"You had the deil's own luck and it's only by you I'm here. Let's get on," and they splashed on again. Past wreck after wreck, grim and gaunt and grisly, mostly of very ancient date, all swept bare to the bone by the fury of the seas, all with the water washing coldly through them. Now and again Macro growled terse comments,-- "A warship,--from the size of her. See those ribs, they'll last another hundred years. And yon's a Dutchman. They build stout too. Mostly British though, bound to be, hereabouts." "Have you any idea where we are, then?" "An idea--ay! I've heard tell o' this place, but I never met anyone had been here. They mostly never come back. They call it what you called it a while ago--'The Graveyard.'" "And where is it?" "Sable Island, if I'm right,--'bout one hundred miles off Nova Scotia." "And is there any island?" "Ay,--on the chart, but I never met any man had been there. We're looking for it. There's no depth here or all them ribs wouldn't be sticking up like that. They're stuck in the sand below. Must be over yonder where they lie so thick.... An' a fearsome place when we get there, with the spirits of all them dead men all about it--hundreds of 'em,--thousands, mebbe." "Do ships ever call there?" "Not if they can help it, I trow. It's Death brings 'em and he holds 'em tight.... Hearken to that now!"--and he stopped as though in doubt about going further. And Wulfrey, listening intently, caught a faint thin sound of wailing far away in the distance. It rose and fell, shrill and piercing and very discomforting, though very far away. "What is it?" he jerked. "Spirits," breathed Macro, and his face was more scared and haggard even than before. "Nonsense!" said Wulfrey, with an assumption of brusqueness for his own reassurance, for this dismal progress through the graveyard was telling sorely on him also, and the sounds that came wavering across the water were as like the shrieking of souls in torment as anything he could imagine. "There are no such things. Don't be a fool, man!" "Man alive!--no spirits? The Islands are full o' them, an' this place fuller still. Yes, indeed!" But it was obviously impossible to float about there for ever. The water was not nearly so cold as Wulfrey had expected, but the strain of the night and of the preceding days of semi-starvation had told on him, and he was feeling that he could not stand much more. He set off doggedly again towards the thickest agglomeration of dead shipping in front, and the mate followed him with a face full of foreboding. They went in silence, paying no heed now to the things they passed on the way, though the apparently endless succession of dead ships and the parts of them was not without its effect on their already broken spirits. "Gosh!" cried Macro of a sudden. "I touched ground or I'm a Dutchman! Ay--sand it is," and Wulfrey sinking his feet found firm bottom.