Then the spectre ships vanish, and the drowning shriek
of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old
hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has not
departed from the earth. But I maun away, and trim my little cottage
fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the crickets, and
my cold and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath the green sod
in the eerie kirkyard." And away the old dame tottered to her cottage,
secured the door on the inside, and soon the hearth-flame was seen to
glimmer and gleam through the key-hole and window.
"I'll tell ye what," said the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with
a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, "it's
a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes
made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows
not mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships and
their unhallowed mariners. She lives cannilie and quietly; no one knows
how she is fed or supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage
ever smokes, and her table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor
of fowl and fish, and white bread and brown.
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