midnight
Sometimes -LRB- but this was usually on moonlit nights or windless evenings when the sun sank clear to view over our broad bay -RRB- she would take up her lute and touch it to one of those outlandish love-chants with which she had first wiled my Master 's heart to her . As time went on , stories came to us that these chants , which fell so softly on the ears of us as we went about the rooms and gardens , had been heard by fishermen riding by their nets far in the offing -- so far away -LRB- I have heard -RRB- as the Scillies ; and there were tales of men who , as they listened , had seen the ghosts of drowned mariners rising and falling on the moon-rays , or floating with their white faces thrown back while they drank in the music ; yea , even echoing the words of the song in whispers like the flutter of birds ' wings . When first the word crept about that she was a witch I can not certainly say . But in time it did ; and , what is more -- though I will swear that no word of Gil Perez ' confession ever passed my lips -- the common folk soon held it for a certainty that the cargo saved from the _ Saint Andrew _ had been saved by her magic only ; that the plate and rich stuffs seen by my own eyes were but cheating _ simulacra _ , and had turned into rubbish at midnight , scarce an hour before the assault on the Portuguese . I have wondered since if 't was this rumour and some belief in it which held Messrs. Saint Aubyn and Godolphin from offering any further attack on us . You might say that it was open to them , so believing , to have denounced her publicly . But in our country Holy Church had little hold -- scarce more than the King 's law itself in such matters ; and within my memory it has always come easier to us to fear witch-craft than to denounce it .