'Another time,' he went on, 'I was coming down where there is a bit
of a cliff and a little hole under it, and I heard a flute playing
in the hole or beside it, and that was before the dawn began.
Whatever anyone says there are strange things. There was one night
thirty years ago a man came down to get my wife to go up to his
wife, for she was in childbed.
'He was something to do with the lighthouse or the coastguard, one
of them Protestants who don't believe in any of these things and do
be making fun of us. Well, he asked me to go down and get a quart of
spirits while my wife would be getting herself ready, and he said he
would go down along with me if I was afraid.
'I said I was not afraid, and I went by myself.
'When I was coming back there was something on the path, and wasn't
I a foolish fellow, I might have gone to one side or the other over
the sand, but I went on straight till I was near it - till I was too
near it - then I remembered that I had heard them saying none of
those creatures can stand before you and you saying the De
Profundis, so I began saying it, and the thing ran off over the sand
and I got home.
'Some of the people used to say it was only an old jackass that was
on the path before me, but I never heard tell of an old jackass
would run away from a man and he saying the De Profundis.'
I told him the story of the fairy ship which had disappeared when
the man made the sign of the cross, as I had heard it on the middle
island.
'There do be strange things on the sea,' he said. 'One night I was
down there where you can see that green point, and I saw a ship
coming in and I wondered what it would be doing coming so close to
the rocks. It came straight on towards the place I was in, and then
I got frightened and I ran up to the houses, and when the captain
saw me running he changed his course and went away.
'Sometimes I used to go out as a pilot at that time - I went a few
times only. Well, one Sunday a man came down and said there was a
big ship coming into the sound.
