The merman swam on slowly, debating whether he should really go and look. Something seemed at once to warn him away and to call him forward. He could not tell what was the matter with him. Once he turned to swim away. Then he made up his mind once for all, and dashed straight on toward the ship. He said over to himself a charm his grandfather had taught him: “Aski, kataski, lix tetrax, damnamenous,” words of power once written on the fish-bodied statue of the great goddess of Ephesus; but, dear me! it did him no good at all. All the while he was coming the wooden nymph stood up in her place, holding out her silver vase in both hands and looking over the sea with her painted eyes. “What a lovely creature!” thought the merman. “She is looking at me; she holds her vase toward me.” She was doing no such thing, of course--the wooden image--but he thought she was. He did not know that she would have looked just the same way if he had been an old porpoise instead of a young merman. He swam closer and closer. The moon shone on the painted face. The ship moved gently on the water. The merman thought the lady had inclined her head. In one moment he fell desperately, helplessly, in love with the oaken nymph. It certainly must have been the doing of the old Witch of the Sea. Some influence of the kind must have been at work, or else a merman who had been to college would surely have had more sense than to become enamored of an oak block. But whether it was the witch’s work, or whether it was the drop of human blood in his veins, or whether it was fate, that is just what he did--he fell in love with a wooden image. He forgot his home, his old grandfather, his sisters, his best friend, who loved him like a brother and who had saved his life in the war. As for the mermaid who had given him the ring, he never gave her a thought. He didn’t care for anything in the world but that painted image smiling up there and holding its vase. He saw nothing but that, and, in fact, he didn’t see that either, for he saw it as if it were alive. “Oh I wish I knew her name or what she is!” said the merman to himself. “She can’t be human. She is too beautiful.” He swam round and round and read the words “The Sea-nymph” painted under the figure. He gave a jump almost out of the water. “It is a nymph,” he said--“one of the Nereides or Oceanides. I thought they had left this world long ago. What can she be doing on that ship?” He gazed at the wooden creature with all his heart in his eyes. He wished he were human that he might at least be a little like this lovely shape. He hated his own form. Was it likely the divine nymph would ever deign to notice a creature with a fish’s tail? Finally he ventured to speak. “Fairest nymph,” he said.