"You cleave to the spirit and turn from the flesh, that I know. But here's a woman with a voice to waken the dead."
"That's the voice on the seaward side of Meteor," answered Rackby.
"Cad Sills is flesh and blood of the Old Roke, I'm agreed," said Deep-water Peter. "She's a seafaring woman, that's certain. Next door to ending in a fish's tail, too, sometimes I think, when I see her carrying on—Maybe you've seen her sporting with the horse-shoe crabs and all o' that at Pull-an'-be-Damned?"
"No, I can't say that."
"No, it wasn't to be expected, you with your head and shoulders walking around in a barrel of jam."
The harbor master smiled wistfully.
"More I don't require," he said.
"Ah, so you say now—Well, marry the sea, then. It's a slippery embrace, take the word of a man who has gone foreign voyages."
"I mistrust the sea," said Jethro.
"So you do.—You mistrust the sea and the like o' that, and you mistrust women and the like o' that. There's too much heaving and tossing in such waters for a harbor master, hey?"