His second memory was of Philip guiding him round the drawing-room (over thick carpets, on which his bare feet made no noise), and showing him the pictures on the walls, and telling him what they meant. One (an engraving of St. John, with a death's-head and a crucifix) was, according to this grim and veracious guide, a picture of a brigand who killed his victims, and always skinned their skulls with a cross-handled dagger. After that his memories of Philip and himself were as two gleams of sunshine which mingle and become one. Philip was a great reader of noble histories. He found them, frayed and tattered, at the bottom of a trunk that had tin corners and two padlocks, and stood in the room looking towards the harbour where his mother's father, the old sailor, had slept. One of them was his special favourite, and he used to read it aloud to Pete. It told of the doings of the Carrasdhoo men. They were a bold band of desperadoes, the terror of all the island. Sometimes they worked in the fields at ploughing, and reaping, and stacking, the same as common practical men; and sometimes they lived in houses, just like the house by the water-trough. But when the wind was rising in the nor-nor-west, and there was a taste of the brine on your lips, they would be up, and say, “The sea's calling us--we must be going.” Then they would live in rocky caves of the coast where nobody could reach them, and there would be fires lit at night in tar-barrels, and shouting, and singing, and carousing; and after that there would be ships' rudders, and figure heads, and masts coming up with the tide, and sometimes dead bodies on the beach of sailors they had drowned--only foreign ones though--hundreds and tons of them. But that was long ago, the Carrasdhoo men were dead, and the glory of their day was departed. One quiet evening, after an awesome reading of this brave history, Philip, sitting on his haunches at the gable, with Pete like another white frog beside him, said quite suddenly, “Hush! What's that?” “I wonder,” said Pete. There was never a sound in the air above the rustle of a leaf, and Pete's imagination could carry him no further. “Pete,” said Philip, with awful gravity, “the sea's calling me.” “And me,” said Pete solemnly. Early that night the two lads were down at the most desolate part of Port Mooar, in a cave under the scraggy black rocks of Gobny-Garvain, kindling a fire of gorse and turf inside the remains of a broken barrel. “See that tremendous sharp rock below low water?” said Philip. “Don't I, though?” said Pete. There was never a rock the size of a currycomb between them and the line of the sky. “That's what we call a reef,” said Philip. “Wait a bit and you'll see the ships go splitting on top of it like--like----” “Like a tay-pot,” said Pete. “We'll save the women, though,” said Philip. “Shall we save the women, Pete? We always do.” “Aw, yes, the women--and the boys,” said Pete thoughtfully.