midnight
`` And so , '' said the old man with a smile , which had more of sorrow in it than of mirth , -- `` and so , young man , these black and shattered hulks seem to the eye of the multitude . But things are not what they seem : that water , a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man , which seems so smooth , and so dimpling , and so gentle , has swallowed up a human soul even now ; and the place which it covers , so fair and so level , is a faithless quicksand , out of which none escape . Things are otherwise than they seem . Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow to live ; had you seen the storms , and braved the perils , and endured the distresses which have befallen me ; had you sat gazing out on the dreary ocean at midnight on a haunted coast ; had you seen comrade after comrade , brother after brother , and son after son , swept away by the merciless ocean from your very side ; had you seen the shapes of friends , doomed to the wave and the quicksand , appearing to you in the dreams and visions of the night , -- then would your mind have been prepared for crediting the maritime legends of mariners ; and the two haunted Danish ships would have had their terrors for you , as they have for all who sojourn on this coast . `` Of the time and the cause of their destruction , '' continued the old man , `` I know nothing certain : they have stood as you have seen them for uncounted time ; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast have gone to pieces , and rotted , and sunk away in a few years , these two haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand , nor has a single spar or board been displaced . Maritime legend says , that two ships of Denmark having had permission , for a time , to work deeds of darkness and dolor on the deep , were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock , and were wrecked in this bonnie bay , as a sign to seamen to be gentle and devout . The night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon mildness and beauty : the sun had newly set ; the moon came brighter and brighter out ; and the reapers , laying their sickles at the root of the standing corn , stood on rock and bank , looking at the increasing magnitude of the waters , for sea and land were visible from Saint Bees to Barnhourie .