were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore, recalled him to the subject by a question.
‘You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?’ he asked.
‘No clearly,’ replied the other. ‘I misdoobt if a mere man could see ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi’ a lad – they ca’d him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shure eneueh, an’ shure eneueh it was the end of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde – a sair wark we had had – gaun north wi’ seeds an’ braws an’ things for the Macleod. We had got in ower near under the Cutchull’ns, an’ had just gane about by soa, an’ were off on a lang tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far’s Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi’ mist; a fine gaun breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an’ – what nane o’ us likit to hear – anither wund gurlin’ owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane craigs o’ the Cutchull’ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi’ the jib sheet; we couldnae see him for the mains’l, that had just begude to draw, when a’ at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were ower near Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy Gabart’s deid skreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A’t he could tell was that a sea deil, or sea bogle, or sea spenster, or sic-like, had clum up by the bowsprit, an’ gi’en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An’, or the life was oot o’ Sandy’s body, we kent weel what the thing betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o’ the Cutchull’ns; for doon it cam’ – a wund do I ca’ it! it was the wund o’ the Lord’s anger – an’ a’ that nicht we foucht like men dementit, and the niest that we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an’ the cocks were crawin’ in Benbecula.’
‘It will have been a merman,’ Rorie said.
‘A merman!’ screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. ‘Auld wives’ clavers! There’s nae sic things as mermen.’
‘But what was the creature like?’ I asked.
‘What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had a kind of a heid upon it – man could say nae mair.’
Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen, mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his incredulity, listened with uneasy interest.
‘Aweel, aweel,’ he said, ‘it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae word o’ mermen in the Scriptures.’
‘And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe,’ objected Rorie, and his argument appeared to carry weight.
When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank behind the house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsman showed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a reference to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on that remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peats that had been lit by Mary.
Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet and bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certain periods of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay – Aros Bay, as it is called – where the house stands and on which my uncle was now gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is, there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks – sea-runes, as we may name them – on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in a thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those he loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention, struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.
‘Do ye see yon scart upo’ the water?’ he inquired; ‘yon ane wast the gray stane? Ay? Weel, it’ll no be like a letter, wull it?’
‘Certainly it is,’ I replied. ‘I have often remarked it. It is like a C.’
He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then added below his breath: ‘Ay, for the Christ-Anna.’
‘I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself,’ said I; ‘for my name is Charles.’
‘And so ye saw’t afore?’, he ran on, not heeding my remark. ‘Weel, weel, but that’s unco strange. Maybe, it’s been there waitin’, as a man wad say, through a’ the weary ages. Man, but that’s awfu’.’ And then, breaking off: ‘Ye’ll no see anither, will ye?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where the road comes down – an M.’
‘An M,’ he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: ‘An’ what wad ye make o’ that?’ he inquired.
‘I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,’ I answered, growing somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the threshold of a decisive explanation.
But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of the other’s. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hung his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo from my own.
‘I would say naething o’ thae clavers to Mary,’ he observed, and began to walk forward.
There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay, where walking is easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman. I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be represented by the letter M – misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like – I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
‘Ye think there’s naething there?’ he said, pointing with his pipe; and then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: ‘I’ll tell ye, man! The deid are down there – thick like rattons!’
He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to the house of Aros.
I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that, which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there’s a hope that lies nearer to my heart than money.’ And at that I paused. ‘You can guess fine what that is, Mary,’ I said. She looked away from me in silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off. ‘All my days I have thought the world of you,’ I continued; ‘the time goes on and I think always the more