But in the black storms that swept over them at times, when the great waves crashed like thunder on the spit, and the sandhills and hummocks melted away under Wulfrey's wondering eyes and built themselves afresh in new places, when the shrieking hosts came whirling round the ship and the sky was full of their raucous clamour, then the darkness came on Macro and he fell again to his seuns, and knew them, beyond all doubt, for things of evil. When the odds out there on the wreck-pile were too much for him, he learned by experience how to fool them. He would smash furiously at them with his club, shouting in wild exultation as the bashed bodies went tumbling into the sea. If that did not discourage them, and their venom persisted, he would drop quietly into some adjacent hole amid the wreckage where they could not get at him, and wait there till they whirled away after easier prey. So keen was he on adding to his store that, when their commissariat needed replenishing, Wulfrey found it necessary to accompany him and to insist on his attending strictly to this more important business, or at times they would have gone short. For the rest, Wulfrey left him to the satisfaction of his cravings and interfered with him not at all. One memorable morning, which broke sweet and clear after two days of stress and storm, the mate set off as usual to find what the gods had sent him; and Wulf, leaning over the side, watched him paddle across to the spit, and land there, and stride away towards the western point from which they always waded out to the wreckage. But on this occasion, before he disappeared in the distance, he stopped and stood looking out over the sea, and the next moment Wulfrey saw him wading out towards something which only caught his eye when thus directed to it,--something which bobbed up and down among the waves with a glint of white at times. He saw Macro reach it and lift his arms in a gesture of amazement. Then he bent over it and presently came staggering back up the shore bearing a white burden over his shoulder. It looked at that distance so very like a body that Wulfrey tumbled over on to his raft, and paddled across to the spit, and ran along the shore to where the mate was kneeling now alongside his find. It was the body of a woman, pallid and sodden, with her long dark hair all astream, her white face pinched and shrunken and blue-veined, with dark hollows round the closed eyes, and colourless lips slightly retracted showing even, white teeth. She was clothed only in a long white nightdress, which the water had so moulded to her shapely figure that it looked like a piece of fair white marble sculpture. In life she must have been beautiful, Wulfrey thought, as he stood panting, and gazed down upon her. "Dead?" he jerked. "Ay, sure! She were lashed to yonder spar and I couldna leave her there.... The pity of it! She's been a fine bit."