"On approaching the island, he saw the solitary figure sitting on the rocks at the mouth of the deep black chasm, motionless, with his head resting, as it were, sorrowfully on the palm of his right hand, and his eyes fixed apparently on the sea that rippled to his feet, though it boiled and roared in white foam over the reefs that lay a few fathoms off outside.
"Tom steered his boat straight for the cave, and now, when the towering rocks of the desert isle were over his head, covered with thousands upon thousands of wild auks, screaming, whirling, and flapping their wings, as if to scare him away; when the deep black chasm in which the sea was gurgling and moaning yawned before him, and everything seemed so weird and wan in the pale moonlight, he did feel queer, and more so when the solitary man, instead of melting into thin air as usual, turned his white face towards him, and arose, just as he let go the halyards, lowered the brown flapping sail, and running his boat into the cave, adroitly noosed a rope over a large stone to moor her, and stepped ashore. Tom's heart was beating wildly and strangely, for he was determined to discover whether this figure, which he had so often seen from the sea, and which had so invariably eluded his brother fishermen, was man, ghost, or devil.
"He perceived that the stranger was clad in an old-fashioned dress, his coat having large metal buttons, broad pocket-flaps, and deep cuffs. He was ghastly pale, his glassy eyes glistened in the moonlight, and dark crimson blood was flowing from what appeared to be a pistol-shot in his left temple.
"'What seek you here?' he asked, in a voice so hollow that the terrified fisherman, who now repented sorely of his rashness, knew not whether the sound came from the spectre's white lips, from the depth of the dreary chasm, or from the sea. 'Speak,' continued the figure, with mournful earnestness; 'what seek you?'
"'To discover who and what you are,' said Tom.
"'May you never be what I was, or what I am,' replied the other, sadly.
"'But what are you?'
"'A restless spirit.'
"Tom's knees bent under him, for the pale eyes of that cold white visage seemed to pierce his soul.
"'A wretched spirit—left here by a fiend to guard his ill-gotten spoil—so begone, I charge you.'