"
"And so," said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in
it than of mirth,--"and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks
seem to the eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem:
that water, a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man, which
seems so smooth, and so dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a
human soul even now; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level,
is a faithless quicksand, out of which none escape. Things are
otherwise than they seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow
to live; had you seen the storms, and braved the perils, and endured
the distresses which have befallen me; had you sat gazing out on the
dreary ocean at midnight on a haunted coast; had you seen comrade after
comrade, brother after brother, and son after son, swept away by the
merciless ocean from your very side; had you seen the shapes of friends,
doomed to the wave and the quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams
and visions of the night,--then would your mind have been prepared for
crediting the maritime legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish
ships would have had their terrors for you, as they have for all who
sojourn on this coast.
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