who will not even condescend to be awe-struck at the new wonders
which she herself reveals daily? Perhaps, too, according to the Duke
of Wellington's great dictum, that each man must be the best judge in
his own profession, sailors may know best whether mermaids exist or
not. Besides, was it not here on Croyde Sands abreast of us, this
very last summer, that a maiden--by which beautiful old word West-
country people still call young girls--was followed up the shore by a
mermaid who issued from the breakers, green-haired, golden-combed,
and all; and, fleeing home, took to her bed and died, poor thing, of
sheer terror in the course of a few days, persisting in her account
of the monster? True, the mermaid may have been an overgrown Lundy
Island seal, carried out of his usual haunts by spring-tides and a
school of fish. Be it so. Lundy and its seals are wonderful enough
in all reason to thinking men, as it looms up there out of the
Atlantic, with its two great square headlands, not twenty miles from
us, in the white summer haze. We will go there some day, and pick up
a wild tale or two about it.

But, lo! a black line creeps up the western horizon. Tom,
gesticulating, swears that he sees 'a billow break.' True: there
they come; the great white horses, that 'champ and chafe, and toss in
the spray.' That long-becalmed trawler to seaward fills, and heels
over, and begins to tug and leap impatiently at the weight of her
heavy trawl. Five minutes more, and the breeze will be down upon us.
The young men whistle openly to woo it; the old father thinks such a
superstition somewhat beneath both his years and his religion, but
cannot help pursing up his lips into a sly 'whe-eugh' when he has got
well forward out of sight.