26 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



rose alongside the ship, and uttered such shrieks and tones 

 of lamentation, so much Hke those produced by the female 

 human voice when expressing the deepest distress as to 

 occasion no small degree of alarm among those who first 

 heard it. These cries continued for upwards of three hours, 

 and seemed to increase as the ship sailed from it. I never 

 heard any noise whatever that approached so near those 

 sounds which proceed from the organs of utterance in the 

 human species." 



Captain Weddell, in his ' Voyage towards the South 

 Pole ' (p. 143), writes that one of his men, having been left 

 ashore on Hall's Island to take care of some produce, heard 

 one night about ten o'clock, after he had lain down to rest, 

 a noise resembling human cries. As daylight does not 

 disappear in those latitudes at the season in which the 

 incident occurred, the sailor rose and searched along the 

 beach, thinking that, possibly, a boat might have been upset, 

 and that some of the crew might be clinging to the detached 

 rocks. 



" Roused by that voice of silver sound. 

 From the paved floor he lightly sprung, 

 And, glaring with his eyes around, 

 Where the fair nymph her tresses wrung," * 



guided by occasional sounds, he at length saw an object 

 lying on a rock a dozen yards from the shore, at which he 

 was somewhat frightened. "The face and shoulders ap- 

 peared of human form and of a reddish colour ; over the 

 shoulders hung long green hair ; the tail resembled that of 

 a seal, but the extremities of the arms he could not see 

 distinctly." 



" As on the wond'ring youth she smiled, 

 Again she raised the melting lay,"* 



* John Leyden. 



