Roughly, it came to this:-- A body had been discovered--the body of a small infant--washed up on the Polkimbra Beach.

This would give an opportunity for an inquest; and, in fact, the coroner was to arrive that afternoon from Penzance with an interpreter for the evidence of the strange sailor, who, it seemed, was a Greek.

Little enough had been got from him, but he seemed to imply that the vessel had struck upon Dead Man's Rock from the south-west, breaking her back upon its sunken base, and then slipping out and subsiding in the deep water.

It must have happened at high tide, for much coffee and basket-work was found upon high-water line.

This fixed the time of the disaster at about 4 a.m., and my mother's eyes met mine, as we both remembered that it was about that hour when we heard the wild despairing cry.