“You—­you see,” said I, “she’s cleared the rip there now, and the music’s gone.  You—­you hear?”

“Yes,” said she, turning back slow.  “That’s where it stops every night—­night after night—­it stops just there—­at the rip.”

When she spoke again her voice was different.  I never heard the like of it, thin and taut as a thread.  It made me shiver, sir.

“I hate ’em!” That’s what she said.  “I hate ’em all.  I’d like to see ’em dead.  I’d love to see ’em torn apart on the rocks, night after night.  I could bathe my hands in their blood, night after night.”

And do you know, sir, I saw it with my own eyes, her hands moving in each other above the rail.  But it was her voice, though.  I didn’t know what to do, or what to say, so I poked my head through the railing and looked down at the water.  I don’t think I’m a coward, sir, but it was like a cold—­ice-cold—­hand, taking hold of my beating heart.

When I looked up finally, she was gone.  By and by I went in and had a look at the lamp, hardly knowing what I was about.  Then, seeing by my watch it was time for the old man to come on duty, I started to go below.  In the Seven Brothers, you understand, the stair goes down in a spiral through a well against the south wall and first there’s the door to the keeper’s room and then you come to another, and that’s the living-room, and then down to the store-room.  And at night, if you don’t carry a lantern, it’s as black as the pit.

Well, down I went, sliding my hand along the rail, and as usual I stopped to give a rap on the keeper’s door, in case he was taking a nap after supper.  Sometimes he did.

I stood there, blind as a bat, with my mind still up on the walk-around.  There was no answer to my knock.  I hadn’t expected any.  Just from habit, and with my right foot already hanging down for the next step, I reached out to give the door one more tap for luck.

Do you know, sir, my hand didn’t fetch up on anything.  The door had been there a second before, and now the door wasn’t there.  My hand just went on going through the dark, on and on, and I didn’t seem to have sense or power enough to stop it.  There didn’t seem any air in the well to breathe, and my ears were drumming to the surf—­that’s how scared I was.  And then my hand touched the flesh of a face, and something in the dark said, “Oh!” no louder than a sigh.

Next thing I knew, sir, I was down in the living-room, warm and yellow-lit, with Fedderson cocking his head at me across the table, where he was at that eternal Jacob’s-ladder of his.

“What’s the matter, Ray?” said he.  “Lord’s sake, Ray!”

“Nothing,” said I. Then I think I told him I was sick.  That night I wrote a letter to A.L.  Peters, the grain-dealer in Duxbury, asking for a job—­even though it wouldn’t go ashore for a couple of weeks, just the writing of it made me feel better.