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of the dory and threw her into the water.
    One sailor jumped down into the dory to try and rescue her. He could see her in the water, tossed like a child in a blanket game. “Grab hold!” he shouted, reaching his arm out over the water.
    He looked back once, hoping for a little help from the rest of the crew, but the other sailors were far too busy trying to keep the Victory afloat.
    â€œCome on!” he shouted.
    Maggie managed to hook one arm up about the bow of the dory. The young sailor worked his way down to her. He could see her face, pale and staring like a death mask, from the heart of the storm-tossed Atlantic and the sight moved him. He worked his way forward and tried to grab on to Maggie’s arm. Another wave rocked the dory, the sailor plunged into the angry waters. Dressed far more heavily than Maggie, he sank like three-day-old biscuit. The dory broke against the ship’s hull and Maggie was lost.
    The storm turned the Victory over and stove her in two like a rotted barrel. The captain and the entire crew were lost to the angry waters. After the storm eased up, searchers found the hulk of the ship grounded in the mud flats surrounding Mud Island. The corpses of the five dead sailors, covered in dead eel grass, were strewn around the wreckage of the Victory , like the points on a compass. The captain was still clinging to the wheel, his dead hands frozen hard to the spokes.
    They buried the sailors on the shore of Mud Island. The ground was wet and soft for the digging. Shortly after the last grave was dug, a searcher stumbled across the body of poor Maggie Flynn, lying face upward in the shallow water, her arm still hooked about the broken bow stem of the ship’s dory. Her face was as pale as ice, her flesh as hard as stone.
    This hardness was far more than simple rigor mortis. Young Maggie was petrified, like a hod of sculpting clay that had hard-ened in the heat of the sun, as if her flesh had turned to granite.
    Some said it was something in the water; others claimed it was something in the mud, while still others blamed it on the unseasonable chill of the cold gray Atlantic waters. Whatever the reason, the body of young Maggie Flynn was as cold, hard, and pale as any marble church sculpture.
    At first the sailors who had found her were afraid to touch her strangely altered flesh.
    â€œWe’ll turn to stone ourselves,” one swore. “Don’t touch her.”
    â€œIt’s devil’s work,” another said.
    â€œShe is a Maritime woman who has died at sea,” their leader pointed out. “She’ll get a decent Christian burial, even if she was turned to hot burning glass.”
    They quickly fell to their work and in a short time had churned the dirt deep enough to lay poor Maggie safely at rest.
    They ended the day at a local tavern where ale loosened their tired tongues.
    â€œDigging is thirsty work, and an ale or two will wash the taint of grave dirt from our throats,” said one.
    â€œAye,” agreed another, “and a tot of rum will wash the taint of ale from our lips.”
    It goes without saying that drinking leads to gossip as sure as all rivers lead home to the sea. Soon enough the entire tavern had heard the tale of Mud Island’s petrified woman. Before too long, a boatload of drunken sailors were rowing themselves out to see the petrified remains of poor Maggie Flynn. They dug her up and had their fill of staring, burying her back down in a careless and shallow manner.
    Soon word got around to the whole town that a stone woman had been buried in the dirt of Mud Island. Entertainment like that was clearly hard to pass up in nineteenth-century rural Nova Scotia and soon the midnight boat tours and excavations became a regular event. Curiosity seekers from far and wide stole out to take a look at the woman made of stone.
    Finally, an old couple who lived on the island took it upon themselves to dig up Maggie Flynn’s grave and