Hilles and Robert Rayner."

[Illustration: FROM DE BREY. EDITION 1619]

I am sorry to say that the too-conscientious Doctor Asher, in
editing this log, felt called upon to add, in a foot-note:
"Probably a seal"; and to quote, in support of his prosaic
suggestion, various unnecessary facts about seals observed a few
centuries later in the same waters by Doctor Kane. For my own part,
I much prefer to believe in the mermaid--and, by so believing, to
create in my own heart somewhat of the feeling which was in the
hearts of those old seafarers in a time when sea-prodigies and
sea-mysteries were to be counted with as among the perils of every
ocean voyage.

This belief of mine is not a mere whimsical fancy. Unless we take
as real what the shipmen of Hudson's time took as real, we not
only miss the strong romance which was so large a part of their
life, but we go wide of understanding the brave spirit in which
their exploring work was done. Adventuring into tempests in their
cockle-shell ships they took as a matter of course--and were brave
in that way without any thought of their bravery. As a part of the
day's work, also, they took their wretched quarters aboard ship and
their wretched, and usually insufficient, food. Their highest
courage was reserved for facing the fearsome dangers which existed
only in their imaginations--but which were as real to them as were
the dangers of wreck and of starvation and of battlings with wild
beasts, brute or human, in strange new-found lands. It followed of
necessity that men leading lives so full of physical hardship, and
so beset by wondering dread, were moody and discontented--and so