Such a terrible storm had never been known at Padstow Town within the memory of man, so the old Granfer men said, and never a gale lasted so long.
When the wind went down the natives of Padstow ventured out to see what the gale had wrought, and sad was the havoc it had made; and some went out to Chapel Stile, where a small chapel stood overlooking the haven, and what should meet their horrified gaze but a terrible bar of sand which the Mermaid’s curse had brought there; and it stretched from Hawker’s Cove to the opposite shore, and what was worse, the great sand-bar was covered with wrecks of ships and bodies of drowned men.
Chapel Stile.
‘It is the bar of doom brought there by the fearful curse of the maid of the sea whom I shot with my brand-new gun,’ cried Tristram Bird, who was one of the first to reach the stile when the wind had gone down; and he told them all, as he had told the Padstow maids, of what the Mermaid had said before and after he had shot her. ‘And because of the wicked deed I did,’ he said, ‘I have brought a curse on my native town, and Padstow will never be blessed with a safe and beautiful harbour till the poor Mermaid’s death be avenged.’
There was a dreadful silence after Tristram Bird had spoken, and the men and women of Padstow Town gazed at each other, troubled and sad, knowing that what the youth, who had been bewitched by the Mermaid’s face, had said was true, for there below them was the great bar of sand dividing the outer harbour from the inner, and on it lay the masts and spars of broken ships and the lifeless bodies of the drowned. The wind was quiet, but the sea was still breaking and roaring on the back of the Doombar, and as the waves thundered and broke, a wailing cry sounded forth, like the wail that Tristram heard when the Mermaid disappeared under the water; it sounded like the distressful cry of a woman bewailing her dead, and all who heard shivered and shook, and both old and young looked down on the Doombar with dread in their eyes, but they saw nothing but the dead bodies of the sailors and their broken ships.
‘It is the Mermaid’s wraith,’ cried an old Granfer man.
‘It is the Mermaid’s wraith,’ cried an old Granfer man, leaning against the grey walls of the ancient chapel, ‘and she is wailing the wail of the drowned; and, mark my words, everyone,’ letting his eyes wander from one face to another, ‘each time a ship is caught on this dreadful bar and lives are lost—as lost they will be—the Mermaid’s wraith will bewail the drowned.’