"Well, I sat there between the two, for I wasn't sleepy at all myself, and kept the fire alight, and my own pipe a-going, till morning, by which time the storm was mostly cleared off. So I got the old lantern down from the gable, and stirred about to get breakfast ready; and at sunrise, the two being still sleeping, I walked out to see if so be as anything of the wreck was visible. But the Devil's Ribs was only a bank of foam, and when I came to the beach there was naught there but a few shattered timbers and bits of spars and rigging; whatever else there may have been had gone down within the whirlpool of the Devil's Ribs, and would never see daylight more; nor was there anything to tell where the wrecked ship hailed from, or what she was, or whither she was bound. Nay, a man might well have doubted whether there'd been any wreck at all; and superstitious folks might have thought that the pretty child we had found was a sea-nymph or a mermaid, who had come on the shoulders of waves to bring us good luck--or bad, maybe! Not that I'd have ye to think, sir, that I'm of the superstitious kind, being a man as has seen much of the world, and lived a number of years in it. But 'twas a strange thing altogether, and stranger yet was to follow, as ye shall hear. "In my walk I happened by the boulder where I'd been with the Scholar overnight, and there I picked up a small iron box, with a big lock on it; it was lashed to four bits of wood, so as it might float, and I think it must have come ashore along with the raft that brought the little girl. Just as I laid hands on it, and cut away the lashings, I sighted one of the villagers a-coming over the cliff path towards me. So, not caring to be hailed at that time, I slipped the box in the pocket of my jacket, and steered for the house.