"Then I wish you would do me a favour. I want to see your skipper. Can I get into the church?" "Yes. He always leaves the door wide open while he rings the bells--so that his mates can come in from the sea to him." "Poor fellow! Poor fellow!" He got up. "I shall go across to the church now," he said. "I'll take you there. Wrap yourself up. It's cold to-night." "It is very cold." The painter pulled a great cloak over his shoulders and a cap down over his glittering and melancholy eyes, that had watched for many years all the subtle changes of the colour and the movement of the sea. Uniacke opened the Vicarage door and they stood in the wind. The night was not dark, but one of those wan and light grey nights that seemed painted with the very hues of wind and of cloud. It was like a fluid round about them, and surely flowed hither and thither, now swaying quietly, now spreading away, shredded out as water that is split by hard substances. It was full of noise as is a whirlpool, in which melancholy cries resound forever. Above this noise the notes of the two bells alternated like the voices of stars in a stormy sky. "Even living men at sea to-night would not hear those bells," said the painter. "And the drowned--how can they hear?" "Who knows?" said the clergyman. "Perhaps they are allowed to hear them and to offer up prayers for their faithful comrade. I think faithfulness is heaven in a human heart." They moved across the churchyard, and all the graves of the drowned flickered round their feet in the gusty greyness. They passed Jack Pringle's grave, where the "Kindly Light" lay in the stone. When they gained the church Sir Graham saw that the door was set wide open to the night. He stood still. "And so those dead mariners are to pass in here," he said, "under this porch. Uniacke, cannot you imagine the scene if they came? Those dead men, with their white, sea-washed faces, their dripping bodies, their wild eyes that had looked on the depths of the sea, their hanging hands round which the fishes had nibbled with their oval lips! The procession of the drowned to their faithful captain. If I stood here long enough alone my imagination would hear them, would hear their ghostly boat grate its keel upon the Island beach, and the tramp of their sodden sea-boots. How many were there?" "I never heard. Only one body was cast up, and that is buried by the churchyard wall. Shall we go in?" "Yes." They entered through the black doorway. The church was very dim and smelt musty and venerable, rather as the cover of an old and worn Bible smells. And now that they were within it, the bells sounded different, less magical, more full of human music; their office--the summoning of men to pray, the benediction of the marriage tie, the speeding of the departed on the eternal road--became apparent and evoked accustomed thoughts. "Where is the belfry?" said Sir Graham in a whisper. "This way. We have to pass the vestry and go up a stone staircase."