shed by generations into fine growth, not by such as he to
be utterly scouted. The sound of buoy-bells reached his ears for warning,
but he eyed the intricate lines of breakers, he recalled ominous reports,
only to estimate the nerve of body and mind needful to any mortal bent
there upon a perilous trespass.

For a tale went that kept every fisher well aloof, to shun a danger worse
than shipwreck. Little gain was it held for any once driven within the
buoy-bells to work clear again to open sea, since sorrow and disaster
would dog thenceforward, nor cease till due forfeit were paid: the boat
broken up and burnt, her very ashes delivered to the sea. Woe even to the
man who dare take any least splinter to burn on his hearth, for sickness
and death would desolate his home. Nay, if a shifting wind but carried
the ashes landwards, blight or murrain would follow surely. So went
tradition, and conviction attended it well, since not within memory had
any hardy or unfortunate supplied a living test. Now truly this boy, who
came coasting perilously, needed to have in his veins the blood of an
alien race, over and above youth and great strength, to be traversing a
superstition of such dark credit, in others bred deep and strong.

Years ago he had been fascinated by the terrors and mystery of the place,
and with a human desire after the unattainable, most strong and
unregulated in youth, he had fearfully longed for a strength to do and a
heart to dare more than all his world: to get footing where never man had
stood: to face black luck and its befitters with a higher faith, defying
a supremacy of evil. Very early, out of the extravagant vagaries of a
child's brain, an audacious word had escaped, sped by a temper aflame,
for which he had suffered--from youngsters a day's derision, from a
strict elder a look that was worse disgrace. He deemed that might come to
be recalled to his credit. Now that he was grown to a strength
unmatched, with a heart proud and eager, impatient of any mastery not of
love and reverence, a notion pleased him that like enough these tales had
been magnified to recover the self-esteem of balked adventurers: a
presumption not extreme in one whose superb strength had lowered old
records, who found that none could withstand him to his full
satisfaction. Here in the bright sunshine of high day, the year's eager
spring quick in every vein, young virile audacity belittling all hazards,
the lad's heart rode so high an