Bombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on the
trees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before the
wind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but as
soon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became an
ordinary uncharted rock.

They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast towns
as of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and even
attached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they would
plunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship was
wrecked on their island of a night they said it was all to the good.
They grew very crafty in seamanship, and cunning in what they did, for
they knew that any news of the _Desperate Lark_'s old crew would bring
hangmen from the interior running down to every port.

And no one is known to have found them out or to have annexed their
island; but a rumour arose and passed from port to port and every
place where sailors meet together, and even survives to this day, of a
dangerous uncharted rock anywhere between Plymouth and the Horn, which
would suddenly rise in the safest track of ships, and upon which
vessels were supposed to have been wrecked, leaving, strangely enough,
no evidence of their doom. There was a little speculation about it at
first, till it was silenced by the chance remark of a man old with
wandering: "It is one of the mysteries that haunt the sea."

And almost Captain Shard and the Queen of the South lived happily ever
after, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would see
their captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him mutter now and again
in a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ways of Queens."