mariners; and the two haunted Danish ships would have had their terrors
for you, as they have for all who sojourn on this coast.

"Of the time and the cause of their destruction," continued the old man,
"I know nothing certain; they have stood as you have seen them for
uncounted time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast
have gone to pieces, and rotted and sunk away in a few years, these two
haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar
or board been displaced. Maritime legend says that two ships of Denmark
having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and dolor on
the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock,
and were wrecked in this bonnie bay, as a sign to seamen to be gentle and
devout. The night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon
mildness and beauty: the sun had newly set; the moon came brighter and
brighter out; and the reapers, laying their sickles at the root of the
standing corn, stood on rock and bank, looking at the increasing
magnitude of the waters, for sea and land were visible from Saint Bees to
Barnhourie. The sails of two vessels were soon seen bent for the
Scottish coast; and, with a speed outrunning the swiftest ship, they
approached the dangerous quicksands and headland of Borranpoint. On the
deck of the foremost ship not a living soul was seen, or shape, unless
something in darkness and form, resembling a human shadow could be called
a shape, which flitted from extremity to extremity of the ship, with the
appearance of trimming the sails, and directing the vessel's course. But
the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes; the captain
and mate, and sailor and cabin-boy, all seemed there; and from them the
sound of mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast
which they skirted along was one of extreme danger, and the reapers
shouted to warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this friendly
counsel no notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which