“I know no more than you do.”
“Listen, then. There’s only one place for you to go to, and that is Swaylone’s Island. I will ferry you across myself before sunset.”
“What shall I find there?”
“He may go, wife,” put in the old man hoarsely, “but I won’t allow you to go. I will take him over myself.”
“No, you have always put me off,” said Gleameil, with some emotion. “This time I mean to go. When Teargeld shines at night, and I sit on the shore here, listening to Earthrid’s music travelling faintly across the sea, I am tortured—I can’t endure it.... I have long since made up my mind to go to the island, and see what this music is. If it’s bad, if it kills me—well.”
“What have I to do with the man and his music, Gleameil?” demanded Maskull.
“I think the music will answer all your questions better than Polecrab has done—and possibly in a way that will surprise you.”
“What kind of music can it be to travel all those miles across the sea?”
“A peculiar kind, so we are told. Not pleasant, but painful. And the man that can play the instrument of Earthrid would be able to conjure up the most astonishing forms, which are not phantasms, but realities.”
“That may be so,” growled Polecrab. “But I have been to the island by daylight, and what did I find there? Human bones, new and ancient. Those are Earthrid’s victims. And you, wife, shall not go.”