But the children could not be comforted. They felt the weight of some vague apprehension; they could not be tempted to leave their mother; they crept noiselessly about, watching her movements. Until at last one night they whispered together, and resolved to take courage and ask their mother what made her dread the sea; and then they consulted long as to the best way of introducing the forbidden subject.
The next evening, as they sat together by the fireside, Hope began, and forgetting all the speeches they had prepared, fixed his large eyes on his mother's, and said abruptly, "Mother, what is there terrible in the sea?"
She paused a moment, her face grew deadly pale, and her lips trembled.
"Children, why should you wish to know? You will learn too soon without my telling you."
"O mother, tell us," said May. "We can bear anything from you. Do not let any one else tell us."
A sudden thought seemed to flash across her, and she said, "Children, you are right."
Then folding one arm around Hope as he stood by her, and taking May on her knee, she said, "It is not the sea I dread; it is the Black Ship. That is the terrible secret; and it is, indeed, better you should learn it from my lips than learn it by losing me, and no one be left to tell you how.
"My children," she continued, making a great effort to speak calmly, "this is the one sorrow of our country. From time to time a Black Ship, without sails or oars, glides silently to our shores, and anchors there. A dark, veiled Figure lands from it, and seizes any one of our people whom it chooses, without violence, without a sound, but with irresistible power, and quietly leads the victim away to the Ship, which immediately glides away again from our coasts as swiftly and noiselessly as it came; but no one ever sees those who are thus borne away any more."
"Whence does the Ship come, mother?" asked Hope, after a long silence. "And whither does it go?"
"No one knows, my child. That is the terrible thing about it. There is no sound nor voice. The agonised cries of those who are thus bereaved avail not to bring one word of reply from those lips, or to raise one fold of that dark veil. If we only knew, we could bear it."