William Sharp

“ For a few seconds he still fought savagely, tearing with teeth and hands. Once, only, a wild cry burst from his lips: when from the shore end of the reef came loud and clear the lilt of the rune of his fate.
The next moment he was dragged down and swept from the reef into the sea. As the torn and mangled body disappeared from sight, it was amid a seething crowd of leaping and struggling seals, their eyes wild with affright and fury, their fangs red with human gore.
And Gloom Achanna, turning upon the reef, moved swiftly inland, playing low on his feadan as he went. ”

“ From that day, though neither Sheumais nor Katreen knew of it, a watch was set upon Achanna.
It could not be long before their secret was discovered; and it was with a savage joy overmastering his sullen rage that Ian Macarthur knew himself the discoverer, and conceived his double vengeance. He dreamed, gloatingly, on both the black thoughts that roamed like ravenous beasts through the solitudes of his heart. But he did not dream that another man was filled with hate because of Katreen’s lover—another man who had sworn to make her his own ”

“ The moon shone clear and full. When he heard the clock strike in its worm-eaten, rickety case, he sat up, and listened intently. He could hear nothing. No shadow stirred. Surely if the wraith of Gloom Achanna were waiting for him it would make some sign, now, in the dead of night.
An hour passed. Mànus rose, crossed the room on tip-toe, and soundlessly opened the door. The salt-wind blew fresh against his face. The smell of the shore, of wet sea-wrack and pungent gale, of foam and moving water, came sweet to his nostrils. He heard a skua calling from the rocky promontory. ”

“ As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between the living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen gave a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice cried, “Sheeach-ad! Away with you!” And with that she lifted the shroud from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and lifted each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an ancient incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave the spirit of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its coffin till the wood was ready. ”

“ It was a great herring-year, and the moon-fishing was unusually good. All the Uist men who lived by the sea-harvest were in their boats whenever they could. The pollack, the dogfish, the otters, and the seals, with flocks of sea-fowl beyond number, shared in the common joy. Mànus MacCodrum alone paid no need to herring or mackerel. He was often seen striding along the shore, and more than once had been heard laughing. Sometimes, too, he was come upon at low tide by the great Reef of Berneray, singing wild strange runes and songs, or crouching upon a rock and brooding dark. ”

“ It is a true saying that memory is like the [14] sea-weed when the tide is in—but the tide ebbs. Each frond, each thick spray, each fillicaun or pulpy globe, lives lightly in the wave: the green water is full of strange rumour, of sea-magic and sea-music: the hither flow and thither surge give continuity and connection to what is fluid and dissolute. But when the ebb is far gone, and the wrack and the weed lie sickly in the light, there is only one confused intertangled mass. ”

“ Was Marcus beside him—Marcus with the knife still thrust up to the hilt, and the lung-foam upon his lips? Can the sea give up its dead? Can there be strain of any feadan that ever was made of man—there in the Silence?
In vain Mànus MacCodrum tortured himself thus. Too well he knew that he had heard the Dàn-nan-Ròn, and that no other than Gloom Achanna was the player. ”

“ Well, Sheumais, my brother, it is wondering if I am dead, you will be. Maybe ay and maybe no. But I send you this writing to let you see that I know all you do and think of. So you are going to leave Eilanmore without an Achanna upon it? And you will be going to Sleat in Skye? Well, let me be telling you this thing. Do not go. I see blood there. And there is this, too: neither you nor any man shall take Katreen away from me. You know that; and Ian Macarthur knows it; and Katreen knows it: and that holds whether I am alive or dead. I say to you: do not go. It will be better for you and for all. ”

“ There was only one oar in the boat, and we lay idly adrift. The tide was still on the ebb, and so we made way for Soa; though, well before the island could be reached, the tide would turn, and the sea-wind would stir, and we be up the Sound and at Balliemore again almost as quick as the laying of a net.
As we—and by “us” I am meaning Phadric Macrae and Ivor McLean, fishermen of Iona, and myself beside Ivor at the helm—as we slid slowly past the ragged islet known as Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach, torn and rent by the tides and surges of a thousand years, I saw a school of seals basking in the sun. ”

“ Through many a hot noon-tide hour, through many a gloaming, he went as one in a dream. Whenever he saw a birch swaying in the wind, or a wave leaping upon Loch Liath, that was near his home, or passed a bush covered with wild roses, or saw the moonbeams lying white on the boles of the pines, he thought of Katreen: his fawn for grace, and so lithe and tall, with sun-brown face and wavy dark mass of hair and shadowy eyes and rowan-red lips. ”

“ It was the good lie of tender love.
“Sure now, after all, Neil, my man,” she said, “it is sleeping at the farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be sitting by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is there I must be going; and if I am weary, there is a good bed for me just beyond the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is tired you are sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have the sleep; and God be with you.” ”

“ This, in truth, was what Donull had done. But while he was speaking, Marcus was staring fixedly beyond him.
“Who is it that is there?” he asked; “there, in the stern?”
“There is no one there.”
“I thought I saw the shadow of a man.”
“Then it was my shadow, Eilanmore.”
Achanna turned to his brother.
“I see a man’s death there in the boat.”
Gloom quailed for a moment, then laughed low.
“I see no death of a man sitting in the boat, Marcus; but if I did, I am thinking it would dance to the air of the Dàn-nan-Ròn, which is more than the wraith of you or me would do.” ”

“ One day Aulay Macneill, in his boat, but [158] dumb with amaze and terror for him, saw him at high tide swimming on a long rolling wave right into the hollow of the Spouting Cave. In the memory of man, no one had done this and escaped one of three things: a snatching away into oblivion, a strangled death, or madness. The islanders know that there swims into the cave, at full tide, a Mar-Tarbh, a dreadful creature of the sea that some call a kelpie; only it is not a kelpie, which is like a woman, but rather is a sea-bull, offspring of the cattle that are never seen. ”

“ He shone white in the moonshine, but was sheltered from the sea by the ledge behind which he crouched. “What did Gloom Achanna mean by that,” he muttered savagely, as he heard the nearing air change into the “Dance of the Dead.” For a moment Mànus was a man again. He was nigh upon turning to face his foe, corpse or wraith or living body, to spring at this thing which followed him, and tear it with hands and teeth. Then, once more, the hated Song of the Seal stole mockingly through the night. ”

“ White! there is no whiteness like that of the human face. It was whiter than the foam about the skerry it was; whiter than the moon shining; whiter than ... well, as white as the painted letters on the black boards of the fishing-cobles. There he stood, for all that the sea was about him, the slip-slop waves leapin’ wild, and the tide making, too, at that. He was shaking like a sail two points off the wind. It was then that, all of a sudden, he called in a womany, screamin’ voice—
“‘I am throwing the sins of Adam Blair [156] into the midst of ye, white dogs o’ the sea! ”

“ Poor Aunt Elspeth! my heart often bled for her. I do not think Archibald Campbell was unkind to his wife, but he was harsh, and his sex was like a blank wall to her, against which her shallow waters surged or crawled alike vainly. There was to her something at once terrible and Biblical in this wall of cruel strength, this steadfast independence of love or the soft ways or the faltering speech of love. There are women who hate men with an unknowing hatred, who lie by their husband night after night, [20] year after year; who fear and serve him; who tend him in life and minister to him in death ”

“ An’ there Neil Morrison read the Word o’ God to the seals that lay baskin’ in the sun; and one, a female, snarled and showed her fangs; and another, a black one, lifted its head and made a noise that was not like the barking of any seal, but was as the laughter of Murdoch when he swung the dead body of Deirg.
“And that is all that is to be said. And silence is best now between you and any other. And no man knows the judgments o’ God. ”

“ He had killed his brother Sheumais. He had always hated him because of his beauty; of late he had hated him because he had stood between him, Gloom, and Katreen Macarthur, because he had become her lover. They were all dead now except himself—all the Achannas. He was “Achanna.” When the day came [225] that he would go back to Galloway there would be a magpie on the first birk, and a screaming jay on the first rowan, and a croaking raven on the first fir. Ay, he would be their suffering, though they knew nothing of him meanwhile! He would be Achanna of Achanna again. ”

“ Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth, whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains of air around and beyond. ”

“ Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.
“It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now that he is no longer in life!”
Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the dull red glow of the peats.
But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.
“The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too. They will come back to you. ”

“ I suppose no place could be called lifeless which had always that sound of Gorromalt Water, that ceaseless lamentation of the sheep crying among the hills, that hoarse croaking of the corbies who swam black in the air betwixt us and Maol-Dunn, that mournful plaining of the lapwings as they wheeled querulously for ever and ever and ever. ”

“ And by the same token, Andrew Blair shrank back white and shaking, and his woman had the swoon upon her, and who knows but the corpse might have come to life again had it not been for Maisie Macdonald, the deid-watcher, who clapped a handful of salt on his eyes, and tilted the coffin so that the bottom of it slid forward, and so let the whole fall flat on the ground, with Adam Blair in it sideways, and as likely as not cursing and groaning, as his wont was, for the hurt both to his old bones and his old ancient dignity. ”

“ With a savage cry Mànus snatched up a long dirk from its place by the chimney, and rushed out.
There was not the shadow of a sea-gull even in front: so he sped round by the byre. Neither was anything unusual discoverable there.
“Sorrow upon me,” he cried; “man or wraith, I will be putting it to the dirk!” ”

“ There were two men who loved one woman. It is of no mere girl with the fair looks upon her I am speaking, but of a woman, that can put the spell over two men. The name of the woman was Silis: the names of the men were Sheumas and Isla.
[234]
Silis was the wife of Sheumas. So Sheumas had his home, for her breast was his pillow when he willed it: and he had her voice for daily music: and his eyes had never any thirst, for they could drink of her beauty by day and by night. But Isla had no home. ”

“ It seemed to him that the tide was ebbing in his heart, and a cold sleety rain falling, falling through a mist in his brain.
Sorrow lay heavily upon him. After the earthing of her whom he loved he went to and fro solitary; often crossing the Narrows and going to the old Pictish Tower under the shadow of Ben Breac. He would not go upon the sea, but let his kinsman Callum do as he liked with the Luath.
Now and again Father Allan MacNeill sailed northward to see him. Each time he departed sadder. “The man is going mad, [96] I fear,” he said to Callum, the last time he saw Mànus. ”

“ For a time Sheumas kept silence. Then he spoke again.
“She was the wife of another man?”
“Ay; she was the wife of another man.”
“Did he love her?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“Did she love him?”
“Yes ... yes.”
“Whom, then, did she love? For a woman can love one man only.”
“She loved both.”
[239]
“That is not a possible thing: not the one deep love. It is a lie, Isla Macleod.”
“Yes, it is a lie, Sheumas Maclean.”
“Which man did she love?”
Isla slowly shook the ash from his pipe, and looked for a second or two at a momentary quiver in the sky in the north-east.
“The dawn will be here soon now, Sheumas.” ”