even as he had seen it the day before.  A strange revulsion of feeling overtook him.  Believing that she was luring the ship to its destruction, he ran out on the beach and strove to hail the vessel and warn it of its impending doom.  But he could not speak—­no sound came from his lips.  And now his attention was absorbed by the ship itself.  High-bowed and pooped, and curved like the crescent moon, it was the strangest craft that he had ever seen.  Even as he gazed it glided on nearer and nearer, and at last beached itself noiselessly on the sands before his own feet.  A score of figures as bizarre and outlandish as the ship itself now thronged its high forecastle—­really a castle in shape and warlike purpose—­and leaped from its ports.  The common seamen were nearly naked to the waist; the officers looked more like soldiers than sailors.  What struck him more strangely was that they were one and all seemingly unconscious of the existence of the lighthouse, sauntering up and down carelessly, as if on some uninhabited strand, and even talking—­so far as he could understand their old bookish dialect—­as if in some hitherto undiscovered land.  Their ignorance of the geography of the whole coast, and even of the sea from which they came, actually aroused his critical indignation; their coarse and stupid allusions to the fair Indian swimmer as the “mermaid” that they had seen upon their bow made him more furious still.  Yet he was helpless to express his contemptuous anger, or even make them conscious of his presence.  Then an interval of incoherency and utter blankness followed.  When he again took up the thread of his fancy the ship seemed to be lying on her beam ends on the sand; the strange arrangement of her upper deck and top-hamper, more like a dwelling than any ship he had ever seen, was fully exposed to view, while the seamen seemed to be at work with the rudest contrivances, calking and scraping her barnacled sides.  He saw that phantom crew, when not working, at wassail and festivity; heard the shouts of drunken roisterers; saw the placing of a guard around some of the most uncontrollable, and later detected the stealthy escape of half a dozen sailors inland, amidst the fruitless volley fired upon them from obsolete blunderbusses.  Then his strange vision transported him inland, where he saw these seamen following some Indian women.  Suddenly one of them turned and ran frenziedly towards him as if seeking succor, closely pursued by one of the sailors.  Pomfrey strove to reach her, struggled violently with the fearful apathy that seemed to hold his limbs, and then, as she uttered at last a little musical cry, burst his bonds and—­awoke!

As consciousness slowly struggled back to him, he could see the bare wooden-like walls of his sleeping-room, the locker, the one window bright with sunlight, the open door of the tank-room, and the little staircase to the tower.  There was a strange smoky and herb-like smell in the room.  He made an effort to rise, but as he did so a small sunburnt hand was laid gently yet restrainingly upon his shoulder, and he heard the same musical cry as before, but this time modulated to a girlish laugh.  He raised his head faintly.  Half squatting, half kneeling by his bed was the yellow-haired stranger.