o mounted the rock, and was seated close beside her!

He too, sailor though he was, seemed quite unconscious of their danger.
They sat there on the water-surrounded rock, he with arm around the girl,
she with her head on his breast, oblivious of everything but each other.

"Oh ho! my young woman!" said the old dame to herself, "so this is how you
pass your time while your lover is away! and after the way you pretended
to love him, too!" She felt quite cross, for she was very tired and very
frightened and in no mood to smile at lovers' foolishness. She sat
herself down on a rock by the path they would have to ascend, determined
to await their return, partly to give the maiden a good sound scolding for
her reckless behaviour, and partly to satisfy her curiosity by seeing who
the young man was who had won her heart away from the absent lover.

The lovers, though, appeared in no hurry to move. There they sat clinging
together, with the moon shining down coldly on them, and the water
gleaming around them. The wind had died away until there seemed to be
scarcely a breath of air stirring, and the sea lay as calm as a lake.
The whole scene resembled Fairyland, with the lovers as two spirits
watching over the Cove. The tide rose higher and higher, and the only
sound to be heard in that lone, desolate spot was the lazy plash of the
waves on the shore, and around the cliffs.

In a short time the water rose so high that the rock was almost covered;
to get off it now the lovers would have to swim; yet still they paid no
heed. They seemed lost to everything but each other.

It was all so ghostly and uncanny that the poor old woman grew wild with
nervousness and excitement. She called and called to them at the top of
her voice, but she failed to make it reach them. The plash of the waves
and the sighing of the gently heaving sea seemed to swallow it up.
And when at last a wave came up and washed right over them, she shrieked
aloud, distracted by her own helplessness, and covered her eyes with her
apron. She could not bear to look and watch them being drowned.

With her face hidden she waited, breathless, for their shrieks for help,--
but none came. She uncovered her eyes and looked at the rock,--it was
bare, save for the water which now covered it. She gazed frantically
around, first at the beach, then out to sea; the beach was empty, save for
herself, but out on the sea were the two lovers, floating out on the
scarcely