“There was a woman on the island in those times,” said Peter, “a very aged woman, and she had a kind of plaster which she made which cured the cancer, drawing it out by the roots, and she could tell what was good for the chin cough, and the women did like to have her with them when their children was born, she being knowledgable in them matters. I’m told the priests didn’t like her, for there was things she knew which it mightn’t be right that anyone would know, things that’s better left to the clergy. Whether she guessed what was the matter with Anthony, or whether he up and told her straight my mother never heard. It could be that he told her, for many a one used to go to her for a charm when the butter wouldn’t come, or a cow, maybe, was pining; so it wouldn’t surprise me if Anthony went to her.” Peter crept aft. He took a pull on the jib-sheet and belayed it again; but I do not believe that he really cared much about the set of the sail. That was his excuse. He wanted to be nearer to me. There is something in stories like this, told in dim twilight, with dark waters sighing near at hand, which makes men feel the need of close human companionship. Peter seated himself on the floorboards at my feet, and I felt a certain comfort in the touch of his arm on my leg. “Well,” he went on, “according to the old hag--and what she said was true enough, however she learnt it--them ones doesn’t go naked all the time, but only when they’re playing themselves on the rocks at low tide, the way Anthony seen them. Mostly they have a kind of cloak that they wear, and they take the same cloaks off of them when they’re up above the water and they lay them down on the rocks. If so be that a man could put his hand on e’er a cloak, the one that owned it would have to follow him whether she wanted to or not. If it was to the end of the world she’d have to follow him, or to Spain, or to America, or wherever he might go. And what’s more, she’d have to do what he bid her, be the same good or bad, and be with him if he wanted her, so long as he kept the cloak from her. That’s what the old woman told Anthony, and she was a skilful woman, well knowing the nature of beasts and men, and of them that’s neither beasts nor men. You’ll believe me now that Anthony wasn’t altogether the same as other men when I tell you that he laid his mind down to get his hand down on one of the cloaks. He was a good swimmer, so he was, which is what few men on the island can do, and he knew that he’d be able to fetch out to the rock where them ones played themselves.” I was quite prepared to believe that Anthony was inspired by a passion far out of the common. I know nothing more terrifying than the chill embrace of the sea at night-time. To strike out through the slimy weeds which lie close along the surface at the ebb point of a spring tide, to clamber on low rocks, half awash for an hour or two at midnight, these are things which I would not willingly do.