Part 5

A sough of the sea came inland. Mànus inhaled its breath with a sigh of delight. A passion for the running wave was upon him. He yearned to feel green water break against his breast. Thirst and hunger, too, he felt at last, though he had known neither all day. How cool and sweet, he thought, would be a silver haddock, or even a brown-backed liath, alive and gleaming wet with the sea-water still bubbling in its gills. It would writhe, just like the rat; but then how he would throw his head back, and toss the glittering thing up into the moonlight, catch it on the downwhirl just as it neared the wave on whose crest he was, and then devour it with swift voracious gulps!

With quick jerky steps he made his way past the landward side of the small thatchroofed cottage. He was about to enter, when he noticed that the door, which he had left ajar, was closed. He stole to the window and glanced in.

A single thin, wavering moonbeam flickered in the room. But the flame at the heart of the peats had worked its way through the ash, and there was now a dull glow, though that was within the “smooring,” and threw scarce more than a glimmer into the room.

There was enough light, however, for Mànus MacCodrum to see that a man sat on the three-legged stool before the fire. His head was bent, as though he were listening. The face was away from the window. It was his own wraith, of course--of that Mànus felt convinced. What was it doing there? Perhaps it had eaten the Holy Book, so that it was beyond his putting a _rosad_ on it! At the thought, he laughed loud. The shadow-man leaped to his feet.

The next moment MacCodrum swung himself on to the thatched roof, and clambered from rope to rope, where these held down the big stones which acted as dead-weight for the thatch against the fury of tempests. Stone after stone he tore from its fastenings, and hurled to the ground over and beyond the door. Then, with tearing hands, he began to burrow an opening in the thatch. All the time he whined like a beast.

He was glad the moon shone full upon him. When he had made a big enough hole, he would see the evil thing out of the grave that sat in his room, and would stone it to death.

Suddenly he became still. A cold sweat broke out upon him. The _thing_, whether his own wraith, or the spirit of his dead foe, or Gloom Achanna himself, had begun to play, low and slow, a wild air. No piercing cold music like that of the _feadan_! Too well he knew it, and those cool white notes that moved here and there in the darkness like snowflakes. As for the air, though he slept till Judgment Day and heard but a note of it amidst all the clamour of heaven and hell, sure he would scream because of the Dàn-nan-Ròn!

The Dàn-nan-Ròn: the _Roin_! the Seals! Ah, what was he doing there, on the bitter-weary land! Out there was the sea. Safe would he be in the green waves.

With a leap he was on the ground. Seizing a huge stone he hurled it through the window. Then, laughing and screaming, he fled towards the Great Reef, along whose sides the ebb-tide gurgled and sobbed, with glistering white foam.

He ceased screaming or laughing as he heard the Dàn-nan-Ròn behind him, faint, but following; sure, following. Bending low, he raced towards the rock-ledges from which ran the reef.

When at last he reached the extreme ledge, he stopped abruptly. Out on the reef he saw from ten to twenty seals, some swimming to and fro, others clinging to the reef, one or two making a curious barking sound, with round heads lifted against the moon. In one place there was a surge and lashing of water. Two bulls were fighting to the death.

With swift stealthy movements Mànus unclothed himself. The damp had clotted the leathern thongs of his boots, and he snarled with curled lip as he tore at them. 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.

With a shiver he slipped into the dark water. Then, with quick, powerful strokes, he was in the moon-flood, and swimming hard against it out by the leeside of the reef.

So intent were the seals upon the fight of the two great bulls that they did not see the swimmer, or, if they did, took him for one of their own people. A savage snarling and barking and half-human crying came from them. Mànus was almost within reach of the nearest, when one of the combatants sank dead, with torn throat. The victor clambered on to the reef, and leaned high, swaying its great head and shoulders to and fro. In the moonlight its white fangs were like red coral. Its blinded eyes ran with gore.

There was a rush, a rapid leaping and swirling, as Mànus surged in among the seals, which were swimming round the place where the slain bull had sunk.

The laughter of this long white seal terrified them.

When his knee struck against a rock, MacCodrum groped with his arms and hauled himself out of the water.

From rock to rock and ledge to ledge he went, with a fantastic dancing motion, his body gleaming foam-white in the moonshine.

As he pranced and trampled along the weedy ledges, he sang snatches of an old rune--the lost rune of the MacCodrums of Uist. The seals on the rocks crouched spell-bound: those slow-swimming in the water stared with brown unwinking eyes, with their small ears strained against the sound:--

It is I, Mànus MacCodrum, I am telling you that, you, Anndra of my blood, And you, Neil my grandfather, and you, and you, and you! Ay, ay, Mànus my name is, Mànus MacMànus! It is I myself, and no other, Your brother, O Seals of the Sea! Give me blood of the red fish, And a bite of the flying sgadan; The green wave on my belly, And the foam in my eyes! I am your bull-brother, O Bulls of the Sea, Bull-better than any of you, snarling bulls! Come to me, mate, seal of the soft furry womb, White am I still, though red shall I be, Red with the streaming red blood if any dispute me! Aoh, aoh, aoh, arò, arò, ho-rò! A man was I, a seal am I, My fangs churn the yellow foam from my lips: Give way to me, give way to me, Seals of the Sea; Give way, for I am fëy of the sea And the sea-maiden I see there, And my name, true, is Mànus MacCodrum, The bull-seal that was a man, Arà! Arà!

By this time he was close upon the great black seal, which was still monotonously swaying its gory head, with its sightless eyes rolling this way and that. The sea-folk seemed fascinated. None moved, even when the dancer in the moonshine trampled upon them.

When he came within arm-reach he stopped.

“Are you the Ceann-Cinnidh?” he cried. “Are you the head of this clan of the sea-folk?”

The huge beast ceased its swaying. Its curled lips moved from its fangs.

“Speak, Seal, if there’s no curse upon you! Maybe, now, you’ll be Anndra himself, the brother of my father! Speak! _H’st--are you hearing that music on the shore!_ ’Tis the Dàn-nan-Ròn! Death o’ my soul, it’s the Dàn-nan-Ròn! Aha, ’tis Gloom Achanna out of the Grave. Back, beast, and let me move on!”

With that, seeing the great bull did not move, he struck it full in the face with clenched fist. There was a hoarse strangling roar, and the seal champion was upon him with lacerating fangs.

Mànus swayed this way and that. All he could hear now was the snarling and growling and choking cries of the maddened seals. As he fell, they closed in upon him. His screams wheeled through the night like mad birds. With desperate fury he struggled to free himself. The great bull pinned him to the rock; a dozen others tore at his white flesh, till his spouting blood made the rocks scarlet in the white shine of the moon.

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.

_THE SIN-EATER_

_NOTE_

It should be explained that the sin-relinquishing superstition--a superstition probably pre-Celtic, perhaps of the remotest antiquity--hardly exists to-day, or, if at all, in its crudest guise. The last time I heard of it, even in a modified form, was not in the west, but in a remote part of the Aberdeenshire highlands. Then, it was salt, not bread, that was put on the breast of the dead: and the salt was thrown away, nor was any wayfarer called upon to perform this or any other function.

THE SIN-EATER

SIN.

_Taste this bread, this substance: tell me_ _Is it bread or flesh?_

[_The Senses approach._]

THE SMELL.

_Its smell_ _Is the smell of bread._

SIN.

_Touch, come. Why tremble?_ _Say what’s this thou touchest?_

THE TOUCH.

_Bread._

SIN.

_Sight, declare what thou discernest_ _In this object._

THE SIGHT.

_Bread alone._

CALDERON, _Los Encantos de la Culpa._

A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.

Thus was it at daybreak: it was thus at noon: thus was it now in the darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the mist: on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and terns screamed, or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged note of the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying blindly along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the tide sobbed with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of a seal.

Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the Loch-a-chaoruinn.[5] By the shores of this mournful water a man moved. It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after dawn.

[5] _Contullich_: _i.e._ Ceann-nan-tulaich, “the end of the hillocks.” _Loch-a-chaoruinn_ means the loch of the rowan-trees.

At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer. The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin grey locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of life still glimmered, though that dimly.

The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his question in the Gaelic.

After a minute’s silence the old woman answered him in the native tongue, but only to put a question in return.

“I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?”

The man stirred uneasily.

“And why is that, mother?” he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp and fatigue; “how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at all?”

“Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross.”

“I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as for the old face o’ you, it is unbeknown to me.”

“I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an ill laughing that.”

“I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!”

“’Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three years agone now.”

“You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now on Iona?”

“Ay; they are all under grey stone or running wave. Donald your brother, and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum, and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid, and his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in the brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at Ballyrona. The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat that runs across the fireless hearth.”

“It is there I am going.”

“The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross.”

“Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am speaking to.”

“_Tha mise_ … it is I.”

“And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?”

“I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago; and before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went. It was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me. Then I crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie: till _she_ went: and then the two cows had to go: and I had no rent: and was old.”

In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her shaking hand to it, and it was still.

Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and over and over.

It was a pitiful thing to hear: ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience of poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his heart was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his lips. But at last he spoke.

“Tha mo chridhe goirt,” he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his hand on her bent shoulder; “my heart is sore.”

She put up her old face against his.

“’S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe,” she whispered; “it is touching my heart you are.”

After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb and brooding deep.

“Where will you be staying this night?” asked Sheen suddenly, when they had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an afterthought--“Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is Contullich.”

“Which way?”

“Yonder: to the right.”

“And you are not going there?”

“No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag.”[6]

[6] The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers.

“I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed together.”

“Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this weary day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair.”

“And why that … why till this day?”

“It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence.”

Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged wearily on.

“Then I am too late,” he said at last, but as though speaking to himself. “I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him between the eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my mother, and marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And they say ill of him, do they?”

“Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and the shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, ’tis ill to be speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. ’Tis Himself only that knows, Neil Ross.”

“Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this night, Sheen Macarthur?”

“They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the nights, I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when there is the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is the warm byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may rest, and welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either save some of the porridge that is over.”

“And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for it.”

And so it was.

* * * * *

After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food--poor food at that, but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was given, and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even spoon was lifted--she told him a lie. 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.”

With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep, where he sat on an upturned _claar_, with his elbows on his knees, and his flame-lit face in his hands.

The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what they were--the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before the last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.

Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then, muttering

_Crois nan naoi aingeal leam_ _’O mhullach mo chinn_ _Gu craican mo bhonn_

(The cross of the nine angels be about me, From the top of my head To the soles of my feet),

she went on her way fearlessly.

When she came to the White House, she entered by the milk-shed that was between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place, with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the house,--an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe itself in a clean white shroud?

She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.

“Duit sìth mòr, Beann Macdonald.”

“And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there.”

“Och, ochone, mise ’n diugh; ’tis a dark hour this.”

“Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?”

“Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and the green place over there.”

“The corpse-lights?”

“Well, it is calling them that they are.”

“I _thought_ they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the planks--the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the coffin to-morrow.”

A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fireless, and was lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.

At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while. “I would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur,” said the deid-watcher in a low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment’s pause, “_The mice have all left the house._”

Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror half of awe in her eyes.

“God save the sinful soul that is hiding,” she whispered.

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. If it be well with the soul, it need have no fear: if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and blind walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror, and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen; then, after a silence, added--

“Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of the sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are, here. He will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day.”

“Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder.”

Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.

Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face relaxed somewhat, and the thin breath laboured slow across the fallen jaw.

“Poor old woman,” she muttered, heedless of her own grey hairs and greyer years; “a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. ’Tis the sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!”

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.

The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep, and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy flares of light that came into the sky.