The Mermaid

e found himself alone in possession of the strand and the vast blue of sea and sky. It

refused himself the luxury of being there again, filling his time with work. He fe

bed on which he had tossed wakefully, and went in the hot August n

sunlight and an incoming tide, did not expect to see her now; frequent disappointment had bred the absence of hope. He stood on the shore, looking at the current in which he had so nearly perished as a boy. It was glittering with white moon-rays. He thought of himself, of the check and twisting which his motives an

it had a rhythm to it, too, and both joy and pathos in its cadence. Across the bright path of the moon's reflection he saw her come. Her head and neck were crowned and

e threw his cap and coat and boots on the shore. The sea-child, gazing in surprise, began to recede quickly. Caiu

ok about, the sea-child had gone out of the track of the moonlight,

face was turned from him, and there was evident movement in her body. For the first ti

able to return, reckless of everything except the one welcome fact that he was gaining on the sea-child. A fear oppressed him that perhaps this apparent effort of hers and her slow motion were only a ruse to lead him on-that at

strength would not hold out much longer. He hardly knew what he hoped or dreamed would come to pass when he overtook t

She put out a glistening arm, perhaps in human feebleness to ward him off, perhaps, in the

is consciousness long enough to know from that time forth that the hand had actually been in his-a living, struggling hand, not cold, but warm. He felt, too, in that wonderful power which we have in extreme moments of noting detail, that the hand ha

to regain the surface in one of those wild struggles to which inexper

his last thought as he lost consciousness-that with the fishy nature is sometimes given the power to stun an enemy by an electric shock. Some

-in that foolish way in which the half-awakened brain knows the supposed certainties of dreams-that the white hand he had essayed to hold had gr

as bending over his. He saw it distinctly, all tender human solicitude written on the moonlit lineaments. As his eyes opened more her face reced

going back to her sea. But it was a strange, monstrous thing he saw. From her gleaming neck down to the ground was dank, shapeless form. So a walrus or huge seal might appear, could it totter about

deep enough to rise up well around her, she turned to him once more a quick glance over her shoulder. Such relief came with the sight of her face, after this monstrous vision, that he saw the face flash on him as a swor

ome of mermaids, but on the bit of beach from which he had launched himself into the water. His coat and hat lay near

eart was bruised, too, partly by the sight of the monstrous body of the lovel

e he recovered from the weariness of that secret adventure, and he bore the m