The contrast was marked between the
heavy-lying peace of the inner harbor and that hungry reverberation from
without of waters seeking fresh holds along a mutilated coast. On damp
nights when the wind hauled to the southeast, men stood still in their
tracks, and said, simply, "There's the Old Roke," as if it was the Old
Man of the Sea himself. The sound was a living personality in their
ears.--Women whom the sea had widowed shivered and rattled irons when
the Old Roke came close to their windows; but the men listened, as if
they had been called--each by his own name.
"What's the ringle jingle of feet by the side of that?" Rackby said, his
mystified face turned toward the water. "I'm a man for slow tunes,
Peter. No, no, no; put your paper up again."
"No? You're a denying sort of a crab, and no mistake. Always seeing how
fast you can crawl backward out of pleasure."
"I mistrust women."
"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.
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