le of shipwreck and
desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch
by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a
long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element
received.

The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his
hands together, and said: "Blessed be the tide that will break over and
bury ye for ever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers,
has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil
were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from
you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its
shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye!
Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined
ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye
here! Seven times have ye put my life in peril, three fair sons have ye
swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and now, even now, your
waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm limbs
in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam,
and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for
another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine."

Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young
man appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his halve-net
in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose and shouted, and
waved him back from a place which, to a person unacquainted with the
dangers of the bay, real and superstitious, seemed sufficiently perilous;
his granddaughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her white
hands; but the more they strove, the faster advanced the peasant, till he
stood to his middle in the water, while the tide increased every moment
in depth and strength. "Andrew, Andrew," cried the young woman, in a
voice quavering with emotion, "turn, turn, I tell you! O the Ships, the
Haunted Ships!" But the appearance of a fine run of fish had more
influence with the peasant than the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward
he dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne off his feet, and
mingled like foam with the water, and hurried towards the fatal eddies
which whirled and roared round the sunken ships. But he was a powerful
young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of the projecting ribs
of the nearest hulk, an