“The boy needs his strength,” the host said. “Let him eat first!”

When Fergus couldn’t force himself to take another bite, he looked up from his plate and around the room. Stacked in every corner were crates and boxes, each filled to the top with different things: bottles of wine in one box, dried spices in another, rolls of fabric in another. To one side of Fergus’s chair was a crate spilling over with dozens and dozens of hammers.

“Excuse me, but why do you need so many hammers?” Fergus asked.

“I’m in the salvage business,” the man explained. “I found them washed up on the beach one morning.”

“And the wine and rolls of fabric and dried spices?” Fergus said.

“Those too,” the man replied. “Guess I’m just lucky!”

The other guests found this funny for some reason, and laughed. Fergus began to feel uncomfortable and, thanking his host for the fine meal, excused himself to go.

“But he can’t leave without showing us his trick!” said one of the guests.

“It’s late, he must be tired,” said the host. “Let the boy sleep first!”

Fergus was tired, and the offer of a bed was more than he could resist. The man showed him to a cozy bedroom, and the moment Fergus’s head hit the pillow he fell into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night, he snapped suddenly awake to find people in his room. They crowded around the bed and tore his blankets off. “You’ve slept enough!” they said. “It’s time to do your trick!”

Fergus realized he’d made a mistake, and he should have snuck out the bedroom window and run away—or better yet, never revealed his talent in the first place. But it was too late for that now. The crowd dragged him out of bed and down to the shore, where they demanded he pull in the tide again. Fergus didn’t like being forced to do things, but the more he resisted, the angrier they got. They weren’t going to let him go until he did what they asked, and so, resolving to run away at the first opportunity, he pulled in the tide.

Water came rushing in. The people jumped and cheered. A bell began tolling out to sea. A bank of fog cleared, revealing the lights of a passing ship, which was being dragged toward land by the quickly shifting tide. When Fergus realized what was happening, he tried to push the tide back out again, but it was too late, and he watched in horror as the ship smashed to pieces against a cape of jagged rocks.

Dawn began to break. The ship’s cargo washed ashore in crates and boxes, along with the bodies of the drowned crew. The townspeople divided the crates among them and started carrying them off. This is what they’d meant by “salvage”—they were wreckers, and drew passing ships toward the rocks with false lights and signals. They were thieves and murderers, and they had tricked Fergus into doing their evil work for them.22