After his friend had left him, our merman swam once more after The Sea-nymph. He felt wicked, ashamed, remorseful and very miserable, but for all that he followed his wooden goddess. He was so worn out with his long journeying and with trouble of mind that he could not keep up with the ship—he who had once beaten a fin-back whale in a race. He had lost sight of the brig before she went into the harbor of Syracuse, but he knew where she was going, and he followed in her track. It was a beautiful moonlit night. The water was all golden ripples. The ruins of the ancient town stood up white, still and solemn in the flood of silver light. The modern city did not look dirty as it does by sunlight, but white and cool and still. Only a bell rung at intervals from the tower of a convent.
91

On a fragment of a broken capital that lay in the water near the island shore of Ortyggia sat three lovely ladies. They looked young and beautiful as the day, but they were very, very old. They had known the place before the first Greek ship bore the first Greek colonists to Sicily. The broken capital was the last bit of a temple that had been reared in their honor ages ago, for these were the real sea-nymphs. They had come back from the unknown countries where they went when men forgot them, and the monks shattered their beautiful marble statues to replace them with waxen virgins dressed in tinsel. They were taking a journey just to see what sort of a place this world had grown to be. They were all three rather low-spirited—as much so as sea-nymphs can be.

“This is all so different,” said Arethusa. “It was hardly sadder in the great siege; I could hardly find the place where my fountain was once.”
92

“And nothing of Alpheus?” said Cymodoce with a little smile.

“No, thank Heaven!” said Arethusa; “the stream is there, but it has another name. I wonder what has become of the old gentleman? My dears, you can’t think what a torment he was. I really don’t know what I should have done but for Diana.”

“Maybe you would have married him,” said Panope. “He was very devoted to you.”

“Not he,” said Arethusa. “He was determined to have his own way, but he didn’t get it.”

“Sing something,” said Cymodoce. “What concerts we used to have on this very shore! Oh dear!”

Arethusa began to sing. I only wish you had been there to hear her.

“Years ago when the world was young,

And this weary time was yet to be,

A little bay lay the hills among

Where the hills slope down to the sand and sea.
93

“The shepherd came down to the cool seashore,

Fearless and tall and fair was he;

Careless the cornel spear he bore,

As he paced the sand along the sea.

“Low in the sky the red moon hung,

The wind went wandering wild and free;

To and fro the foam-bells swung

Off from the sand into the sea.

“‘Come up, my love,’ he called, ‘oh come!

Give, oh goddess, once more to me

That fairest face in the whitening foam,

On the pebbly marge ’twixt the sand and sea.’

“The sunset faded like smouldering brand,

And never the nymph again saw he;

The shadow sloped from the tall headland

Off from the sand, out o’er the sea.

“His was a being that, born to-day,

Grows old to-morrow and dies, and she

Lived on for ages as fair alway,

To sing on the shore ’twixt the sand and the sea.

“Yet oh, my lover, by this right hand,

It was fate, not I, that was false to thee;

For thine was the life of the solid land,

And I was a thing of the restless sea.”
94

As Arethusa finished her song, the merman came swimming wearily toward the three nymphs. If he had been a human being, he would not have seen them, but as it was they were revealed to his eyes. He knew what they were in a moment. They were dressed like his wooden nymph, and Arethusa carried a little silver vase in her hand, but they were not like the figure-head, for they had sweet, kind faces, and could laugh and cry. The merman made a most respectful bow, for he knew how to do it.

“Well,” said Panope, kindly, “can we do anything for you?”

“Lovely nymphs,” said the merman, “have you seen a ship pass this way with one of your fair sisters on its prow?”

“One of our sisters?” said Arethusa, a little haughtily. “That seems very unlikely.”

“I assure you she is, my lady,” said the merman, reverently but firmly. “She has her name, The Sea-nymph, written below her.”

“He has lost his wits,” said Panope, sighing.

“What a pity! Such a handsome youth!”

“You don’t mean that wooden figure-head?” cried Arethusa.
95

“Surely she is your sister,” said the merman, looking at Cymodoce, who was more like the wooden nymph than the other two, and whose manners were always a little stiff and prim.

“My sister!” cried Cymodoce, quite bristling. “Am I related to a log of wood?”

Here Arethusa slyly pinched Panope behind Cymodoce’s back, for the truth was Cymodoce had once been a wooden ship, and had been made into a nymph to save her from a conflagration. She never would allow, however, that this was a true story.

“No, of course there is nothing wooden about you, dear,” said Panope, soothingly. “Don’t be vexed. Let us help the poor boy if we can.”

“He’s very like a Triton I used to know,” said Arethusa, aside.

“I saw a ship pass,” said Panope, looking down at him with her kind blue eyes. “Such a big ship! Not like the ones I used to see here years ago, and it certainly had a wooden statue on the prow, but it was only a wooden image; it was not alive.”
96

“How strange it is,” thought the merman to himself, “that these three goddesses should be jealous of my beauty—just like three mortal mermaids.”

“Jealous of that stick indeed!” cried Cymodoce, answering his thought.

“Men!” said Arethusa. “Panope, my darling, they are just the creatures they always were in the water or out of it.”

“So it see............