“Two or three of them laughed and Dame Belella put her finger over his lips, and after that she had called the servitor for fired-wine, she begged this Glaverth to go on with his tale. When he had done and they were all murmuring to ask him questions, Rusty pushed his wife off his lap as though she had been a sack of meal and stood up next to the fireplace, with his own cup in his hand. “‘You sows of soldiers,’ he said (begging your grace, demoiselle, but he said it so); ‘You sows of soldiers talk of your perils, but they are not real dangers at all, only what you could meet with on a city street and solve with a strong arm or a little straight talk, or’—well, I will not say what else he said, demoiselle, but it was something that made all those in the room to gasp, if you know what I mean, and at least a third of them wearing coronet badges. “‘Yah!’ Rusty said, ‘Your Tritulaccan wenches! What could they do at the worst but slip a steel splinter in your back, so that you go to Heaven with the Church’s blessing for the glory of old Dossola? But the harridans we seamen must deal with could cost a man his soul and eternal agony. Even now I may be a lost man—a lost man.’ I remember how he said it, putting both hands to his face with a sob, and somebody dropped a cup. They all thought Rusty taken with wine, d’you see, and so did I, but now he began to tell a long tale, with no sign of winishness at all in his voice. “It was all of our voyage to the south through the Green Islands and I swear to you, demoiselle, had I heard it before I sailed, I would not have sailed at all, so gruesome he made it, with escapes from storm and Tritulaccan raiders and all this only a prelude to telling of a thing he said happened in the Green Islands, where we lay becalmed one night, and he walked the deck. He said then he heard a sound like far-away singing, and the ship began to move without a wind. Going forward, he said, he saw something like pools of green fire in the water; therefore knew the ship was approached of sea-witches who were carrying her on. Would have let go the brow-anchor, he would, but all the men of the deck watch were staring over the side, so little obeying him that they even shook off the hands he laid on them. The song went to his own heart and he knew that the ship and all in it must soon be doomed; therefore, he, Rusty, who still had some part of his wits, conceived the measure of going forward to say they could have him as a willing victim if they would release the rest. This was accepted, he said. One of the demon women clambered to the ship through the rope-hangings and companioned with him all night, then bade him farewell with the word that he must come to her again.