"'S i'n t-suil a chi,'S e'en cridhe a smuainicheas,'S i'n teanga 'labhras:'S mise'n Triuir qu tilleadh so ortsa, Lora-mo-bèan,An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraidh Naoimh!"'T is the eye that sees,'T is the heart that thinks,'T is the tongue that speaks:I am the Three to turn this off to you, Lora, my wife:In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
"'S i'n t-suil a chi,'S e'en cridhe a smuainicheas,'S i'n teanga 'labhras:'S mise'n Triuir qu tilleadh so ortsa, Lora-mo-bèan,An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraidh Naoimh!"
"'S i'n t-suil a chi,
'S e'en cridhe a smuainicheas,
'S i'n teanga 'labhras:
'S mise'n Triuir qu tilleadh so ortsa, Lora-mo-bèan,
An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraidh Naoimh!"
'T is the eye that sees,'T is the heart that thinks,'T is the tongue that speaks:I am the Three to turn this off to you, Lora, my wife:In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
'T is the eye that sees,
'T is the heart that thinks,
'T is the tongue that speaks:
I am the Three to turn this off to you, Lora, my wife:
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
With a sob, she turned and put her arms about him. Never had he seemed so fair in her sight—tall and comely as a young pine, of a beauty beyond that of any man she had ever seen. No wonder that her father, familiar lover of the Ossianic ballads, had been wont, remembering the beauty of the second son of Usnoth, lord of Etha, to call AlastairAilthos.
"Dear, my dear one, Ailthos, Alastair!" she cried, clinging close. "Look at me! Speak to me! Do you not know me?"
Slowly he turned his eyes upon her, and after a brief perplexity the shadow went out of them, and he smiled gently.
"Let us go home, my fawn," he whispered. "I am tired. It would be too sad to go down to Ardgheal."
He had already caught sight of the smoke of a steamer beyond Dunmore Point; and fearing that it might be theClansman—for he thought the hour much later than it was—he hoped to spare Lora another needless pang. Moreover, his growing dread of seeing any one was stronger than ever upon him.
So they turned thus soon even in that last sunshine, and entering the cottage, sat before the smouldering peat-fire; he brooding darkly, Lora dreaming through her slow-welling tears, and both ... waiting.
Though, at dusk, a heavy sea still ran, it was partly due to the surge of the ground-swell and to the turbulence of the tide, for there was but little wind even away from the shelter of the isle, and what there was came mostly in short, sudden puffs and wandering breaths.
In the quietude of the gloaming, it was as though the sea called all round Innisròn as a beast of prey stalks about a high sheepfold, growling, breathing heavily, ravening.
After the supper, eaten frugally and in silence, Lora and Alastair listened once again to the peat-prayer and the Blessing of Peace of Mrs. Maclean; then, not daring to say any word to her but that of a husky farewell for the night, and fearful even of meeting the glance of her quiet eyes, they went to their room, there to sit silently awhile in the darkness, hand in hand.
No one saw them leave the cottage an hour later: not a soul heard them as they passed through the clachan.
The road they chose was that sheep-path through the heather which led to Ardfeulan by the Glen of the Dark Water. Each knew the way well, otherwise their faring westward would have been difficult, for the sky was veiled by a thin mist and the moon was not visible.
They walked in silence; sometimes Lora in advance, but, whenever practicable, together, and hand in hand.
At last they reached the Glen of the Dark Water, and perceived through the gloaming the sheiling of Ealasaid MacAodh. This they skirted, and then entered a sloping hollow, at the base of which was audible the hoarse murmuring of the sea. Lora knew the place well. A week ago she had been there with Alastair, and remembered that the whole slope was a mass of moonflowers, tall, white, and so close-clustered that the green stems could hardly be seen.2
The wan glimmer of them was perceptible now, like the milky way on a night when a faint frost-mist prevails. Around, there was nothing else visible. Not a tree grew in that place: not a crag rose out of the sea of death-white blooms. The low-hanging mist-cloud veiled all things. It was as though the grave had been passed, and this was the gloom of the Death-sleep land that lies beyond. Onlythereis eternal silence: here, the dull menace of the sea made a ceaseless murmur about the obscure coasts.
As they entered the valley of moonflowers, dimly seeing their way a few yards beyond them, and hearkening to the inwash and resurgence of the tide moving along the extreme frontiers of the land, a sense of unspeakable dread came over Alastair and Lora.
They stood still, hardly daring to breathe. Both vaguely remembered something: they
knew not what, save that the tragic memory was linked with reminiscence of a valley of moonflowers seen in a dark twilight. Was it all a dream, coincident in their minds? Or had life once before, in some unremembered state, wrought tragic issues for them by a valley of white flowers seen in the darkness, with a deeper darkness around, a veiled sky above, and the hoarse, confused prophesying of the sea beyond?
As they stood, the moon—about an hour risen—glimmered through the veil of cloud. As with a hand, the rift was slowly made; but though the light was now clearly visible, it still gleamed through filmy shrouds of vapour. There was no shape, no central luminous spot even: only a diffused sheen which spread for a great span northward and southward, though it illumed nothing beneath save the long sloping hollow filled with moonflowers. The blooms rose almost to the knees of the two silent and trembling figures. For some inscrutable reason, the advance of light had not brought any comfort to either: rather, their vague terror increased almost unendurably.
The sea called below. Lora shuddered, and drew back a step or two.
A long, wavering, greenish light appeared high above the south-west. As the sheet-lightning fled shudderingly northward, it lapsed into ashen tremors before it was swallowed up of the darkness, as a wounded sea-bird in the deep.
In that brief gleam, Alastair turned and looked into Lora's eyes.
She moved to his side again, and once more took his hand. Then, slowly, and still without word one to the other, they moved downward through the hollow.
There was not a sound about them save the susurrus of their feet going through the moonflowers. From the glen alone came any break in the inland stillness, the noise of water running swiftly from ledge to ledge. In the darkness where the sea was, there broke the fluctuating moan and boom of ocean. From far across the wave came a thin, forlorn sound that was the crying of the wind.
Minute by minute, as they waded through that death-white wilderness, the moon wove the cloud-shroud into thinner veils, till at last, as the two figures emerged upon the shore by the side of a precipitous scaur, they were of a filmy gossamer that no longer obscured the golden-yellow globe that wheeled solemnly through the appalling upper solitudes of the night.
The tide, at the last reach of the ebb for nearly an hour past, was now on the flood: though the first indeterminate babble of returning waters was scarce different from the lapsing ebb-music in aught save a gurgling swiftly repetitive undertone.
The scaur by whose side they stood was hollow, and was known as the Cave of the Sea-Woman. It could be reached dry-shod, or nearly so, only at low-water, and even then only during calm, or when the wind did not blow from the south or west. For years beyond record it had been almost unvisited, for the cavern was a place of deadly peril except just before and after the extreme ebb. But after the death of two of his sons—one in the effort to swim outward against the inrush of the tide; the other by falling, or being swept backward to the deep chasm that lay at the far end of the cave—old Macrae, of Ardfeulan Farm near by, had caused rude steps to be cut in the funnel-like hollow rising sheer up from the sloping ledge that lipped the chasm and reached the summit of the scaur.
The smell of the brine from the dripping boulders smote shrewdly upon Alastair and Lora as they stood at the weedy mouth of the cavern. Then for the first time that night they turned their backs upon the sea, and moved slowly across the long, flat slabs of rock.
It was not dark at the entrance to the Cavern of the Sea-Woman, for the moonlight moved within it as the hand of a blind man groping blankly in an unfamiliar place. The arch of the rock was clear, and even the frondage of fern and sea-plants suspended from its lower curve; also, beneath, a mass of mossed crag, just beyond the highest reach of the tides. Among this dark crag-vegetation grew strange plants; but none stranger or so rare as the sea-grape, or mermaid's-fruit of the islanders. No one on Innisròn knew its proper designation, and it had become known at all as the sea-grape only because some student of rare things discovered and wrote about it under that name, as perhaps the culminating treasure-trove of the botanist in the Scottish West. It is a plant which clings as a tendril, choosing only the summit of high rocks or boulders in some sunless place where it can breathe the ooze from dead or dying sea-weed, and can feel the salt air reach it with a chilly touch. It lies low, with its thin, moist, ash-grey stems; its round, pale-green, transparent leaves faintly spotted with livid blotches; and its infrequent clusters of small, juicy berries of a hue of dusky yellow.
The isle-folk regard it with awe. Though the fruit is poisonous, and a deadly draught can be distilled from the leaves, a few berries would not suffice to kill. To eat sparingly of the sea-grape is not to invite death necessarily, but to bring about a stupor so deep that for an hour or more no familiar sound can reach the ear, no ordinary shock vibrate along the nerves, no common pain affect the body. If the eater of the mermaid's-fruit be left undisturbed, he will not stir for twelve or even fifteen hours, though the first death-like trance does not prevail beyond an hour, or at most two: while, if forcibly aroused, he is so weak in body and so dazed in mind that he cannot long be kept awake without peril to the brain, and indeed to life itself.
It was because of this fruit of oblivion that Alastair and Lora had sought the Cave of the Sea-Woman.
They had feared not so much their own instinctive evasion of death as that, in the final struggle, they might not go down into the shadow together.
The idea that the Silence should come upon them unawares—that, arms about each other in a last embrace, the wave should encroach upon their deep unheeding slumber—had given them a strange elation. The thought was Alastair's. Though he was not a native of Innisròn, he had often visited it from Dunvrechan even before he had come to love Lora, and was familiar with each of the treacherous caves and all the desolate, boulder-strewn, uninhabited south-western side of the island, as well as with everything in animate or inanimate nature which was to be found therein. Not only had he often heard of the sea-grape which grew almost inaccessibly in some of the caverns on the western side, but he knew where in the Cave of the Sea-Woman it was to be obtained with little difficulty.
Letting Lora's hand drop gently to her side, he climbed the rough, broken ledges to the right, and swiftly returned holding in his hand a cluster of limp leaves from which hung snakily several stems of the dusky-yellow fruit.
Lora looked at the berries curiously, and yet with a strange indifference. With that awful menacing sound of the sea beyond, with that more awful murmur of dread in her heart, with that rising tide of death all about them, it mattered little to her that Alastair laid such stress on those small, poisonous things, those petty messengers of a mere oblivion of the senses.
Just beyond where they stood, and at the beginning of those long, flat, inward-sloping ledges which formed the floor of the cavern till the abrupt ending over the dark chasm at the extreme end, was a bed of soft white sand, shelving from one of the ledges past and underneath another, and then among rocks covered with bladder-wrack and adder's-tongues and other sea-weed, with tangled masses of the long, trailing dead-man's-hair.
Still without speech, here Alastair and Lora lay down, side by side.
There is an ebb in the tide of human hope that must reach a limit. When this limit is attained there is too great weariness for any further revolt, for any protest, for anything but dull acquiescence.
Slowly Alastair stripped a few of the dusky berries from the plant and held them in the hollow of his hand to Lora.
Taking them, she leaned forward, looking intently upon his face, but failing to see into his eyes, because of a deeper shadow therein than that which environed them.
"Alastair," she whispered.
He made no answer; but wearily raised his hand to his mouth, and with his tongue crushed against his palate the acrid juice of the sea-grapes.
"O Alastair! speak to me! speak to me!"
He turned slowly. Then suddenly he put out his arms, and gathered her to his breast.
"My beautiful gloom—Lora—my Rest—my Joy—O you who are my Pharais—all the Pharais I care for now or dream of—if there be indeed a pitiful God, He will have mercy upon us. If we do wrong, we sin believing that we are doing the right, the sole right thing. But sweet it is—O Lora, sweet and dear at the last, after all our dark bewildered pain, to be here and know that all is over now, and that we two go into the Silence together: and if there be any waking, that together we shall wake.Mo ghràidh, mo mùirnean, my dear one, what peace there is for you and me that I die thus: free from that crushing, crushing pain and darkness that has filled my brain."
"Alastair! O my dear love—dearest—shall we—shall we meet again after this dreadful night? Shall there be any day for us? I cannot die—oh, I cannot die in this awful darkness ... thus.... We are both so young ... and I...."
She ceased abruptly.
A low splashing sound, with long-drawn suffocating surge and susurrus, told that the sea had begun to creep forward with stealthy swiftness.
It was not the menace of the tide, however, that froze the words upon her lips.
Alastair had begun to croon, in a drowsy, yet strained, uncertain voice, a snatch of fisher-lore.
"Alastair! Alastair! Alastair!"
He gave a low laugh, as he turned on his side, and with wandering fingers played idly with the sand.
"Alastair!... my husband!... Beloved ... Alastair!... Oh, say farewell to me at the least.... Do not turn from me!"
"It called—called—called: and she cried to me, Come, my Belovèd: and then I knew Lora was dead. Why do you laugh at me? She is dead, I tell you:dead, dead, dead! She, my beautiful Lora—my dream—my joy—she who to me was Pharais itself: she isdead!"
In the grip of supreme woe, a woman has a heroism of abnegation beyond all words to tell of it.
Her grief rose within Lora as a phantom, and chilled her to the very heart and to the very brain. But with a great effort she stirred, leaned over and plucked some of the fatal fruit and swallowed it: for she had crushed in her hand the berries he had given her.
Then, having risen, with deft hands she pulled toward her some long strings of dead-man's-hair and rope-weed; and, with those which were firmly affixed to rocks or heavy stones, she wove a girdle about the waist of Alastair, and so round her own.
She could scarce see to finish her task, for the moon had passed upward into the denser cloud, and the faintly luminous veils of vapour beneath it were now scarce distinguishable from the obscurity all around.
The insistent wash of the tide was coming steadily nearer. She could feel the cold breath of its moving lip.
Absolute darkness prevailed; while, with shaking hands, having unloosed her long, black hair, she tied it firmly in two places with the curly tangle of him whom she loved so passing well in death as in life.
Not a gleam fell from the veiled moon. Not a thing was visible save a faint phosphorescent line that moved slowly inward. Lora could not see Alastair's face, not even his body, not even the two shaking hands she held over him while she prayed inaudibly, and with a suffocating, bewildering pain at her heart, at her lungs, in her head.
No sound came from the isle. The noise of the falling stream in the glen was merged in the confused clamour of the tide-race. Shoreward, there was that awful tidal whisper. Seaward, the march of wave after wave, of billow after billow, in vast processional array; squadron after squadron, battalion after battalion, of the innumerable army of the deep: and among them all, over them all, beneath them all, a Voice, loud, reverberant, menacing, awful as brooding thunder, terrible as the quaking of the dry land when the hills o'er-topple the cities of the plain: a Voice as of the majesty of Death, swelling through the night with all the eternal pain, the forlorn travail, the incommunicable ache of all the weary, weary World.
Then, ere all remembrance died for her, Lora knew that Alastair slept and was at peace.
She stole her arm round his neck and held him close, but was too weak now to lean over and kiss those white lips, parted as a child's in dreamless slumber.
It was her last pain: the last unavailing bitterness of woman's woe.
Thereafter she lay still, vaguely hearkening the tide run up the deep channel beyond the little isle of sand, already damp with the underooze.
She listened to the slipping of the water along the ledges. A wave came out of the darkness and stalked through the gloom as a wild beast to its lair. Ledge over ledge she heard it swiftly move: then suddenly there was a blank ... a hoarse muffled noise ... the hollow reverberation of the billow as it fell heavily into the black unfathomed gulf wherein at the flood was swept all that drifted into the cave.
A windy sigh arose in the cavern. The tide moved upward, feeling along the walls with stealthy, groping hands. A faint phosphorescence appeared momently, now here, now there.
The second channel, to the left, suddenly brimmed. The water spilled over upon the sandy tract beyond. Then a long rolling wave raced inward, leaped along one of its ledges, poised a moment, and, breaking into a seething foam in its fall, tore this away and that the weedy bonds which bound the sleepers.
Beyond, in the darkness, the loud moan, the deep, monotonous boom of the sea filled the whole vast void of the night.
The loud and terrifying violence of the sea throughout that day; the oppressive gloom of that night; the weight of undischarged electricity which everywhere brooded; all made sleep impossible for Ealasaid MacAodh.
So ill was she when evening set in, that she had moved her things from the bed in the second of the two rooms of which the sheiling consisted, so as to sleep in the box-bed in the larger, within sight and feel of the fire-glow.
She had not slept there since her husband died. Perhaps this was because that, even after the lapse of years, she could not endure the solitudes of memory. They had been lovers in their youth, she and her Hebridean: they had been lovers during their brief married life, ere he, after the too frequent wont of the islesmen, found death in the wave wherein he sought the means of life: and when his drifted body had been recovered, and laid in the island soil, she had remained his lover still. Doubtless, she thought of him even yet with his yellow hair and laughing eyes; perhaps of herself, too, as lithe of limb and with soft, fair skin as unwrinkled and hair as brown and supple as when he had first caused the trouble of a new and strange tide in the calm waters of her girl's heart.
To sleep in the bed where she had lain by his side, where a child had been born to her and had died just as with glad pain she had recognised in the little one the eyes of its father, may have seemed to her a cross of suffering which she was unable to take up and bear.
Or, it may be, there lurked darkly in her mind the ancient secret Celtic dread of sleeping in the bed where any of one's own blood-kin has died: the dread of the whisper that is on the pillow in the dark hours, of the hand that gropes along the coverlet, of the chill breath that comes without cause and stirs the hair as it falls suddenly upon the cheek of the awakened sleeper.
On this night, however, she dreaded not only her own weakness, but the dark. Vaguely, she wondered how she had for so long a time slept away from the comforting light and warmth of her peat-fire.
She was so old, so weary, she thought pitifully. Would Duncan be sure to know her again? Why was she kept so long there, waiting for the summons that never came? Had God forgotten her? No kin had she: not one to claim her body for the place of sleep when her dark hour came. Useless were her days to all: to herself, each day a rising sorrow; each night a setting grief.
Yet that infinite patience of the poor was hers, that poignant pathos of womanhood in childless and husbandless old age, which to the very end endures—till the last thread has been used in the weaving of the Crown of Sorrow.
Beautiful this austere Diadem worn by aged and lonely women: sweet-eyed bearers of crowns among the myriad procession of the weary poor of all the world, all going gloriously apparelled and wreathed with green garlands which fade not in the sight of Him who leadeth His feeble folk to kingship and honour.
For a brief while she lay brooding, with dull old eyes fixed upon the red heart of the peats. Then the gaze withdrew slowly, and the lids closed; as though a bird, flying softly through the twilight, had passed beneath the low-hung leaves over its nest.
She could not have been long asleep, for the glow was still ruddy upon the floor, when she was startled by a sudden barking and whining. She sat up, listening intently. She could hear no step, no voice. The whining terrified her. If the noise were that of a dog at all, and not of Luath or some other phantom hound, whose dog was it, and why its sudden appearance at her door at that hour of night—its eager, unceasing clamour?
But when, with louder and louder barks and an impatient scraping, the unwelcome visitor showed he was not to be denied, she rose, put on her things, and then, having wrapped a shawl about her head and lit a lantern which she lifted from a hook, opened the door.
For a moment, she thought that nothing was there. Then her ears caught the sound of panting breath, and something wet and warm touched her suspended left hand.
With timid, yet caressing voice, she lured the dog across the threshold. The moment she could see clearly, she recognised him as Ghaoth, the white-breasted, tawny-haired, amber-eyed collie that belonged to Alastair Macleod.
The dog would not bide. His whining never ceased, save when it was interrupted by loud, eager barks. To and fro he ran, and at last sprang out into the night again, only to return a few moments later in a state of excitement bordering on frenzy.
"Some evil must have happened to Alastair Macleod," Ealasaid muttered, as after a brief hesitation she took the lantern and followed Ghaoth.
To her dismay, the dog tried to lead her toward the hollow of the moonflowers. Could Alastair possibly be there, or on the shore beyond? Why, if he were down there, lying helpless, the tide would be upon him shortly, and then his doom would be certain. Again, of what avail was she, so old and frail, and now with some new weakness upon her? She feared she had not the strength to move downward in the dark through that dense jungle of white blooms: still less to climb homeward again. But while she pondered, she saw that Ghaoth leaped no more in the direction of the valley, but along the grassy ridge which led to the summit of Craig-Geal, so perilous by night because of the sloping, precipitous hole which gave entrance to the funnel-like passage issuing from the Cave of the Sea-Woman.
"Ah," she cried, as it flashed upon her that Alastair had fallen, or been hemmed in in the cavern by the tide, "God help him if he isthere!"
With panting breath she hurried along the ridge, heedless now of Ghaoth, who had suddenly darted off to the left and disappeared among the moonflowers. She had not gone far, however, before she stopped. What use to hurry onward, if all she could do was to shout down into the darkness—a cry that would likely never be heard, and if heard would be of no avail to the hearer?
No sooner did she realise the uselessness of her errand than she turned, and, with shaking limbs and labouring breath, made her way along a sheep-path which led to the opposite brae of Craig-Ruaidh, where Angus Macrae and his son Ranald lived.
So exhausted was the old woman by the time she had reached the farm and aroused the inmates, that two or three minutes passed before she could explain.
Ranald Macrae saw at once that one of two things had happened: either that Alastair had wandered to the cave in his madness, and there, ignorant or oblivious of the steps cut in the hollow columnar passage at the far end, been cut off by the sea; or else that he had wittingly made his way there, with intent to drown himself in the Kelpie's Pool—an abyss that never gave back what it swallowed.
It was during this hurried explanation to his father that Ealasaid learned for the first time the truth of what had reached her as a vague rumour in the mouth of a herd-boy. Eager as she was to be of help, she was now too weak to accompany the men, even if it were possible for her to keep pace with them, which it was not, as they had started off at a run.
She knew that old Macrae's advice was right: that she could best help by going home at once, and making preparation to receive Alastair if he were still alive. There was no room for him at the farm, where Ranald's wife had given birth to a child two days before. So with little Pòl, the herd-boy, she set out once more, leaning often upon the lad's shoulder; and wondering if, after all, God were going to let her be of some service before he led her through the blind way till her hand should slip into that of her husband. As she went, she muttered to herself part of a rune now almost lost among the people, an ancientsian—that part of theTuaitheal, beginningClogaid na salainte mu d'cheann:
"The helmet of Salvation about your head,The ring of the Covenant about your neck,The priest's breastplate about your breast;If it be rout on the rear,The shoes of the Virgin to take you swiftly away.Charm of the Three in one on youFrom crown of head to sole of foot,And the charm of the pater of the seven patersA-going anti-sunwise and sunwise, sunwise and anti-sunwise,To protect you from behind,From wound and from slaying,Till the hour and time of your death."
"The helmet of Salvation about your head,The ring of the Covenant about your neck,The priest's breastplate about your breast;If it be rout on the rear,The shoes of the Virgin to take you swiftly away.
"The helmet of Salvation about your head,
The ring of the Covenant about your neck,
The priest's breastplate about your breast;
If it be rout on the rear,
The shoes of the Virgin to take you swiftly away.
Charm of the Three in one on youFrom crown of head to sole of foot,And the charm of the pater of the seven patersA-going anti-sunwise and sunwise, sunwise and anti-sunwise,To protect you from behind,From wound and from slaying,Till the hour and time of your death."
Charm of the Three in one on you
From crown of head to sole of foot,
And the charm of the pater of the seven paters
A-going anti-sunwise and sunwise, sunwise and anti-sunwise,
To protect you from behind,
From wound and from slaying,
Till the hour and time of your death."
Before they left the farmstead, theMacraes had provided themselves with lanterns, a long rope, and a pine torch dipped in tar.
As they neared the summit of Craig-Geal, they could hear the frenzied barking of Ghaoth in the darkness down by the sea—loud when caught on an eddy of wind and borne upward, scarce audible when overborne by the moan and boom and ever recurrent breaking surge of the advancing tide.
At the dark circular exit of the cavern, they waved lanterns and shouted themselves hoarse: but without seeing aught, or winning response.
Angus Macrae silently drew back, rose, and lit the pine torch. Flaring abruptly into the dark before a gust of wind, it was like a blood-red wound in the flank of some vast black creature of night.
Having fastened the torch to the rope, he swung it far down the narrow funnel, up which came the smell of wrack and sea-damp and an obscure, muffled sound.
Still there was nothing visible. No shout followed the sudden glare.
The old man stood silent, craning forward with brooding eyes; for now he was thinking of the two sons he had lost. With a shudder, he moved slowly back and turned to Ranald.
"Will you go down?"
"Ay, father, that I will: if you will breathe the holy word before me and after me. The kelpie ... the Sea-Woman ... won't catchme, for I am sure of hand and foot."
"So your brother Seumas thought."
Ranald hesitated, looked at the cave-mouth, then at his father.
"Is it true Seumas died inthatway?"
"It is true. The tide hemmed him in, and a heavy sea foamed at the mouth of the cavern. There was no chance but to gain some ledge high above the Sea-Woman's Pool. He did gain a hold on a ledge, for long afterward we found his knife on it. Then the accursed kelpie rose out of her lair and took him by the legs, and pulled him down, and tore him, and broke the bones of him—my son, my son, my beautiful Seumas!"
As the old man spoke, his voice had grown louder, his tone more intense; and at the last the memory of his loss so wrought upon him that, with a sudden cry, he dashed forward and whirled one of the lanterns into the dark, echoing chasm.
"Let me go, let me go," he cried, as his son tried to withhold him. "If she must have one of us again, let it be me! Let go, boy! You have your wife and child: and I am old, and have lost Seumas and Andras and the mother who bore them!"
Without a word, Ranald desisted. The old man went on his knees, crawled forward, and pulled up the flaming torch. Then, having fastened the rope round his waist and secured a lantern to his belt, he slipped over the edge and began the descent, cautiously feeling his way with his feet as he went.
As he reached further and further into the darkness, he wondered why he heard no more the barking of Ghaoth. A grim thought came into his mind: the dog had been caught by the Sea-Woman, and was even now drifting round and round in her pool, strangled, with glazed, protruding eyes.
At last, both sight and sound told him that he was nearly over the abyss—sight and sound, and his careful counting of the steps in his descent.
The tidal wash, the heavy lapse and then heavier resurge, with the rush and cataract-roar of the seas as they fell far down into the chasm, assailed his ears continuously. Peering down, he could see the foam upon the flood, as it swept ravening round the cave and then fell headlong into the abyss, above which was a misty pulsating whiteness, the send and spray of tons of whirled water.
There was almost no need to descend further, he thought. The strongest swimmer, if caught in that inrush, would be swept irresistibly into the horrible caldron where the Sea-Woman brewed her spells of storm and disaster.
There was but one chance for Alastair; if, in truth, he were in the cave at all and still alive. A little way below where the islesman stood, there were three or four broad ledges of which even the lowest would still be unswept by the sea. He dreaded to descend; for it was on the first of those ledges that his son, Seumas, had been dragged, screaming, into the abyss. With a muttered prayer, however—a prayer that was half an incantation—he once more slowly crawled downward.
When he came to the third ledge, he stopped, crouched, and peered downward and forward.
For a moment his brain swung.
What was it that he saw? What fantasy was this? What horrible caprice of his eyes? Had Ghaoth slain the kelpie, and was he now perishing there with his teeth fixed in the neck of the Sea-Woman?
For Ghaoth, and no other, was the dog that crouched on the lowest ledge; and a woman it was who lay beside him, upheld at the neck by his strong teeth.
He saw the gleam in the dog's eyes, fixed upon him unwaveringly. He understood their appeal. Slowly he unfastened and raised his lantern.
When he recognised Lora, he knew intuitively what had happened. With uplifted arm, he let the light fall all around—above weedy, sea-swept boulders, and the dark, inward-moving flood, broken here and there into a seethe of foam that shone ghastly white in the lantern-glow.
There was no sign of Alastair.
It was clear he was either already swept into the chasm, or had been sucked seaward in the undertow.
With utmost care, Macrae stepped on to the lowest ledge.
Stooping, he looked intently in Lora's white face. Then he put his hand to her heart. He fancied he felt it beat, but could not be sure. Drawing a flask from his pocket, he poured some of the contents down her throat, then upon her temples and breast, with rough hand laving the spirit across the bosom, which, cold as it was, had not the unmistakable chill of death. A new strength came to the old man. He had lost all fear now, and had no other thought but to save this poor creature who had already looked on the face of Death, and nigh perished with the horror of it.
Taking her in his arms, he was swiftly securing her to his body by the rope, when he was startled to see Ghaoth, who had at once let go his hold, leap into the surge and swim seaward.
The dog went to its doom, he knew, in a vain quest for Alastair. With a moment's sigh, he turned to what he had to do.
An arduous and perilous climb it was ere the old islesman at last neared the summit, and felt Ranald grasp him by the shoulder and help him and his burden over the edge.
He would have swooned from the long strain upon him, had not his son hastily put the flask of whisky to his mouth and imperatively bid him drink.
As soon as he could breathe freely once more, he recounted what had happened. The young man wanted to go down at once into the cave and seek for Alastair, in the hope that he might still be swimming in the open, or be somewhere afloat, and that Ghaoth might reach him and bring him to the spot where the dog had guarded Lora—almost from the moment, though of course neither Macrae nor his son knew aught of this, when the first ledge-sweeping wave broke upon the sleepers and reft asunder their impotent weedy bonds.
But of this project Angus Macrae would hear nothing further. Was his son mad, he asked him, to believe that Alastair could still be alive, since, he was visible nowhere?
"No," he added, "he is in the deep sea by now, or lies gripped by the Woman in her hole. But, Ranald, if to search for his body you are so fain, you can go down later. Maybe you will find the dog, though I think neither you, nor I, nor any one else will ever see dog or man again. Meanwhile, take up this poor soul and carry her to Widow Ealasaid's.
"She is big with child," whispered the young man, as, awe-struck, he wrapped Lora in his warm plaid and raised her in his arms.
"Ay: God have pity on this lost ewe and her poor, wee lammie. Be careful, Ranald, be tender—ay, as tender as if she were your own Cairistine, and the babe that is now moving within her were blood of your blood and bone of your bone."
In silence, and as swiftly as possible, the two men, with their still more silent burden, crossed the slopes of the ridge and ascended the grassy, boulder-strewn brae. In due time, they were met at the door by Ealasaid.
With a low, crooning wail, the old woman helped to lay Lora on the bed in the inner room. She had already warmed the clothes, and had poured boiling water in a tub, with hot flannels for swathing. All island-women act thus on any hint of accident, for the hunger of the sea is the cause of nearly every disaster for them and their loved ones. Besides—had not Duncan Bàn once been brought home, and all this and more done for him, though the chill upon him was not that of the sea only?
Suddenly she saw there was no time to lose.
"Quick, quick, Pòl," she cried: "take a lantern and run like the wind across to the clachan, and tell Mrs. Mary Maclean that she is to come here at once, for Alastair Macleod is dead, and his wife is lying here in labour, and that the last pains may come upon her speedily."
The boy hesitated a moment, glanced at his grandfather, and then fled into the night, heedless of any lantern, and sure-footed as a goat.
Finding that he could be of no use, and that Mrs. MacAodh wished only his father to remain, Ranald Macrae slipped quietly away: and in a brief while had reached the cave entrance, descended, and searched vainly for any trace of either Alastair or the dog.
To Ealasaid's unceasing care Lora owed her life. The old woman seemed to have grown years younger. A new strength was in her arm, a new light in her worn eyes, a new spirit in her frail body. With deft hands, she rubbed the skin aglow, wrapped warm flannels about the limbs, breathed into breast and back, soothed the convulsive strainings of the sides and heavy womb, fed the unconscious sufferer with sips of broth and warmed spirit, and often the while kissed the poor faintly quivering lips. It seemed to her as if her heart swam in tears; but with the unnoticed heroism of women, she let no grief overmaster her, no flagging of mind or body usurp her will.
In the outer room Angus Macrae sat, intent at first upon the keeping up of the fire and the fulfilment of Ealasaid's divers commands. Then, nigh an hour later, when through the open doorway he heard a strange moaning from the inner room, he sat down by the low, rude table and, taking the Gaelic Bible which lay there, began in a slow, monotonous voice to read from the page which caught his eye as he opened the book:
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."
As he read steadfastly onward through this moving last chapter of Ecclesiastes, his voice rose, and took a rhythmic chant, and filled the room, as a rising wind fills a valley set among the hills.
But when he read:
"As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the work of God who doeth all——"
"As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the work of God who doeth all——"
he stopped abruptly, for he heard a sound at the outer door, and guessed, even before he saw her, that the comer was Mrs. Maclean.
Angus rose, and took her hand. Then, seeing the speechless sorrow in her eyes, he let go his hold of her, and, bowing his head, did not lift up his eyes again till Mary had entered the inner room.
He knew that, with those two women there, all would go well with Lora, if it were ordained that she was to live. But he feared that death was already entered in at the door; and he knew not what passionate sorrow might come upon and undo those who ministered to the woman, who even now was in those pains of labour that ere morn should end in the birth of a child. Long he sat brooding. Then, weary of his vigil, once more he began to read, resuming with the verse where he had been interrupted:
"Even so, thou knowest not the work of God who doeth all."In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."
"Even so, thou knowest not the work of God who doeth all.
"In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."
Looking up, he saw Ealasaid standing at the door, a wonderful light on her old face.
"It lives," she said simply. "Mary said that the child would certainly be born dead; but it lives. She says now it has the shadow upon it, and must die ere long; but they told me that my own little blossom was strong, and would live: ... and even as they were wrong, wrong also may Mary Maclean be."
Hearing a call, she turned, and went within.
The oldislesman muttered for a while, with bent head and closed eyes. Then he began to read again:
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun."
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun."
"Hush!"
It was Mary who spoke. She had that in her face which made him rise.
"Hush, Angus Macrae. Truly, the eyes are the delight of the body, but this is not the time for the bitterness of that saying. Never for this child, that is born in the shadow of death, and can itself live but a brief while, shall there be the sweet light of which you speak, nor the pleasantness of beholding the sun, nor the way of the day betwixt rise and set."
"Is the child blind?"
"Ay ... blind ... blind."
"And weakling?"
"Ay."
"And she?"
"God hath given her strength to endure."
"Does she know all that has happened?"
"If she did, she would be with Alastair. Her mind is dazed. She is as one distraught. My friend, read no more to-night. Go home now, and God be with you. Bring on the morrow what tidings you have."
Soon after the departure of the old man, a great stillness fell upon the house. Lora slept in a stupor like unto death. The child lay upon her breast, as a frail flower drifted there by a chance wind. Ealasaid sat by the bed watching. Mary knelt against it, crying silently.
Toward dawn, Mrs. Maclean rose, and looked out upon the chill dusk. When she came back, she kneeled again; and, in a low voice, repeated a strange Celtic "Prayer of Women":
O Spirit, that broods upon the hillsAnd moves upon the face of the deep,And is heard in the wind,Save us from the desire of men's eyes,And the cruel lust of them,And the springing of the cruel seedIn that narrow house which is as the graveFor darkness and loneliness ...That women carry with them with shame, and weariness, and long pain,Only for the laughter of man's heart,And the joy that triumphs therein,And the sport that is in his heart,Wherewith he mocketh us,Wherewith he playeth with us,Wherewith he trampleth upon us.Us, who conceive and bear him;Us, who bring him forth;Who feed him in the womb, and at the breast and at the knee:Whom he calleth Mother,And Mother again of his wife and children:When he looks at our hair, and sees it is white;And at our eyes, and sees they are dim;And at our lips, straitened out with long pain;And at our breasts, fallen and seared as a barren hill;And at our hands, worn with toil;And, seeing, seeth all the bitter ruin and wreck of us—All save the violated womb that curses him—All save the heart that forbeareth ... for pity—All save the living brain that condemneth him—All save the spirit that shall not mate with him—All save the soul he shall never seeTill he be one with it, and equal;He who hath the bridle, but guideth not;He who hath the whip, yet is driven;He who as a shepherd calleth upon us,But is himself a lost sheep, crying among the hills!O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,Heal us of the Wrong of Man:We, whose breasts are weary with milk,Cry, cry to Thee, O Compassionate!
O Spirit, that broods upon the hillsAnd moves upon the face of the deep,And is heard in the wind,Save us from the desire of men's eyes,And the cruel lust of them,And the springing of the cruel seedIn that narrow house which is as the graveFor darkness and loneliness ...That women carry with them with shame, and weariness, and long pain,Only for the laughter of man's heart,And the joy that triumphs therein,And the sport that is in his heart,Wherewith he mocketh us,Wherewith he playeth with us,Wherewith he trampleth upon us.Us, who conceive and bear him;Us, who bring him forth;Who feed him in the womb, and at the breast and at the knee:Whom he calleth Mother,And Mother again of his wife and children:When he looks at our hair, and sees it is white;And at our eyes, and sees they are dim;And at our lips, straitened out with long pain;And at our breasts, fallen and seared as a barren hill;And at our hands, worn with toil;And, seeing, seeth all the bitter ruin and wreck of us—All save the violated womb that curses him—All save the heart that forbeareth ... for pity—All save the living brain that condemneth him—All save the spirit that shall not mate with him—All save the soul he shall never seeTill he be one with it, and equal;He who hath the bridle, but guideth not;He who hath the whip, yet is driven;He who as a shepherd calleth upon us,But is himself a lost sheep, crying among the hills!O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,Heal us of the Wrong of Man:We, whose breasts are weary with milk,Cry, cry to Thee, O Compassionate!
O Spirit, that broods upon the hills
And moves upon the face of the deep,
And is heard in the wind,
Save us from the desire of men's eyes,
And the cruel lust of them,
And the springing of the cruel seed
In that narrow house which is as the grave
For darkness and loneliness ...
That women carry with them with shame, and weariness, and long pain,
Only for the laughter of man's heart,
And the joy that triumphs therein,
And the sport that is in his heart,
Wherewith he mocketh us,
Wherewith he playeth with us,
Wherewith he trampleth upon us.
Us, who conceive and bear him;
Us, who bring him forth;
Who feed him in the womb, and at the breast and at the knee:
Whom he calleth Mother,
And Mother again of his wife and children:
When he looks at our hair, and sees it is white;
And at our eyes, and sees they are dim;
And at our lips, straitened out with long pain;
And at our breasts, fallen and seared as a barren hill;
And at our hands, worn with toil;
And, seeing, seeth all the bitter ruin and wreck of us—
All save the violated womb that curses him—
All save the heart that forbeareth ... for pity—
All save the living brain that condemneth him—
All save the spirit that shall not mate with him—
All save the soul he shall never see
Till he be one with it, and equal;
He who hath the bridle, but guideth not;
He who hath the whip, yet is driven;
He who as a shepherd calleth upon us,
But is himself a lost sheep, crying among the hills!
O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,
And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,
Heal us of the Wrong of Man:
We, whose breasts are weary with milk,
Cry, cry to Thee, O Compassionate!
Ealasaid trembled. She had never heard words such as these before, and was afraid; yet even more of the strange intensity in the voice of Mrs. Maclean, in the shine of her usually quiet eyes.
"God be with you, Mary Maclean."
"And with you, Ealasaid MacAodh."
Therewith Mrs. Maclean arose, looked at Lora to see if she still slept, and then went into the adjoining room, where she seated herself before the hot glow of the peats; and, as the day broke, read below her breath in the third chapter of the Book of Job.
Weeks passed, and there was no word of Alastair. For twenty days after the coming of the child, Lora lay distraught, knowing no one about her, though oftentimes looking long and lovingly in the eyes of Mary, whose face had won again an exceeding peace, and who went, as of yore, girt about with a beautiful silence as with a garment.
But on the last day of the third week, Lora awoke in her right mind. Mary had given the frail, blind babe to young Cairistine Macrae to suckle. This was well; for had Lora looked upon it on that day, she would have died.
Nevertheless, in a brief while thereafter she knew all. It seemed strange, both to Mary and Ealasaid, that she did not appear greatly to care. She had that in her heart which would have enlightened them; but grief, as well as madness or evil, has its cunning, and so she veiled her purpose in absolute secrecy.
Not a sign of Alastair! This was what she could not accept. Till his body, or some trace of it, were found, she said she would not return with Mary to her home. Nothing, however, repaid the most scrupulous search: no clew was gained—unless the discovery of the body of Ghaoth, caught in a trawling net one night a mile seaward, could be called a clew.
On that day of agony when she had at last looked on the face of her child, and knew it stricken with frailty and blind for all its days, and heritor perhaps of that curse which had caused her to sin and incur this punishment, she had made a covenant with herself to go down as soon as she could to the shore, at low tide, and with her child follow Alastair into that abyss in the cavern where she felt assured he had been swept by the sea.
Two weary weeks passed before an opportunity came. One afternoon Mary went across Innisròn, so as to reach the clachan and meet theClansmanfor somewhat she expected: and as she was to come back with Ranald Macrae, and he was not to return till after dark, Lora felt secure.
Early in the evening, she sent Ealasaid on a message to Parlan Macalister's wife, who lived in a cottage about a mile along the shore beyond the promontory of Ardfeulan.
It was a lovely evening in mid-July. The moon was at the full, and made a golden dust upon the isle and a glory of pale gold upon the sea.
As she went once more down the hollow of the moonflowers—not so dense now as then, and many withered by the heat of the sun and the month-long drought—she stopped again and again, overcome by the heat even of the dusk.
In her ears was the bewildered, plaintive cry of the lapwings: and, as an undertone, the low, soft chime—the long, sweet ululation of the myriad-swung bell of the sea.
She was weary when she reached the shore. An unspeakable horror of the cavern came upon her, and she turned and went slowly toward the long sandy tract that stretched beyond the base of the hollow. There she laid the child gently down in the soft sand at her feet, and seated herself on a low rock.
After all, was it worth while to seek Death, when Death had already whispered that the little one was to be his own so soon, and had stealthily removed all but the last barriers that guarded her own poor life?
Would God not be even more wroth with her—punish her even more heavily; though this, indeed, seemed impossible?
How lovely that vast ocean veiled in violet dusk, save where lit gloriously with moonlight: how full of alluring peace, she thought that wave-whisper all around her.
Surely the music was woven into a song that was dear and familiar in her ears?
She turned her head away from the sea, and looked idly along the sand: though, as she did so, the vague strain ceased.
Then Lora stood, trembling in a great awe, and with a passionate hope in her eyes, in her heart, at the very springs of life.
In the moonshine, she saw a tall figure moving slowly toward her, naked-white, and walking with a proud mien. The erect body, the flashing eyes, the grace and beauty, were those of a king—of a king among men: and as a king the naked figure was crowned, with moonflowers and yellow sea-poppies woven into his gold-sheen hair.
Suddenly he saw her. He stood as though wrought in impassioned stone. The moonshine fell full upon his white skin, upon the beauty of his face, upon the flower-tangle wherewith he had crowned himself.
Then, without a sound, he turned and fled like the wind, and vanished into the gloom that lay beyond the dusk.
And Lora, lifting the child and staggering homeward, knew that she had seen Alastair.
It was not till many weeks later that the way of Alastair's escape from death became known.
On that dark night when he had lain down to die, the wave which fell across Lora and himself, and tore asunder the bonds she had woven, was followed by no other for a time: otherwise, the end of both would have been attained. But so great was the shock, that his apathy of mind and body was rudely broken. The tired blood stung in his veins; the instinct of life was as a flame of fire that consumed all the stupor due to the sea-fruit he had eaten—an instinct that wrought him to a passion of effort.
Shaken and trembling, he staggered to his feet. Nothing but a profound darkness beyond, behind, above: a darkness filled with the voices of the wind, the seething tide, wave falling over wave, billow leaping after billow and tearing it into a yeast of foam—itself to stagger the next moment, and struggle and strangle furiously in a cloud of spray ere flung a dead mass upon the shore.
He had no remembrance of Lora, of what had brought them here, of the grave that was ready where the Sea-Woman watched.
But fear was left to him: and when he was aware of something moving across the ledges to his left, and heard it splash through the tide-wash in its effort to reach him, he gave a terrified cry, and dashed seaward to escape the grip of the kelpie.
Stumbling, he fell heavily forward. But it was into deep water; and, powerful swimmer as he was, he fought the surge, and so was not thrown back upon the rocks till, unwittingly, he was caught in a cross-current and swept southward on the backs of the reeling sea-horses.
A horrible tumult was in his ears. The darkness was upon him as a heavy hand. As idle flotsam, the waves swung him backward and forward.
A deathly cold beset his limbs; then utter weariness. His hands ceased to propel, and only automatically and instinctively kept him afloat.
Yet even now, at the last extremity, when memory was no more, terror remained.
There was something swimming near, something moving toward him through the dark.
The next moment he threw up his hands, overcome by the sickness of fear and a fatigue that he could no longer withstand. As he sank, he was conscious of a body surging up against his; of a hot breath against his face; of a gasping whine against his ear. Then in a flash he recognised, or by instinct divined, that it was Ghaoth who had followed into the darkness, and was there to save him.
The dog had indeed followed, having but an hour ago escaped from the byre where Ian Maclean had risen from his sleep to let him out because of his ceaseless whining. He had raced across the island, and along Alastair's and Lora's track, till he found them where they lay. Thence, after seeing the two whom he loved lying silent and motionless in a way that made him whine with fear, and knowing, as faithful dogs do know, that he must win help without delay, he had sped back to the nearest cottage. Once convinced that old Ealasaid was following to succour those whom he had left, he had sprung away again through the moonflowers, and had reached the entrance to the cave after fierce baffling with the tide-race. Just as Alastair had risen and was staggering toward the sea, Ghaoth had caught sight of him, and had plunged without hesitation into the black bewilderment of waters which had swallowed up the friend whom he loved with his life.
Fortunately, the spent swimmer was still near the shore—nearer, even, than when he had first fallen; for he was now close to the headland of Craig-Geal, and was already in shallow water, which swung on to a long shelf of sand lying against the entrance to another of the innumerable caverns of that side of the island. But here the sea, though at full-flood it covered the sand and moved its hungry lip for a few feet within, did not enter, as a beast of prey halting unassuaged at the entrance to its lair.
Ghaoth had gripped him by the hair of his neck, and was now struggling to reach the shore. Man and dog were still flung to and fro by the waves; but the living sport of the sea was no longer separate. With Ghaoth's help, Alastair made renewed, if despairing, efforts.
Suddenly his feet touched the ground for a moment. Then, with a staggering rush, having shaken himself free of the dog, he gained the shore, stumbled blindly up the low shelve of the sound, and fell unconscious among the soft, powdery grit, midway in the wide, half-roofless hollow known as the Cave of the Sùlaire, from the solan geese which often congregated there in the blinding snow-storms of winter.
Ghaoth stood panting beside him awhile. At last, with a low whine, the dog pressed his muzzle against the white face in the white sand; turned aside, whined again, and came back with lolling tongue. Then, suddenly, he sprang away into the darkness, and back into the drowning surge, with all his loyal, loving heart—beautiful love of the dumb animal-soul that God heedeth and cherisheth no less than that other wandering fire He hath placed in the human—eager to baffle with drift and billow till he reached the cavern once more, in time to save Lora, of whose body he had caught a glimpse as he dashed after Alastair.
In time, and no more. He had not long rescued Lora, who, also, had been partially roused by the shock of the breaking wave. She had been half-standing, half-leaning against the higher ledge, to which, with difficulty and in blind instinct, she had clung; but, as Ghaoth reached her, she sank wearily and lay back against the dog, dreaming she had waked in terror, but was now safe in Alastair's arms.
It was thus that Angus Macrae discovered them. Long afterward the islesman recalled how he had seen the dog leap back into the darkness. Whether Ghaoth failed to reach the Cave of the Sùlaire, and was carried seaward by a current; or whether his strength failed him in his last effort, and he was swung lifelessly from wave to wave; whatever the first word of his fate was, the last was the finding of his sea-mangled body in the trawl-net of a fisherman more than a mile oceanward from Innisròn.
When Alastair woke, an hour or more after dawn, he remembered nothing of what had happened. His memory, though not killed, was clouded by his madness; and, doubtless, the shock of what he had gone through, with the action of the mermaid's fruit, had further weakened it.
He rose and looked about him wonderingly. Around, were the precipitous rocks; beyond, the sea stretched far into the morning mists, calm, with a silver sparkle in the south-east and turquoise-blue elsewhere, except in green straits under the shadow of the isle, till it faded into opal and dove-grey where the veils of mist slowly dispersed, re-wove, lifted, in-wove, and sank to the wave again, or sailed indefinitely away.
Though he could still recall nothing of the past night, he recognised, as soon as he stepped from the cave and went down by the sea-marge, the head-land of Craig-Ruaidh and that of Craig-Geal just behind him. His one wish was to hide, so that none should see him. His fantasy led him to seek remote places, and to fear the face of his fellows.
Turning toward the sun, he looked scrutinisingly along the coast. Somewhere beyond Craig-Geal, he remembered vaguely, there was another hollow which led to a series of intricate and unexplored caves, perilous places of evil repute among the islanders.
If he were to go there ... but at that moment his wandering gaze lighted upon an object moving black in the shine of the sea.
Was it a whale sunning itself, or a pollack moving idly after the liath? Then he saw that it was a boat—one of many torn from moorings or swept from the beach by the recent gale.
So methodical were his actions, that none seeing him would believe his mind was so darkly veiled, that his reason was only partially in exercise.
Having taken off his coat, he wrapped it round a heavy stone and threw the bundle far into the sea. Then he thrust his boots into a cranny in a fissured boulder that at full flood was covered.
A few seconds later he was in the water, swimming swiftly toward the derelict.
While he neared the boat, amid a sheen of sparkling foam as he urged his way through the sun-dazzle which lay upon that part of the sea, he broke intermittently into a mournful Gaelic chant, but with words so incoherent, and with interjections so wild and strange, that the fishermen on a coble, hid in the mist a few fathoms away, believed they listened to a sea-kelpie, or to that vague object of their profoundest dread known as "the thing that hides beneath the boat." They were southward bound; but at that forlorn wailing they hauled down their flapping sail, and, with their oars, made all haste northerly to their island or mainland haven. Not a man among them would have persevered in that voyage on that day.
Alastair heard the sound of the oar-wash, and ceased his fitful chant. It must, he thought, be dead seamen rowing to and fro, looking for the newly drowned to take their places as warders of the treasures and keepers of the secrets which lie among the weed-tangle and sunless caverns of the deep. At the thought, he laughed loud, but mirthlessly; and the echo of his laughter, falling against the ears of the fishermen, added to their horror and consternation.
With his hands gripping the gunwale, he swayed for some time to and fro, fascinated by the lustrous green beneath the keel—green in the sunlit spaces as leaves of the lime in April, and in the lower as emerald lapsing into jade, and then as jade passing into the gloom of pines at dusk.
At last he raised himself on the water, bending the gunwale low, and half fell, half crawled into the boat. Indifferently, he noticed that it was namedFionnaghal. Clearly it had drifted away from moorings; for not only were oars and sail-enveloped mast lying taut under the thwarts, but a rope trailed from the bow far down into the water.
He rowed for some time. At last, becoming weary, or perhaps puzzled by the mists which crept behind and all around him, he desisted. A flurry of air struck his right cheek. Instinctively he put up the palm of his hand to feel if the wind were coming from the south-east or the south-west. Then, adjusting the mast and setting the sail, he seated himself at the tiller.
Eddy followed eddy, and soon a breeze blew freshly from the south-east. By the time theFionnaghalwas three or four miles to the north-west of Innisròn, there was not a mist upon the sea. Immeasurably vast it stretched; blue, or glittering in a diamond-sparkle sheen, or wimpling over in violet hollows, with the white lambs beginning to collect and leap merrily onward in the pathway of the sun.
Alastair became drowsy with the warmth of the glow upon his back and the chime of the sea-music. Long before noon he slept. For hours the boat went idly adrift.
When he woke, he saw an island less than half a mile to starboard. Looking northward, he could descry nothing but sea; to the westward, nothing but sea; nothing but sea to the southward. Far eastward, a dim blue line of hills rose above the horizon: here and there—lying apparently against it, and scarce bigger to his eye than the gannets and sea-mews which flew overhead—two or three patches of amethyst. These were the isles he had left, though he did not recognise them: Ithona, most westerly; Innisròn, remote in the south-east; I-na-Trilleachan-tràhad, lost in its northerly purple-greys.
Though the words brought no meaning to him, or awakened nothing beyond mere visual reminiscence, his lips, as he looked at the island he was now approaching, framed its name, "I-Mònair."
Heedless of the fact that he was running straight upon a shore set with reefs like gigantic teeth, he tautened the sail and let the boat rush forward, and was almost havened when, with a grinding rip, theFionnaghalstopped, filled, leaned over, and hung upon a jagged reef, as a dead body suspended on the horn that has gored it.
Alastair was thrown forward by the shock. Bruised and stunned, he lay motionless for a few seconds while the water poured over him. Then, rising and casting a keen glance around, he stepped on to the reef, sprang thence to a rock nearer the shore, and thence to the shore itself.
As he left the boat, it split. The larger half went drifting on the tide.
He sat down to watch idly for the disappearance of the few planks which remained. Suddenly, without cause, he rose, stared wildly at the sea and along the shore on either hand, and then moved rapidly inland—often casting furtive glances behind him, now on the one side, now on the other.
No other lived on I-Mònair than a shepherd and his wife; and they only through the summer months. Sometimes weeks passed by without their seeing another soul: without other sign of the world of men than the smoke of a steamer far upon the horizon, or the brown patches in the distance when the herring-trawlers ventured oceanward.
No wonder, then, that Fearghas McIan gave a cry of astonishment, that was partly fear, when he saw a man walking swiftly toward him ... a man who appeared to have dropped from the clouds; for, looking beyond the stranger, the shepherd could see no sign of trawler, wherry, or boat of any kind.
"Diònaid, Diònaid," he cried to his wife, who had come to the door of the cottage to see if he were at hand for his porridge; "Trothad so ... bi ealamh, bi ealamh: quick, quick, come here."
They stood together as Alastair slowly drew near. When he was close, he stopped, looking at them curiously, and with an air as if he wondered who they were and why they were there.
"What is your name?" he asked quietly, looking at the shepherd.
"C'ainm' tha ort?" he repeated, as the man stared at him in surprise and something of alarm.
"Fearghas McIan."
"And yours?" he asked of the woman.
"Diònaid McIan."
"Cò tha sin?" he added abruptly, pointing to the cottage: "who is there?"
"No one."
"I thought I saw some one come out, look at us, and go in again."
Fearghas and Diònaid glanced at each other with eyes of dread.
"C'ainm' tha ort?" asked the former, in turn.
Alastair looked at him, as if uncomprehendingly; and then, in a low, dull voice, said that he was tired; that he was hungry, and thirsty, and wet.
"Tha mi glé sgith; tha an t acras orm; tha am pathadh orm; tha mi flìuch."
"How did you come here?"
"Tha mi glé sgith."
"Did you come in a boat? Where is the boat you came in?"
"Tha mi glé sgith."
"What is your name? Are you of the isles?"
"Tha mi glé sgith."
"What do you want with us here, on I-Mònair, where we do no wrong, O stranger who carry your sorrow in your eyes?"
"Tha mi glé sgith. Tha mi flìuch. Tha an t' acras orm. Tha mi glé sgith—tha mi glé sgith—tha mi glé sgith."
Alastair spoke in a strange, dull voice. It would have terrified Fearghas and Diònaid more, but that the stranger was so gentle in his manner, and had a look upon his face that awed while it reassured them.
"God has sent him," said Diònaid, simply. "The poor lad has not waked—he is in a dream. God do unto us as we do unto this waif from the sea. In His good time He will whisper in the closed ears, and the man will wake, and tell us who he is, and whence he came, and whither he would fain go."
"So be it, Diònaid. You have said the word, and a good word it is. When this man's hour has come, God will deliver him. Meanwhile, let us call him Donncha, after the boy we lost nigh upon six-and-twenty years ago, who might have been as tall and comely as this stranger that is now a stranger no more, but of us and one with us."
And so it was that, from that day, Alastair Macleod, unsought by any, and unrecognised because no one came near who might have known or guessed who he was, abode on I-Mònair with Fearghas the shepherd and his wife Diònaid.
He dwelt in peace. Through the long days he wandered about the shores. Often, in the gloaming, he sat on a rock and stared longingly across the waters for he knew not what, for some nameless boon he craved witlessly; stared yearningly through the dusk for something that lay beyond, that, though unseen, brought a mist into his eyes, so that when he reached the peat-fire again, where Diònaid McIan awaited him, he often could not see to eat for a while for the blur of his slow-falling tears.
Week succeeded changeless week. The sheep ceased to look up as he passed. The yellow-hammers in the gorse sang even when he stopped brooding by the bush whereon they flitted from branch to branch, looking at him with quiet eyes.
It was in the sixth week, after a time of storm which had lapsed into another long spell of exquisite summer, that the dream came to its end.
Late one afternoon, a herring-trawler lay off I-Mònair. The skipper, a kinsman of Fearghas, came ashore to give and learn what news there was.
Alastair had come back about the usual time from one of his day-long rambles, and, as he approached the door, his quick ear had caught the sound of an alien voice.
Whether he overheard the shepherd tell his friend, in turn for the strange and moving tale of Alastair MacDiarmid Macleod, of Innisròn, of the strange visitor he and his wife nourished, with the surmise that he, Donncha, might be no other than the missing man; or whether some other suggestion concerning his removal or identification alarmed him, no one ever knew.
But, in the cloudy dark of that night, when Rory McIan and his two mates, Dùghall and Eòghann, were drinking the crude spirit from Fearghas' illicit still, Alastair slipped into the small boat in which they had come ashore, and rowed softly away into the obscure and lonely wilderness of the sea.
Truly, as Diònaid said, God must have whispered in the closed ears, and told him whither to guide the boat, and when to rest while he let it drift, and when to take up the oars again. For, betwixt dawn and sunrise, the fugitive, oaring slowly out of a pearly haze, came abruptly upon the south-west of Innisròn.
With a cry of gladness, he leaned forward, shading with his right hand his eager eyes. He had recognised familiar features of shore and headlands. The whim took him to capsize the boat and swim ashore. In sudden excitement, he sprang to his feet. The little craft rocked wildly. The next moment Alastair had left the upturned keel to drift in the grey sea like a water-snake, and was swimming swiftly across the two or three hundred yards which lay between the island and the place where he had fallen.
When he reached the shore, he wandered slowly to and fro, his new-born energy having lapsed into a vague unrest. Aimlessly he leaned now against one boulder, now against another. At last, the chill of his dripping clothes gave him active discomfort. He looked doubtfully on the slopes, then at the sea, then again at the slopes. With the strange impulsiveness of his disease, he turned abruptly; with swift, stumbling steps, crossed the shore; passed the ridges covered with sea-grass, and entered the shaws beyond. Thence he walked quickly up the corrie behind Craig-Geal. When he gained the upper end, the sunrise shone full upon him. Flinging first one wet garment from him, and then another, he was speedily naked—beautiful in his fair youth, with his white skin and tangle of yellow hair, which, as the sun-rays blent with it, seemed to spill pale gold.
He laughed with pleasure; then raced to and fro for warmth. When tired, he stooped to pluck the thyme or tufts of gale. For a while, he wandered thus circle-wise, aimlessly happy.
The day came with heat, and hourly grew hotter. Alastair was glad to lie down in a shady place by a burn, and drowse through the long, warm hours. As the afternoon waned into gloaming, he rose, and, forgetful of or unheeding his discarded clothes, wandered idly northward by one of the many sheep-paths. It was late when, having woven for himself a crown of moonflowers into which he inserted afterward a few yellow sea-poppies, he made his way down to the sea, and hungrily ate of what shell-fish he could gather—briny cockles from the sand, and whelks and mussels from the rocks.