"My sweet William come at last, I'll be with thee in an instant," she replied.
Nancy's aunt Prudence, who lodged in the same room, heard Willy's request and his sweetheart's answer; looking out of the window she saw the sailor, just under, dripping wet and deathly pale. An instant after--glancing round into the chamber, and seeing Nancy leave it--she dressed, in all haste, and followed her. Aunt Prudence, running down the cliff lane at her utmost speed, kept the lovers in sight some time, but couldn't overtake them, for they seemed to glide down the rocky pathway leading to Pargwarra as if borne on the wind, till they disappeared in the glen.
At the fisherman's door, however, she again caught a glimpse of them passing over the rocks towards a boat which floated off in the cove. She then ran out upon the How--as the high ground projecting into the cove is called--just in time to see them on a large flat rock beside the boat, when a fog rolling in over sea, shrouded them from her view. She hailed them but heard no reply.
In a few minutes the mist cleared away, bright moonlight again shone on the water, but the boat and lovers had disappeared.
Then she heard mermaids singing a low sweet melody, and saw many of them sporting on the water under Hella; that was nothing new, however, for the rocks and sawns (caverns) bordering this headland were always noted as favourite resorts of these death-boding syrens, whose wild unearthly strains were wont, before tempests, to be heard resounding along Pedn-Penwith shores.
By daybreak the old fisherman came to Roskestal and told the farmer that he hoped to find his son there, for, about midnight, he saw him at his bedside, looking ghastly pale; he stayed but a moment, and merely said, "Farewell father and mother, I am come for my bride and must hasten away," when he vanished like a spirit. It all seemed to the old man uncertain as a dream; he didn't know if it were his own son in the body or a token of his death.
In the afternoon, ere they had ceased wondering and making search for Nancy, a young mariner came to the fisherman's dwelling, and told him that he was chief officer of his son's ship, then at the Mount with a rich cargo from the Indies, bound for another port; but put in there because his son--her captain--when off Pargwarra, where he intended to land last night, eager to see his native place, went aloft, and the ship rolling he missed his holdfast of the shrouds, fell overboard and sunk before she could be brought-to or any assistance rendered.