“Well!” he said. “The chief problem is surely that she is on her side. Shall I simply turn her upright? That would be quite easy to accomplish.”

“Good Lord! No!” cried Captain Gilbey. “That will not do at all! Unless it is done in the most careful manner imaginable her keel would almost certainly snap in two. Everybody would drown.”

“Oh!” said Strange.

His next attempt to help fared even worse. Something somebody said about a fresher breeze blowing the ship off the sandbank at high water caused him to think that a strong wind might help. He raised his hands to begin conjuring one up.

“What are you doing?” asked Captain Gilbey.

Strange told him.

“No! No! No!” cried the Captain, appalled.

Several people seized Strange bodily. One man started shaking him vigorously, as though he thought that he might in this way dispel any magic before it took effect.

“The wind is the from south-west,” explained Captain Gilbey. “If it grows stronger, it will batter the ship against the sands and almost certainly break her up. Everybody will drown!”

Someone else was heard to remark that he could not for the life of him understand why the Admiralty thought so highly of this fellow whose ignorance was so astonishing.

A second man replied sarcastically that he might not be much of a magician but at least he danced very well.

A third person laughed.

“What is the sand called?” asked Strange.

Captain Gilbey shook his head in an exasperated fashion to convey that he had not the least idea what Strange was talking about.

“The … the place … the thing on which the ship is caught,” urged Strange. “Something about horses?”

“The shoal is called Horse Sand,” said Captain Gilbey coldly and turned away to speak to someone else.

For the next minute or two no one paid any attention to the magician. They watched the progress of the sloops and brigs and barges around the False Prelate and they looked to the skies and talked of how the weather was changing and where the wind would be at high water.

Suddenly several people called attention to the water. Something odd had appeared there. It was a large, silvery something with a long, oddly-shaped head and hair like long pale weeds waving behind it. It seemed to be swimming towards the False Prelate. No sooner had the crowd begun to exclaim and wonder about this mysterious object than several more appeared. The next moment there were a whole host of silvery shapes – more than a man could count – all swimming towards the ship with great ease and speed.

“What in the world are they?” asked a man in the crowd.

They were much too large to be men and not at all like fish or dolphins.

“They are horses,” said Strange.

“Where did they come from?” asked another man.

“I made them,” said Strange, “out of the sand. Out of Horse Sand, to be precise.”