“You couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear. There was nothing to do but to haul back and forward, back and forward about a hundred times. We wore ourselves all out, though probably the work was all that kept us from freezing to death. Some of us had frostbites. After a while a faint light appeared. Dawn, frightened by that merciless gale. Dawn, and then daylight; and at last we could see. The ocean went down; wind had gone down in the night. What we saw was the body of the captain of the _Farallone_ hanging stiffly in the buoy. “The line had been made fast to the mast too near the deck. As we hauled away each man, coming to the ship’s bulwark, had to lift his body over it. The last man had been able to get into the buoy, but in the minute or two before he reached the bulwark he had frozen helpless; and when he came to it he couldn’t lift himself over.” There was a silence in which men drew on their pipes. The hand of young Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7, rolling a cigarette, shook slightly. Mermaid saw the scene. She burned to ask her Dad if he, or any of the others, had seen the Duneswoman that night in the fearful storm. Had she walked abroad on the waters, passing unharmed through the great breakers of inky-black water with invisible crests of white and curling foam? Her face--did no one see it beside the staring form of the dying skipper? Did none see her arm about him? Why had she not lifted him over the rail? See.... Dad had said no one could see anything. But you could _always_: see the Duneswoman when she was about, however black the night. Who was she? The little girl lost herself in a timid reverie. “Lemons,” Uncle Ho was saying. “Oranges, onions--fine big Spanish onions from Valencia; pineapples and pomegranates, even Havana see-gars but mostly spoiled by salt water. Once, army blankets; we slept warm that winter. Cocoanuts every little while. The next cocoanut I find I’ll carve a mask out of for Mermaid.” Her cheeks flushed and she tossed her hair and looked at him with dancing eyes. Wasn’t Uncle Ho good! And he was wonderfully skillful with a knife; a full rigged ship carved in a great glass bottle lay in the keeper’s room to witness his craftsmanship. He did marvellous things with bits of rope. He had promised to make her a hammock and with some fine white rope he was braiding a mat to adorn the little shelf which was her dressing table. Rose knots, diamond knots; knots and hitches and splices without number--Uncle Ho was master of them all. Mermaid listened to his further talk about the things that ships jettison and the things that wash ashore.