its living
neighbor, bespeaking the deviltry of woodland demons.--It was the hour
which makes all that man can do seem as nothing in the mournful
darkness, causing his works to vanish and be as if they had not been.

At this hour the heart of man may be powerfully stirred, by an anguish,
a prayer, or perhaps--a fragrance.

The harbor master, uttering a brief cry, dropped to his knees and
remained mute, his arms extended toward the sea in a gesture of
reconcilement.

On that night the _Sally Lunn_, Cap'n Sam Dreed, was wrecked on the
sands of Pull-an'-be-Damned.

Rackby, who had fallen into a deep sleep, lying northeast and southwest,
was awakened by a hand smiting his door in, and a wailing outside of the
Old Roke busy with his agonies. In a second his room was full of
crowding seamen, at their head Peter Loud, bearing in his arms the
dripping form of Caddie Sills. He laid her gently on the couch.

"Where did you break up?" whispered Rackby. He trembled like a leaf.

"Pull-an'-be-Damned," said Deep-water Peter. "The Cap'n's gone. He
didn't come away. Men can say what they like of Sam Dreed; he wouldn't
come into the boat. I'll tell all the world that."

The crew of the wrecked ship stood heaving and glittering in their oils,
plucking their beards with a sense of trespass, hearing the steeple
clock tick, and water drum on the worn floor.

"All you men clear out," said Caddie Sills, faintly. "Leave me here with
Jethro Rackby."

They set themselves in motion, pushing one against the other with a rasp
and shriek of oilskins--and Peter Loud last of all.

The harbor master, not knowing what to say, took a step away from her,
came back, and, looking into her pale face, cried out, horror-struck, "I
damned ye." He dropped on his knees. "Poor girl! I damned ye out and
out."

"Hold your horses, Mr. Happen-so," said Cad Sills. "There's no harm in
that. I was damned and basted good and brown before you ever took me
across your little checkered apron."

She looked at him almost wistfully, as if she had need of him. With her
wet hair uncoiling to the floor, she looked as if she had served,
herself, for a fateful living figurehead, like her mother before her.
The bit of coral was still slung round her throat. The harbor master
recalled with what a world of meaning she had caught it between her
teeth on the night of his rescue--the eyes with a half-wistful light as
now.

"Come," she said, "Harbor Master. I wasn't good t