"Well now, I thought not; but somebody, or something--spoke just now." The boy blushed, for Billy was looking at him quizzically. "It's not the first time I've heard it, either," he went on; "sometimes it sounds right astern, and sometimes close beside me." "What does it say?" asked Billy, re-lighting his pipe. "I don't know that it _says_ anything, and yet it seems to speak out quite clearly. Five or six times I've heard it, and usually on smooth days like this, when the wind's steady." Billy nodded. "That's right, sonny; I've heard it scores of times. And they say. . . . But, there, I don't believe a word of it." "What do they say?" "They say that 'tis the voice of drowned men down below, and that they hail their names whenever a boat passes." The boy stared at the water. He knew it for a floor through which he let down his trammels and crab-pots into wonderland--a twilight with forests and meadows of its own, in which all the marvels of all the fairy-books were possible; but the terror of it had never clouded his delight. "Nonsense, Billy; the voice I hear is always quite cheerful and friendly--not a bit like a dead man's." "I tell what I'm told," answered Billy, and the subject dropped. But the boy did not cease thinking about the voice; and some time after he came, as it seemed, upon a clue. His father had set him to read Shakespeare; and, taking down the first of twelve volumes from the shelf, he began upon the first play, _The Tempest_. He was prepared to yawn, but the first scene flung open a door to him, and he stepped into a new world, a childish Ferdinand roaming an Isle of Voices. He resigned Miranda to the grown-up prince, for whom (as he saw at a glance, being wise in the ways of story-books) she was eminently fitted. It was in Ariel, perched with harp upon the shrouds of the king's ship, that he recognised the unseen familiar of his own voyaging. "O spirit, be my friend--speak to me often!" As children will, he gave Prospero's island a local habitation in the tangled cliff-garden, tethered Caliban in the tool-shed, and watched the white surf far withdrawn, or listened to its murmur between the lordly boles of the red-currant bushes. For the first time he became aware of some limitations in Billy. He had long been aware of some serious limitations in his nurse: she could not, for instance, sail a boat, and her only knot was a "granny." He never dreamed of despising her, being an affectionate boy; but more and more he went his own way without consulting her. Yet it was she who--unconsciously and quite as if it were nothing out of the way-- handed him the clue.