A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay.  It
was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with glass,
where the green, submarine sunshine slept so stilly.  A breeze, I
suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness
filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed
confusedly together.  Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and
quivered.  It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes;
and when I leaped into the sea the second time it was with a quaking in
my soul.

I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle.  All
that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey.  The thicket was alive
with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to
harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood.  On
all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone; no
planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was not
there.  I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my disappointment,
and I was about ready to leave go, when something happened that sent me
to the surface with my heart in my mouth.  I had already stayed somewhat
late over my explorations; the current was freshening with the change of
the tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a safe place for a single swimmer.
Well, just at the last moment there came a sudden flush of current,
dredging through the tangles like a wave.  I lost one hold, was flung
sprawling on my side, and, instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my
fingers closed on something hard and cold.  I think I knew at that moment
what it was.  At least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for
the surface, and clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with the
bone of a man's leg in my grasp.

Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive
connections.  The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle
were surely plain advertisements.  A child might have read their dismal
story, and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind
that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit.  I laid
the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was along
the rocks towards the human shore.  I could not be far enough from the
spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again.  The bones of
the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether on
tangle or minted gold.  But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against the
ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
passionately for all poor souls upon the sea.  A generous prayer is never
presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is
always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.  The horror, at
least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that
great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the
rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep
determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the
treasures of the dead.

I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look
behind me.  The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.

For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost
tropical rapidity.  The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its
conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in the
distance the white waves, the 'skipper's daughters,' had begun to flee
before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already along the
curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I could hear
from where I stood.  The change upon the sky was even more remarkable.
There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and solid continent
of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its contexture, the
sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and there, from all
its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet unclouded sky.  The
menace was express and imminent.  Even as I gazed, the sun was blotted
out.  At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in its might.

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that
it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my
feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun.  The knoll which I had just
surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping
towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole
extent of Sandag Bay.  It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
but where I had never before beheld a human figure.  I had but just
turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fancied
when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot.  The boat was
lying by the rocks.  A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves
rolled up, and one with a boathook, kept her with difficulty to her
moorings for the current was growing brisker every moment.  A little way
off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be superior
in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at first I did
not understand, but a second after I had made it out--they were taking
bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet
of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying features in a
map.  Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, polling among the rocks
and peering over the edge into the water.  While I was still watching
them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly yet able to work
on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly stooped and summoned
his companions with a cry so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill.
The others ran to him, even dropping the compass in their hurry, and I
could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from hand to hand, causing
the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and interest.  Just then I
could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and saw them point westward
to that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly unfurling its
blackness over heaven.  The others seemed to consult; but the danger was
too pressing to be braved, and they bundled into the boat carrying my
relies with them, and set forth out of the bay with all speed of oars.

I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.
Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly informed.
It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent of the
Jacobites; and may be Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to detest, was
one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.  Yet as I ran,
leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely in my mind, this
theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason.  The compass,
the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and the conduct of that one
among the strangers who had looked so often below him in the water, all
seemed to point to a different explanation of their presence on that
outlying, obscure islet of the western sea.  The Madrid historian, the
search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the bearded stranger with the rings,
my own fruitless search that very morning in the deep water of Sandag
Bay, ran together, piece by piece, in my memory, and I made sure that
these strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient treasure and the
lost ship of the Armada.  But the people living in outlying islands, such
as Aros, are answerable for their own security; there is none near by to
protect or even to help them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew
of foreign adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled me
with apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of his
daughter.  I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
came, all breathless, to the top of Aros.  The whole world was shadowed
over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last gleam
of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not heavily,
but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and already a
band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of Grisapol.  The boat
was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of what had been hidden
from me lower down--a large, heavily sparred, handsome schooner, lying to
at the south end of Aros.  Since I had not seen her in the morning when I
had looked around so closely at the signs of the weather, and upon these
lone waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear she must have
lain last night behind the uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved
conclusively that she was manned by strangers to our coast, for that
anchorage, though good enough to look at, is little better than a trap
for ships.  With such ignorant sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming
gale was not unlikely to bring death upon its wings.



CHAPTER IV.  THE GALE.


I found my uncle at the gable end, watching the signs of the weather,
with a pipe in his fingers.

'Uncle,' said I, 'there were men ashore at Sandag Bay--'

I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but even
my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon.  He dropped his
pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen, his
eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper.  We must have looked
at one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made answer
in this extraordinary fashion: 'Had he a hair kep on?'

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at
Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come ashore alive.  For the
first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor
and the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife.

'These were living men,' said I, 'perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French,
perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the Spanish
treasure ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your
daughter and my cousin.  As for your own guilty terrors, man, the dead
sleeps well where you have laid him.  I stood this morning by his grave;
he will not wake before the trump of doom.'

My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his
eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but it
was plain that he was past the power of speech.

'Come,' said I.  'You must think for others.  You must come up the hill
with me, and see this ship.'

He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient
strides.  The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and he
scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was
wont, from one to another.  Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to
make better haste.  Only once he replied to me complainingly, and like
one in bodily pain: 'Ay, ay, man, I'm coming.'  Long before we had
reached the top, I had no other thought for him but pity.  If the crime
had been monstrous the punishment was in proportion.

At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see around
us.  All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun had
vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to
the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased.  Short as was the
interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there
last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and
already it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros.  I looked, at first, in
vain for the schooner.

'There she is,' I said at last.  But her new position, and the course she
was now lying, puzzled me.  'They cannot mean to beat to sea,' I cried.

'That's what they mean,' said my uncle, with something like joy; and just
then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put the
question beyond the reach of doubt.  These strangers, seeing a gale on
hand, had thought first of sea-room.  With the wind that threatened, in
these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of
tide, their course was certain death.

'Good God!' said I, 'they are all lost.'

'Ay,' returned my uncle, 'a'--a' lost.  They hadnae a chance but to rin
for Kyle Dona.  The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldnae win through
an the muckle deil were there to pilot them.  Eh, man,' he continued,
touching me on the sleeve, 'it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck!  Twa in ae
twalmonth!  Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!'

I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in
his right mind.  He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
in his eyes.  All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
prospect of this fresh disaster.

'If it were not too late,' I cried with indignation, 'I would take the
coble and go out to warn them.'

'Na, na,' he protested, 'ye maunnae interfere; ye maunnae meddle wi' the
like o' that.  It's His'--doffing his bonnet--'His wull.  And, eh, man!
but it's a braw nicht for't!'

Something like fear began to creep into my soul and, reminding him that I
had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house.  But no;
nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.

'I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie,' he explained--and then as the
schooner went about a second time, 'Eh, but they han'le her bonny!' he
cried.  'The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this.'

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some
part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
doomed ship.  At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen
how fast the current swept them back.  Each tack was made shorter, as
they saw how little it prevailed.  Every moment the rising swell began to
boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker
would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown
reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave.  I tell you,
they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle men aboard that
ship, God knows.  It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any
human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a
connoisseur.  As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly
on the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the
heather.  He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.

When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still more
sadly downcast at the sight of Mary.  She had her sleeves rolled up over
her strong arms, and was quietly making bread.  I got a bannock from the
dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.

'Are ye wearied, lad?' she asked after a while.

'I am not so much wearied, Mary,' I replied, getting on my feet, 'as I am
weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too.  You know me well enough to
judge me fairly, say what I like.  Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:
you had better be anywhere but here.'

'I'll be sure of one thing,' she returned: 'I'll be where my duty is.'

'You forget, you have a duty to yourself,' I said.

'Ay, man?' she replied, pounding at the dough; 'will you have found that
in the Bible, now?'

'Mary,' I said solemnly, 'you must not laugh at me just now.  God knows I
am in no heart for laughing.  If we could get your father with us, it
would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from
here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father's
too, I want you far--far away from here.  I came with other thoughts; I
came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I have no
desire nor hope but to flee--for that's the word--flee, like a bird out
of the fowler's snare, from this accursed island.'

She had stopped her work by this time.

'And do you think, now,' said she, 'do you think, now, I have neither
eyes nor ears?  Do ye think I havenae broken my heart to have these braws
(as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea?  Do ye think I
have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an
hour or two?  No,' she said, 'I know there's wrong in it; what wrong, I
neither know nor want to know.  There was never an ill thing made better
by meddling, that I could hear of.  But, my lad, you must never ask me to
leave my father.  While the breath is in his body, I'll be with him.  And
he's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie--he's not
long for here.  The mark is on his brow; and better so--maybe better so.'

I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head
at last to speak, she got before me.

'Charlie,' she said, 'what's right for me, neednae be right for you.
There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your
things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better
folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty
years syne, you would find me aye waiting.'

'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good as
yes.  That's done for good.  Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer to
my God.'

As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed
to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros.  It was the first
squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked
about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had
settled round the house.

'God pity all poor folks at sea!' she said.  'We'll see no more of my
father till the morrow's morning.'

And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising
gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle.  All last winter he
had been dark and fitful in his mind.  Whenever the Roost ran high, or,
as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for
hours together on the Head, if it were at night, or on the top of Aros by
day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail.
After February the tenth, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast ashore
at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his excitement had
never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from dark to darker.  He
neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle.  They two would speak together
by the hour at the gable end, in guarded tones and with an air of secrecy
and almost of guilt; and if she questioned either, as at first she
sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with confusion.  Since Rorie
had first remarked the fish that hung about the ferry, his master had
never set foot but once upon the mainland of the Ross.  That once--it was
in the height of the springs--he had passed dryshod while the tide was
out; but, having lingered overlong on the far side, found himself cut off
from Aros by the returning waters.  It was with a shriek of agony that he
had leaped across the gut, and he had reached home thereafter in a fever-
fit of fear.  A fear of the sea, a constant haunting thought of the sea,
appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in his looks when he was
silent.

Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared, took
a bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set forth again
to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie.  I heard that the schooner
was losing ground, but the crew were still fighting every inch with
hopeless ingenuity and course; and the news filled my mind with
blackness.

A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a gale
as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had come, even
in winter.  Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, the
tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops.
Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the schooner, or my
not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and yet ever and
again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind would rise and
strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly fall and draw away, so
that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our sides.  Now
the storm in its might would seize and shake the four corners of the
roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger.  Anon, in a lull, cold eddies of
tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair upon our heads
and passing between us as we sat.  And again the wind would break forth
in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the chimney, wailing
with flutelike softness round the house.

It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me
mysteriously to the door.  My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even his
constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to
come out and share the watch.  I hastened to do as I was asked; the more
readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of the
night, I was myself restless and disposed for action.  I told Mary to be
under no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping
myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open air.

The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as
January.  Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter
blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in
the flying horror of the sky.  The wind blew the breath out of a man's
nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and
when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts
dismally sweeping in the distance.  Over all the lowlands of the Ross,
the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw.  Sheets of
mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces.  All round the isle of
Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs
and beaches.  Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly
varied for a moment.  And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear
the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the
Merry Men.  At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the
name that they were called.  For the noise of them seemed almost
mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not
mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality.  Nay, and it seemed
even human.  As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.

Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard
of ground with conscious effort.  We slipped on the wet sod, we fell
together sprawling on the rocks.  Bruised, drenched, beaten, and
breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the house
down to the Head that overlooks the Roost.  There, it seemed, was my
uncle's favourite observatory.  Right in the face of it, where the cliff
is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes a place
of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet and see
the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet.  As he might look
down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so, from
this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men.  On such a
night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the waters
wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of an
explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye.
Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent.  The fury, height,
and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not
recounted.  High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in
the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust
took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave.  And yet
the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its
force.  Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar--a gleeful
vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I found
myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune
upon a jigging instrument.

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in
one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness
of the night.  He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown
back and the bottle to his mouth.  As he put it down, he saw and
recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.

'Has he been drinking?' shouted I to Rorie.

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,' returned Rorie in the same
high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.

'Then--was he so--in February?' I inquired.

Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me.  The murder, then, had not sprung
in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be
condemned than to be pardoned.  My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you
will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.  Yet what a scene
for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had
chosen!  I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful
pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the
roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the
man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of
death, his ear watching for the signs of ship-wreck, surely that, if it
were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest
superstitions.  Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter
and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with
an unholy glimmer.

'Eh, Charlie, man, it's grand!' he cried.  'See to them!' he continued,
dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening
clamour and those clouds of spray; 'see to them dancin', man!  Is that no
wicked?'

He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the
scene.

'They're yowlin' for thon schooner,' he went on, his thin, insane voice
clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, 'an' she's comin' aye nearer,
aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't, the folk
kens it, they ken wool it's by wi' them.  Charlie, lad, they're a' drunk
in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink.  They were a' drunk in the _Christ-
Anna_, at the hinder end.  There's nane could droon at sea wantin' the
brandy.  Hoot awa, what do you ken?' with a sudden blast of anger.  'I
tell ye, it cannae be; they droon withoot it.  Ha'e,' holding out the
bottle, 'tak' a sowp.'

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed
I had already thought better of the movement.  I took the bottle,
therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
more as I was doing so.  It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to
swallow.  My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing
back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs.  Then, with a loud
laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap
up, shouting to receive it.

'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel.  Ye'll get bonnier nor
that, or morning.'

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards
away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of a
human voice.  Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and
the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury.  But we had
heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship
now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her master
issuing his last command.  Crouching together on the edge, we waited,
straining every sense, for the inevitable end.  It was long, however, and
to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one
brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam.  I still see
her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the
deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can
distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller.  Yet the whole
sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning; the very wave that
disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled cry of many voices
at the point of death rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry
Men.  And with that the tragedy was at an end.  The strong ship, with all
her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin, the lives of
so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at least, as heaven to
themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down into the surging
waters.  They were gone like a dream.  And the wind still ran and
shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled
as before.

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is
more than I can tell, but it must have been for long.  At length, one by
one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
bank.  As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely
master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
altered and melancholy mood.  Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin
iteration, 'Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, puir
lads, puir lads!' and anon he would bewail that 'a' the gear was as
gude's tint,' because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead
of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the
_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with
shuddering awe.  The storm all this time was rapidly abating.  In half an
hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain.  I must then have fallen
asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day
had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in faint
and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its lowest, and
only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros remained to
witness of the furies of the night.



CHAPTER V.  A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.


Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my
uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part of
duty to accompany him throughout.  He was now docile and quiet, but
tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a
child that he pursued his exploration.  He climbed far down upon the
rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers.  The merest
broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured
at the peril of his life.  To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps,
expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of
the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror.  My arm was ready to
support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his
pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night
before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a strong
man.  His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment, was still
undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he could not have
shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his foot slipped and
he plunged to the midleg into a pool of water, the shriek that came up
out of his soul was like the cry of death.  He sat still for a while,
panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for the spoils of
shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more he tottered among
the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks among the bursting
bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set on driftwood, fit, if
it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.  Pleased as he was with
what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at his ill-fortune.

'Aros,' he said, 'is no a place for wrecks ava'--no ava'.  A' the years
I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear clean
tint!'

'Uncle,' said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there
was nothing to divert his mind, 'I saw you last night, as I never thought
to see you--you were drunk.'

'Na, na,' he said, 'no as bad as that.  I had been drinking, though.  And
to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I cannae mend.  There's nae
soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
lug, it's my belief that I gang gyte.'

'You are a religious man,' I replied, 'and this is sin'.

'Ou,' he returned, 'if it wasnae sin, I dinnae ken that I would care
for't.  Ye see, man, it's defiance.  There's a sair spang o' the auld sin
o' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreights--the wind an' her are
a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants,
blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' the
leelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a glamour.
I'm a deil, I ken't.  But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'm
wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men.'

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness.  I turned me
towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with their
manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,
towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.
Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the sea-
chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the
assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands that,
with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.

'Thus far shalt thou go,' said I, 'and no farther.'  And then I quoted as
solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to the
chorus of the breakers:--

   But yet the Lord that is on high,
      Is more of might by far,
   Than noise of many waters is,
      As great sea billows are.

'Ay,' said my kinsinan, 'at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I
dinnae misdoobt that.  But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to
His face.  It is nae wise; I am nae sayin' that it's wise; but it's the
pride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an' it's the wale o'
pleesures.'

I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay
between us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man's better
reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime.  Nor
did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.
The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and I
could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a
profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought.  In three or four
minutes we had topped the brae and begun to go down upon Sandag.  The
wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round
and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a
little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.
When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain,
and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.

'A man,' said I, 'was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortal
dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a
stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may
be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be
he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning of
torment.  I ask you in the sight of heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the
man for whom Christ died?'

He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his
face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.

'You were my father's brother,' I continued; 'You, have taught me to
count your house as if it were my father's house; and we are both sinful
men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life.  It
is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by His
temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the brutish
man his sins are the beginning of wisdom.  God has warned you by this
crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and if
there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him, what
can we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?'

Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face.  A
change fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features seemed
to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose
waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the oft-
repeated name fell once more from his lips: 'The _Christ-Anna_!'

I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return
thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by the
sight that met my eyes.  The form of a man stood upright on the cabin-
hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to be
scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to its
full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky.  I
have said a thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at that
moment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained
appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island filled me with
a surprise that bordered close on terror.  It seemed scarce possible that
any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as had rated
last night along the coasts of Aros; and the only vessel within miles had
gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men.  I was assailed with
doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put the matter to the touch
at once, stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship.

He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us.  At this my
courage instantly revived, and I called and signed to him to draw near,
and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly
to approach, with many stops and hesitations.  At each repeated mark of
the man's uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I advanced
another step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand.  It was
plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island
hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the people farther north had a
sorry reputation.

'Why,' I said, 'the man is black!'

And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have recognised,
my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream.  I looked at
him; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at each step of
the castaway's the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of his
utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled.  I call it prayer,
for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting incongruities
were ever before addressed to the Creator by a creature: surely if prayer
can be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful.  I ran to my kinsman, I
seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to his feet.

'Silence, man,' said I, 'respect your God in words, if not in action.
Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, He sends you an occasion
of atonement.  Forward and embrace it; welcome like a father yon creature
who comes trembling to your mercy.'

With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me to
the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the shoulder of his jacket, and
fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer.  I staggered to
my feet again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had paused in
surprise, perhaps in terror, some halfway between me and the wreck; my
uncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I thus found
myself torn for a time between two duties.  But I judged, and I pray
Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch upon the
sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation; it
was one, besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by that
time to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic.  I advanced
accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach with folded
arms, like one prepared for either destiny.  As I came nearer, he reached
forth his hand with a great gesture, such as I had seen from the pulpit,
and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not a word was
comprehensible.  I tried him first in English, then in Gaelic, both in
vain; so that it was clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks and
gestures.  Thereupon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily
and with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while there had
come no shade of alteration in his face, neither of anxiety while he was
still waiting, nor of relief now that he was reassured; if he were a
slave, as I supposed, I could not but judge he must have fallen from some
high place in his own country, and fallen as he was, I could not but
admire his bearing.  As we passed the grave, I paused and raised my hands
and eyes to heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead; and he,
as if in answer, bowed low and spread his hands abroad; it was a strange
motion, but done like a thing of common custom; and I supposed it was
ceremonial in the land from which he came.  At the same time he pointed
to my uncle, whom we could just see perched upon a knoll, and touched his
head to indicate that he was mad.

We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle if
we struck across the island; and as we walked, I had time enough to
mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my
doubts.  Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before
the negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before taking
bearings with the compass at Sandag.  He understood me at once, and,
taking the imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was,
pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, and
then down along the edge of the rock with the words 'Espirito Santo,'
strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition.  I had thus been
right in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but a
cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was
the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with
many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greed
brought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore.  In the
meantime the black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking up
skyward as though watching the approach of the storm now, in the
character of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an officer,
running along the rock and entering the boat; and anon bending over
imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the same
solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile.  Lastly, he
indicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in words, how he
himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his grief and
indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon folded his
arms once more, and stooped his head, like one accepting fate.

The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to him
by means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her.  He
showed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his open
hand, seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever they had
been) into God's pleasure.  Respect came upon me and grew stronger, the
more I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a sober and severe
character, such as I loved to commune with; and before we reached the
house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly forgiven him, his
uncanny colour.

To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own my
heart failed me; but I did wrong to doubt her sense of justice.

'You did the right,' she said.  'God's will be done.'  And she set out
meat for us at once.

As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway,
who was still eating, and set forth again myself to find my uncle.  I had
not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the very
topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had last
observed him.  From that point, as I have said, the most of Aros and the
neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it was plain
that he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head had
scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had leaped
to his feet and turned as if to face me.  I hailed him at once, as well
as I was able, in the same tones and words as I had often used before,
when I had come to summon him to dinner.  He made not so much as a
movement in reply.  I passed on a little farther, and again tried parley,
with the same result.  But when I began a second time to advance, his
insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence, but with
incredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the rocky summit
of the hill.  An hour before, he had been dead weary, and I had been
comparatively active.  But now his strength was recruited by the fervour
of insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit.  Nay,
the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his terrors, and thus
increased the miseries of our position.  And I had nothing left but to
turn homeward and make my sad report to Mary.

She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure,
and, bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much in
need, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father.  At that age it
would have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or sleep; I
slept long and deep; and it was already long past noon before I awoke and
came downstairs into the kitchen.  Mary, Rorie, and the black castaway
were seated about the fire in silence; and I could see that Mary had been
weeping.  There was cause enough, as I soon learned, for tears.  First
she, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle; each in turn had
found him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in turn he had
silently and swiftly fled.  Rorie had tried to chase him, but in vain;
madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from rock to rock over
the widest gullies; he scoured like the wind along the hill-tops; he
doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and Rorie at length gave
in; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated as before upon the
crest of Aros.  Even during the hottest excitement of the chase, even
when the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment, very near to
capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound.  He fled, and he
was silent, like a beast; and this silence had terrified his pursuer.

There was something heart-breaking in the situation.  How to capture the
madman, how to feed him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him when he
was captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve.

'The black,' said I, 'is the cause of this attack.  It may even be his
presence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill.  We have done the
fair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose
that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through the
Ross as far as Grisapol.'

In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black follow
us, we all three descended to the pier.  Certainly, Heaven's will was
declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never paralleled
before in Aros; during the storm, the coble had broken loose, and,
striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet of
water with one side stove in.  Three days of work at least would be
required to make her float.  But I was not to be beaten.  I led the whole
party round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other side, and
called to the black to follow me.  He signed, with the same clearness and
quiet as before, that he knew not the art; and there was truth apparent
in his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to doubt his truth;
and that hope being over, we must all go back even as we came to the
house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst without embarrassment.

All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate with
the unhappy madman.  Again he was visible on his perch; again he fled in
silence.  But food and a great cloak were at least left for his comfort;
the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to be even
warm.  We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow; rest was
the chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for unusual exertions;
and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.

I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow.  I was to place the
black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards the
house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, as
best we might.  It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of
the island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him down
upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with the
strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared.  It was
on his terror of the black that I relied; for I made sure, however he
might run, it would not be in the direction of the man whom he supposed
to have returned from the dead, and thus one point of the compass at
least would be secure.

When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by a
dream of wrecks, black men, and submarine adventure; and I found myself
so shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped out
before the house.  Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together in
the kitchen; outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here and
there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest.  It was near
the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless
quiet of the night.  Never, not even in the height of the tempest, had I
heard their song with greater awe.  Now, when the winds were gathered
home, when the deep was dandling itself back into its summer slumber, and
when the stars rained their gentle light over land and sea, the voice of
these tide-breakers was still raised for havoc.  They seemed, indeed, to
be a part of the world's evil and the tragic side of life.  Nor were
their meaningless vociferations the only sounds that broke the silence of
the night.  For I could hear, now shrill and thrilling and now almost
drowned, the note of a human voice that accompanied the uproar of the
Roost.  I knew it for my kinsman's; and a great fear fell upon me of
God's judgments, and the evil in the world.  I went back again into the
darkness of the house as into a place of shelter, and lay long upon my
bed, pondering these mysteries.