"Not dangerous now, sir--not dangerous when the water is so smooth and the air so calm; but if there's a little sea on, and a little breeze, you never know what may happen here. Sometimes the sea alone will do it, and sometimes the wind alone will do it, and sometimes both together won't do it. You can only be sure she'll spout when the sea is high and the wind a strong gale from the south-west. What surprises me to see the lady there is because the place has a bad name, and she was just standing on the worst spot of all when we saw her first." "How a bad name, and how the worst place of all? Are you quite sure there is no danger to the lady now?" asked Alfred, struggling violently and successfully to conceal his extraordinary solicitude. "I am perfectly sure there is no danger of the spout now. The reason I said it has a bad name is because of all the people who were carried off that Rock; and where Mrs. Davenport stood is just the worst spot of all." "But Mrs. Davenport must know the Rock well. I dare say, as her house is near, she often comes to see it." "Ay, she may often come to see it. But to see it and to walk on it are different things. There are very few women in the village who would care to go on it without a man to lend them a hand. Why, sir, it's as slippery as ice, and two people fell and were killed on it out of regard to its slipperiness." "Is there no way of landing here?" "No, sir. You can't get a foot ashore anywhere nearer than Kilcash. You might, of course, land on many a rock here and there, but you couldn't get up the cliffs. It's iron-bound for miles." "But could not the lady be cautioned in some way? She could hear a shout even though we cannot see her. She cannot yet be out of hearing?" Paulton could scarcely sit still in the boat. "And suppose she could hear a shout, sir, what could you tell her she doesn't know? Do you think Mrs. Davenport has lived all these years and years a mile from the Black Rock, and doesn't know as much as any of us could tell her about it? Why, she lives nearer to it than any one else in the world! Her next-door neighbours are, I may say, the ghosts of men who lost their lives on that very spot." "What is that you're saying?" asked O'Brien, coming suddenly out of his reverie. "Only, sir, that Mrs. Davenport's next-door neighbours are the ghosts of the men who lost their lives on the Black Rock." O'Brien looked in amazement at the boatman. He had been recalled from his abstraction by the word "ghost;" but he had not fancied, when he asked his question, that the answer would lie so close to the thoughts which had been occupying his mind a moment before. For a while he could not clear his mind of the effect of this coincidence. "What on earth do you know or guess about the matter, Phelan?" he cried, quite taken off his guard. "I suppose I know as much about the Rock as any man of my years along the coast," answered Phelan, with a slight return of his former sullenness.