"Ay, she may often come to see it. But to see it and to walk on it are different things. There are very few women in the village who would care to go on it without a man to lend them a hand. Why, sir, it's as slippery as ice, and two people fell and were killed on it out of regard to its slipperiness."
"Is there no way of landing here?"
"No, sir. You can't get a foot ashore anywhere nearer than Kilcash. You might, of course, land on many a rock here and there, but you couldn't get up the cliffs. It's iron-bound for miles."
"But could not the lady be cautioned in some way? She could hear a shout even though we cannot see her. She cannot yet be out of hearing?" Paulton could scarcely sit still in the boat.
"And suppose she could hear a shout, sir, what could you tell her she doesn't know? Do you think Mrs. Davenport has lived all these years and years a mile from the Black Rock, and doesn't know as much as any of us could tell her about it? Why, she lives nearer to it than any one else in the world! Her next-door neighbours are, I may say, the ghosts of men who lost their lives on that very spot."
"What is that you're saying?" asked O'Brien, coming suddenly out of his reverie.
"Only, sir, that Mrs. Davenport's next-door neighbours are the ghosts of the men who lost their lives on the Black Rock."
O'Brien looked in amazement at the boatman. He had been recalled from his abstraction by the word "ghost;" but he had not fancied, when he asked his question, that the answer would lie so close to the thoughts which had been occupying his mind a moment before. For a while he could not clear his mind of the effect of this coincidence.
"What on earth do you know or guess about the matter, Phelan?" he cried, quite taken off his guard.
"I suppose I know as much about the Rock as any man of my years along the coast," answered Phelan, with a slight return of his former sullenness.