Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory, and she would hum them as she wandered up and down the beach.
"Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Courtsied when you have and kissed
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."
And another which pleased her still more:—
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that can fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange;
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark, now I hear them—ding-dong, bell."
These words she pondered very long, gravely revolving in her little head whether they described the usual course of things in the mysterious under-world that lay beneath that blue spangled floor of the sea; whether everybody's eyes changed to pearl, and their bones to coral, if they sunk down there; and whether the sea-nymphs spoken of were the same as the mermaids that Captain Kittridge had told of. Had he not said that the bell rung for church of a Sunday morning down under the waters?
Mara vividly remembered the scene on the sea-beach, the finding of little Moses and his mother, the dream of the pale lady that seemed to bring him to her; and not one of the conversations that had transpired before her among different gossips had been lost on her quiet, listening little ears. These pale, still children that play without making any noise are deep wells into which drop many things which lie long and quietly on the bottom, and come up in after years whole and new, when everybody else has forgotten them.
So she had heard surmises as to the remaining crew of that unfortunate ship, where, perhaps, Moses had a father. And sometimes she wondered if he were lying fathoms deep with sea-nymphs ringing his knell, and whether Moses ever thought about him; and yet she could no more have asked him a question about it than if she had been born dumb. She decided that she should never show him this poetry—it might make him feel unhappy.
One bright afternoon, when the sea lay all dead asleep, and the long, steady respiration of its tides scarcely disturbed the glassy tranquillity of its bosom, Mrs. Pennel sat at her kitchen-door spinning, when Captain Kittridge appeared.
"Good afternoon, Mis' Pennel; how ye gettin' along?"
"Oh, pretty well, Captain; won't you walk in and have a glass of beer?"