padstow Town.