This time my voice expressed full sympathy. The sea all round us was rising in queer round little waves, though there was no wind. The boom snatched at the blocks as the boat rocked. The sail was ghostly white. The vision of a mermaid would not have surprised me greatly. “The beautifulest ever was seen,” said Peter, “and neither shift nor shirt on them, only just themselves, and the long hair of them. Straight it was and black, only for a taste of green in it. You wouldn’t be making a mistake between the like of them and seals, not if you’d seen them right the way Anthony O’Flaherty did.” Peter made this reflection a little bitterly. I was afraid the recollection of my unfortunate remark about seals might have stopped him telling the story, but it did not. “Once Anthony had seen them,” he said, “he couldn’t rest content without he’d be going to see them again. Many a night he went and saw neither sight nor light of them, for it was only at spring tides that they’d be there, on account of the rocks not being uncovered any other time. But at the bottom of the low springs they were there right enough, and sometimes they’d be swimming in the sea and sometimes they’d be sitting on the rocks. It was wonderful the songs they’d sing--like the sound of the sea set to music was what my mother told me, and she was told by them that knew. The people did be wondering what had come over Anthony, for he was different like from what he had been, and nobody knew what took him out of his house in the middle of the night at the spring tides. There was a girl that they had laid down for him to marry, and Anthony had no objection to her before he seen them ones; but after he had seen them he wouldn’t look at the girl. She had a middling good fortune too but sure he didn’t care about that.” I could understand Anthony’s feelings. The air of wind which Peter had promised, drawn from its cave by the lure of the departing sun, was filling our head-sails. I hauled in the main-sheet gently hand over hand and belayed it The boat slipped quietly along close-hauled. The long line of islands which guards the entrance of our bay lay dim before use. Over the shoulder of one of them I could see the lighthouse, still a distinguishable patch of white against the looming grey of the land. The water rippled mournfully under our bows and a long pale wake stretched astern from our counter. “Fortune,” banked money, good heifers and even enduringly fruitful fields seemed very little matters to me then. They must have seemed still less, far less, to Anthony O’Flaherty after he had seen those white sea-maidens with their green-black hair.