ilence; for wonder, and the
fear of the skipper, were heavy upon them. What madness was this that
had so suddenly come upon him? Had prosperity and power already turned
his head? Or could it be that the young woman he had found on the wreck
was a fairy of some kind, and had bewitched him with the glance of her
sea-eyes? Or perhaps she was a mermaid? Or perhaps she was nothing but a
human who had been born on an Easter Sunday--an Easter child. Strange
and potent gifts of entrancing, and of looking into the future, are
bestowed upon Easter children of the female sex by the fairies. Every
one knows that! Whatever the girl might be, it was an astounding thing
for Black Dennis Nolan to turn his back on a stranded and unlooted
vessel to escort a stranger--aye, or even a friend--to shelter. They
knew that, for all his overbearing and hard-fisted ways toward men, he
was kind to women; but this matter seemed to them a thing of madness
rather than of kindness; and never before had they known him to show any
sign of infatuation. They glanced over their shoulders, and, seeing the
skipper some distance off, supervising the construction of the hammock,
they began to whisper and surmise.

"Did ye mark the glint in the eyes o' her, Pat?" inquired one of
another. "Sure, lad, 'twas like what I once see before--an' may the holy
saints presarve me from seein' it agin! 'Twas the day, ten year back
come July, when I see the mermaid in Pike's Arm, down nort' on the
_Labrador_, when I was hook-an'-linin' for Skipper McDoul o' Harbor
Grace. She popped the beautiful head o' her out o' the sea widin reach
o' a paddle o' me skiff an' shot a glimp at me out o' her two eyes that
turned me heart to fire an' me soul to ice, an' come pretty nigh
t'rowin' me into the bay."

"Aye," returned the other in a husky whisper. "Aye, ye bes talkin' now,
Tim Leary. Sure, bain't that power o' the glimp o' the eye a mark o' the
mermaid? They bewitches a man's heart, does mermaids, an' kills the
eternal soul of him! Sure, b'y! Didn't me own great-gran'father, who
sailed foreign viyages out o' Witless Bay, clap his own two eyes on to
one o' they desperate sea-critters one night he was standin' his trick
at the wheel, one day nort' o' Barbados? Sure, b'y! He heared a whisper
behind him, like a whisper o' music, and when he turned his head 'round
there she was, nat'ral as any girl o' the harbor, a-gleamin' her
beautiful, grand eyes at him in the moonshine. An' when he