But she never came.

Never, never, never, you know.

I sat here watching them come and go, and my child sickened and died, and the summer passed, and the autumn, and all the while I looked--looked--looked; for the brigs are all much alike; and only her I always saw as soon as she hove in sight (because he tied a hank of flax to her mizzen-mast); and when he was home safe and sound I spun the hank into hose for him; that was a fancy of his, and for eleven voyages, one on another, he had never missed to tie the flax nor I to spin the hose.

But the hank of flax I never saw this time; nor the brave brig; nor my good man with his sunny blue eyes.

Only one day in winter, when the great blocks of ice were smashing hither and thither, a coaster came in and brought tidings of how off in the Danish waters they had come on a water-logged brig, and had boarded her, and had found her empty, and her hull riven in two, and her crew all drowned and dead beyond any manner of doubt.