"Alas, yes," replied the fisherman. "Two years ago the Prince of the Unknown Isles sent the finest vessel in his fleet to the Land of the Dawn to buy the jewel. A beautiful ship was she, with a hull as black as night and sails as red as fire. My brother and I sailed in her crew. The jewel was taken aboard. Our brave ship set sail for the Unknown Isles. Hardly were we three days out of the sight of land, when a storm overtook us and sank the vessel. I chanced to be tossed in the water near a great fragment of the mast, and clung to this until a passing vessel found me. Of all aboard, I alone survived. Forty fathoms deep lies the Emerald of the Sea, never more to be seen but by the dumb creatures of the waters." At these tidings the brave sailor's heart became like ice; nevertheless, he cried:-- "Alas, good friend, I know that what you say is true, yet shall I not despair; for, come what will, I must save my father!" Hearing this, the fisherman's wife, a quiet, good body who had had little to say, whispered that it would be well first to consult the Witch of the Sands. "The Witch of the Sands? Who is she and where can I find her?" cried the sailor. "The Witch of the Sands dwells a hundred leagues from here," replied the fisherman's wife. "All the mysteries of the waters are in her keeping and she has an answer for them all. You must go to her and ask her to help you." So the sailor thanked the good fisherman and his wife, and set out to walk the hundred leagues to the house of the Witch of the Sands. His path lay along a desolate and lonely shore, on whose rocky beaches the wooden bones of old wrecks lay rotting, half buried in stones and weed. Just as the third day's sun was sinking in the shining waters, the sailor arrived at the Witch's dwelling. The Witch made her home in a deserted old ship, which a storm of long ago had cast far up the sands. As for the Witch herself, she was a woman so old that the sailor thought she surely must have been living when the moon and the stars were made. A fringe of sea-shells circled the crown of her high hat, and round her wrists were bracelets of pearly periwinkles. Just as the sailor approached the Witch's door, a young fur seal, who had been basking in a little pool left along the beach by the tide, hastened out of his puddle, and running swiftly toward him on his flappers, nuzzled his hand with his sleek, wet head, just like a young dog. "Down, Neptune, down!" cried the witch shrilly. "Good evening, madam," said the sailor in his politest manner.