"Ah," said the old man, "as I thought. Goad help her! She's gone; she'll
never come ashore no more, she won't. She's twenty miles away by now,
she is, breast up, with the gulls a-screaming over her. It's that there
damned canoe, that's what it is. I wish to Goad I had broke it up long
ago. I'd rather have built her a boat for nothing, I would. Damn the
unlucky craft!" screamed the old man at the top of his voice, and
turning his head to hide the tears that were streaming down his rugged
face. "And her that I nursed and pulled out of the waters once all but
dead. Damn it, I say! There, take that, you Sea Witch, you!" and he
picked up a great boulder and crashed it through the bottom of the
canoe with all his strength. "You shan't never drown no more. But it has
brought you good luck, it has, sir; you'll be a fortunit man all your
life now. It has brought you the _Drowned One's shoe_."
"Don't break it any more," said Geoffrey. "She used to value it. You had
better bring it along between you--it may be wanted. I am going to the
Vicarage."
He walked back. Mr. Granger and Elizabeth had not yet arrived, but they
were expected every minute.
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