Achannas were so also, notwithstanding that their forebears and
kindred in Galloway were Protestant (and this because of old Robert
Achanna’s love for his wife, who was of the old Faith, so it is
said)—it may have been for this reason, though I think her lover’s
admiring eyes and soft speech and sweet singing had more to do with
it, that she pledged her troth to Mànus. It was a south wind for him
as the saying is; for with her rippling brown hair and soft, grey
eyes and cream-white skin, there was no comelier lass in the isles.
So when Achanna was laid to his long rest, and there was none left
upon Eilanmore save only his three youngest sons, Mànus MacCodrum
sailed northeastward across the Minch to take home his bride. Of the
four eldest sons, Alasdair had left Eilanmore some months before his
father died, and sailed westward, though no one knew whither or for
what end or for how long, and no word had been brought from him, nor
was he ever seen again in the island which had come to be called
Eilan-nan-Allmharachain, the Isle of the Strangers; Allan and
William had been drowned in a wild gale in the Minch; and Robert had
died of the white fever, that deadly wasting disease which is the
scourge of the isles. Marcus was now “Eilanmore,” and lived there
with Gloom and Seumas, all three unmarried, though it was rumoured
among the neighbouring islanders that each loved Marsail nic
Ailpean,[12] in Eilean-Rona of the Summer Isles hard by the coast of
Sutherland.
Footnote 12:
Marsail nic Ailpean is the Gaelic of which an English translation
would be Marjory MacAlpine. _Nic_ is a contraction for _nighean
mhic_, “daughter of the line of.”
When Mànus asked Anne to go with him she agreed. The three brothers
were ill-pleased at this, for apart from their not wishing their
cousin to go so far away, they did not want to lose her, as she not
only cooked for them and did all that a woman does, including
spinning and weaving, but was most sweet and fair to see, and in the
long winter nights sang by the hour together, while Gloom played
strange wild airs upon his _feadan_, a kind of oaten pipe or flute.
She loved him, I know; but there was this reason also for her going,
that she was afraid of Gloom. Often upon the moor or on the hill she
turned and hastened home, because she heard the lilt and fall of
that feadan. It was an eerie thing to her, to be going through the
twilight when she thought the three men were in the house, smoking
after their supper, and suddenly to hear beyond and coming toward
her the shrill song of that oaten flute, playing “The Dance of the
Dead,” or “The Flow and Ebb,” or “The Shadow-Reel.”
That, sometimes at least, he knew she was there was clear to her,
because, as she stole rapidly through the tangled fern and gale, she
would hear a mocking laugh follow her like a leaping thing.
Mànus was not there on the night when she told Marcus and his
brothers that she was going. He was in the haven on board the
_Luath_, with his two mates, he singing in the moonshine as all
three sat mending their fishing gear.
After the supper was done, the three brothers sat smoking and
talking over an offer that had been made about some Shetland sheep.
For a time, Anne watched them in silence. They were not like
brothers, she thought. Marcus, tall, broad-shouldered, with yellow
hair and strangely dark blue-black eyes and black eyebrows; stern,
with a weary look on his sun-brown face. The light from the peats
glinted upon the tawny curve of thick hair that trailed from his
upper lip, for he had the _caisean-feusag_ of the Northmen. Gloom,
slighter of build, dark of hue and hair, but with hairless face;
with thin, white, long-fingered hands that had ever a nervous
motion, as though they were tide-wrack. There was always a frown on
the centre of his forehead, even when he smiled with his thin lips
and dusky, unbetraying eyes. He looked what he was, the brain of the
Achannas. Not only did he have the English as though native to that
tongue, but could and did read strange unnecessary books. Moreover,
he was the only son of Robert Achanna to whom the old man had
imparted his store of learning, for Achanna had been a school-master
in his youth, in Galloway, and he had intended Gloom for the
priesthood. His voice, too, was low and clear, but cold as
pale-green water running under ice. As for Seumas, he was more like
Marcus than Gloom, though not so fair. He had the same brown hair
and shadowy hazel eyes, the same pale and smooth face, with
something of the same intent look which characterised the long-time
missing, and probably dead, eldest brother, Alasdair. He, too, was
tall and gaunt. On Seumas’s face there was that indescribable, as to
some of course imperceptible, look which is indicated by the phrase
“the dusk of the shadow,” though few there are who know what they
mean by that, or, knowing, are fain to say.
Suddenly, and without any word or reason for it, Gloom turned and
spoke to her.
“Well, Anne, and what is it?”
“I did not speak, Gloom.”
“True for you, _mo cailinn_. But it’s about to speak you were.”
“Well, and that is true. Marcus, and you Gloom, and you Seumas, I
have that to tell which you will not be altogether glad for the
hearing. ’Tis about—about—me and—and Mànus.”
There was no reply at first. The three brothers sat looking at her
like the kye at a stranger on the moorland. There was a deepening of
the frown on Gloom’s brow, but when Anne looked at him his eyes fell
and dwelt in the shadow at his feet. Then Marcus spoke in a low
voice:
“Is it Mànus MacCodrum you will be meaning?”
“Ay, sure.”
Again silence. Gloom did not lift his eyes, and Seumas was now
staring at the peats. Marcus shifted uneasily.
“And what will Mànus MacCodrum be wanting?”
“Sure, Marcus, you know well what I mean. Why do you make this thing
hard for me? There is but one thing he would come here wanting. And
he has asked me if I will go with him; and I have said yes; and if
you are not willing that he come again with the minister, or that we
go across to the kirk in Berneray of Uist in the Sound of Harris,
then I will not stay under this roof another night, but will go away
from Eilanmore at sunrise in the _Luath_, that is now in the haven.
And that is for the hearing and knowing, Marcus and Gloom and
Seumas!”
Once more, silence followed her speaking. It was broken in a strange
way. Gloom slipped his feadan into his hands, and so to his mouth.
The clear, cold notes of the flute filled the flame-lit room. It was
as though white polar birds were drifting before the coming of snow.
The notes slid in to a wild, remote air: cold moonlight on the dark
o’ the sea, it was. It was the _Dàn-nan-Ròn_.
Anne flushed, trembled, and then abruptly rose. As she leaned on her
clenched right hand upon the table, the light of the peats showed
that her eyes were aflame.
“Why do you play _that_, Gloom Achanna?”
The man finished the bar, then blew into the oaten pipe, before,
just glancing at the girl, he replied:
“And what harm will there be in _that_, Anna-ban?”
“Do you know why Gloom played the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’?”
“Ay, and what then, Anna-ban?”
“What then? Are you thinking I don’t know what you mean by playing
the ‘Song o’ the Seals’?”
With an abrupt gesture Gloom put the feadan aside. As he did so, he
rose.
“See here, Anne,” he began roughly, when Marcus intervened.
“That will do just now, Gloom. Anne-à-ghraidh, do you mean that you
are going to do this thing?”
“Ay, sure.”
“Do you know why Gloom played the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’?”
“It was a cruel thing.”
“You know what is said in the isles about—about—this or that man,
who is under _gheasan_, who is spell-bound and—and—about the seals—”
“Yes, Marcus, it is knowing it that I am: ‘_Tha iad a’ cantuinn gur
h-e daoine fo gheasan a th’ anns no roin._’”
“‘_They say that seals_,’” he repeated slowly. “‘_They say that
seals are men under magic spells._’ And have you ever pondered that
thing, Anne, my cousin?”
“I am knowing well what you mean.”
“Then you will know that the MacCodrums of North Uist are called the
_Sliochd-nan-Ròn_?”
“I have heard.”
“And would you be for marrying a man that is of the race of the
beasts, and himself knowing what that _geas_ means, and who may any
day go back to his people?”
“Ah, now, Marcus, sure it is making a mock of me you are. Neither
you nor any here believe that foolish thing. How can a man born of a
woman be a seal, even though his _sinnsear_ were the offspring of
the sea-people, which is not a saying I am believing either, though
it may be; and not that it matters much, whatever, about the
far-back forebears.”
Marcus frowned darkly, and at first made no response. At last he
answered, speaking sullenly:
“You may be believing this or you may be believing that,
Anna-nic-Gilleasbuig, but two things are as well known as that the
east wind brings the blight and the west wind the rain. And one is
this: that long ago a Seal-man wedded a woman of North Uist, and
that he or his son was called Neil MacCodrum; and that the sea-fever
of the seal was in the blood of his line ever after. And this is the
other: that twice within the memory of living folk, a MacCodrum has
taken upon himself the form of a seal, and has so met his death,
once Neil MacCodrum of Ru’ Tormaid, and once Anndra MacCodrum of
Berneray in the Sound. There’s talk of others, but these are known
of us all. And you will not be forgetting now that Neildonn was the
grandfather, and that Anndra was the brother of the father of Mànus
MacCodrum?”
“I am not caring what you say, Marcus. It is all foam of the sea.”
“There’s no foam without wind or tide, Anne, an’ it’s a dark tide
that will be bearing you away to Uist, and a black wind that will be
blowing far away behind the East, the wind that will be carrying his
death-cry to your ears.”
The girl shuddered. The brave spirit in her, however, did not quail.
“Well, so be it. To each his fate. But, seal or no seal, I am going
to wed Mànus MacCodrum, who is a man as good as any here, and a true
man at that, and the man I love, and that will be my man, God
willing, the praise be His!”
Again Gloom took up the feadan, and sent a few cold, white notes
floating through the hot room, breaking, suddenly, into the wild,
fantastic, opening air of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn.”
With a low cry and passionate gesture Anne sprang forward, snatched
the oat-flute from his grasp, and would have thrown it in the fire.
Marcus held her in an iron grip, however.
“Don’t you be minding Gloom, Anne,” he said quietly, as he took the
feadan from her hand and handed it to his brother: “sure he’s only
telling you in _his_ way what I am telling you in mine.”
She shook herself free, and moved to the other side of the table. On
the opposite wall hung the dirk which had belonged to old Achanna.
This she unfastened. Holding it in her right hand, she faced the
three men.—
“On the cross of the dirk I swear I will be the woman of Mànus
MacCodrum.”
The brothers made no response. They looked at her fixedly.
“And by the cross of the dirk I swear that if any man come between
me and Mànus, this dirk will be for his remembering in a certain
hour of the day of the days.”
As she spoke, she looked meaningly at Gloom, whom she feared more
than Marcus or Seumas.
“And by the cross of the dirk I swear that if evil come to Mànus,
this dirk will have another sheath, and that will be my milkless
breast; and by that token I now throw the old sheath in the fire.”
As she finished, she threw the sheath on to the burning peats. Gloom
quietly lifted it, brushed off the sparks of flame as though they
were dust, and put it in his pocket.
“And by the same token, Anne,” he said, “your oaths will come to
nought.”
Rising, he made a sign to his brothers to follow. When they were
outside he told Seumas to return, and to keep Anne within, by peace
if possible, by force if not. Briefly they discussed their plans,
and then separated. While Seumas went back, Marcus and Gloom made
their way to the haven.
Their black figures were visible in the moonlight, but at first they
were not noticed by the men on board the _Luath_, for Mànus was
singing.
When the islesman stopped abruptly, one of his companions asked him
jokingly if his song had brought a seal alongside, and bid him
beware lest it was a woman of the sea-people.
His face darkened, but he made no reply. When the others listened
they heard the wild strain of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn” stealing through the
moonshine. Staring against the shore, they could discern the two
brothers.
“What will be the meaning of that?” asked one of the men, uneasily.
“When a man comes instead of a woman,” answered Mànus, slowly, “the
young corbies are astir in the nest.”
So, it meant blood. Aulay MacNeil and Donull Macdonull put down
their gear, rose, and stood waiting for what Mànus would do.
“Ho, there!” he cried.
“Ho-ro!”
“What will you be wanting, Eilanmore?”
“We are wanting a word of you, Mànus MacCodrum. Will you come
ashore?”
“If you want a word of me, you can come to me.”
“There is no boat here.”
“I’ll send the _bàta-beag_.”
When he had spoken, Mànus asked Donull, the younger of his mates, a
lad of seventeen, to row to the shore.
“And bring back no more than one man,” he added, “whether it be
Eilanmore himself or Gloom-mhic-Achanna.”
The rope of the small boat was unfastened, and Donull rowed it
swiftly through the moonshine. The passing of a cloud dusked the
shore, but they saw him throw a rope for the guiding of the boat
alongside the ledge of the landing place; then the sudden darkening
obscured the vision. Donull must be talking, they thought, for two
or three minutes elapsed without sign, but at last the boat put off
again, and with two figures only. Doubtless the lad had had to argue
against the coming of both Marcus and Gloom.
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.”
“It is not a wraith I was seeing, but the death of a man.”
Gloom whispered, and his brother nodded sullenly. The next moment a
heavy muffler was round Donull’s mouth; and before he could resist,
or even guess what had happened, he was on his face on the shore,
bound and gagged. A minute later the oars were taken by Gloom, and
the boat moved swiftly out of the inner haven.
As it drew near Mànus stared at it intently.
“That is not Donull that is rowing, Aulay!”
“No: it will be Gloom Achanna, I’m thinking.”
MacCodrum started. If so, that other figure at the stern was too big
for Donull. The cloud passed just as the boat came alongside. The
rope was made secure, and then Marcus and Gloom sprang on board.
“Where is Donull MacDonull?” demanded Mànus sharply.
Marcus made no reply, so Gloom answered for him.
“He has gone up to the house with a message to
Anne-nic-Gilleasbuig.”
“And what will that message be?”
“That Mànus MacCodrum has sailed away from Eilanmore, and will not
see her again.”
MacCodrum laughed. It was a low, ugly laugh.
“Sure, Gloom Achanna, you should be taking that feadan of yours and
playing the _Cod-hail-nan-Pairtean_, for I’m thinkin’ the crabs are
gathering about the rocks down below us, an’ laughing wi’ their
claws.”
“Well, and that is a true thing,” Gloom replied slowly and quietly.
“Yes, for sure I might, as you say, be playing the ’meeting of the
Crabs.’ Perhaps,” he added, as by a sudden afterthought, “perhaps,
though it is a calm night, you will be hearing the _comh-thonn_. The
‘Slapping of the Waves’ is a better thing to be hearing than the
’meeting of the Crabs.’”
“If I hear the _comh-thonn_ it is not in the way you will be
meaning, Gloom-mhic-Achanna. ’Tis not the ‘Up Sail and Good-bye’
they will be saying, but ‘Home wi’ the Bride.’”
Here Marcus intervened.
“Let us be having no more words, Mànus MacCodrum. The girl Anne is
not for you. Gloom is to be her man. So get you hence. If you will
be going quiet, it is quiet we will be. If you have your feet on
this thing, then you will be having that too which I saw in the
boat.”
“And what was it you saw in the boat, Achanna?”
“The death of a man.”
“So—. And now” (this after a prolonged silence, wherein the four men
stood facing each other, “is it a blood-matter if not of peace?”
“Ay. Go, if you are wise. If not, ’tis your own death you will be
making.”
There was a flash as of summer lightning. A bluish flame seemed to
leap through the moonshine. Marcus reeled, with a gasping cry; then,
leaning back, till his face blenched in the moonlight, his knees
gave way. As he fell, he turned half round. The long knife which
Mànus had hurled at him had not penetrated his breast more than an
inch at most, but as he fell on the deck it was driven into him up
to the hilt.
In the blank silence that followed, the three men could hear a sound
like the ebb-tide in sea-weed. It was the gurgling of the bloody
froth in the lungs of the dead man.
The first to speak was his brother, and then only when thin
reddish-white foam-bubbles began to burst from the blue lips of
Marcus.
“It is murder.”
He spoke low, but it was like the surf of breakers in the ears of
those who heard.
“You have said one part of a true word, Gloom Achanna. It is
murder—that you and he came here for!”
“The death of Marcus Achanna is on you, Mànus MacCodrum.”
“So be it, as between yourself and me, or between all of your blood
and me; though Aulay MacNeil, as well as you, can witness that
though in self-defence I threw the knife at Achanna, it was his own
doing that drove it into him.”
“You can whisper that to the rope when it is round your neck.”
“And what will _you_ be doing now, Gloom-mhic-Achanna?”
For the first time Gloom shifted uneasily. A swift glance revealed
to him the awkward fact that the boat trailed behind the _Luath_, so
that he could not leap into it, while if he turned to haul it close
by the rope he was at the mercy of the two men.
“I will go in peace,” he said quietly.
“Ay,” was the answer, in an equally quiet tone, “in the white
peace.”
Upon this menace of death the two men stood facing each other.
Achanna broke the silence at last.
“You’ll hear the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’ the night before you die, Mànus
MacCodrum, and lest you doubt it you’ll hear it again in your
death-hour.”
“_Ma tha sin an Dàn_—if that be ordained.” Mànus spoke gravely. His
very quietude, however, boded ill. There was no hope of clemency;
Gloom knew that.
Suddenly he laughed scornfully. Then, pointing with his right hand
as if to some one behind his two adversaries, he cried out: “Put the
death-hand on them, Marcus! Give them the Grave!” Both men sprang
aside, the heart of each nigh upon bursting. The death-touch of the
newly slain is an awful thing to incur, for it means that the wraith
can transfer all its evil to the person touched.
The next moment there was a heavy splash. Mànus realised that it was
no more than a ruse, and that Gloom had escaped. With feverish haste
he hauled in the small boat, leaped into it, and began at once to
row so as to intercept his enemy.
Achanna rose once, between him and the _Luath_. MacCodrum crossed
the oars in the thole-pins and seized the boat-hook.
The swimmer kept straight for him. Suddenly he dived. In a flash,
Mànus knew that Gloom was going to rise under the boat, seize the
keel, and upset him, and thus probably be able to grip him from
above. There was time and no more to leap; and, indeed, scarce had
he plunged into the sea ere the boat swung right over, Achanna
clambering over it the next moment.
At first Gloom could not see where his foe was. He crouched on the
upturned craft, and peered eagerly into the moonlit water. All at
once a black mass shot out of the shadow between him and the smack.
This black mass laughed—the same low, ugly laugh that had preceded
the death of Marcus.
He who was in turn the swimmer was now close. When a fathom away he
leaned back and began to tread water steadily. In his right hand he
grasped the boat-hook. The man in the boat knew that to stay where
he was meant certain death. He gathered himself together like a
crouching cat. Mànus kept treading the water slowly, but with the
hook ready so that the sharp iron spike at the end of it should
transfix his foe if he came at him with a leap. Now and again he
laughed. Then in his low sweet voice, but brokenly at times between
his deep breathings, he began to sing:
The tide was dark, an’ heavy with the burden that it bore;
I heard it talkin’, whisperin’, upon the weedy shore;
Each wave that stirred the sea-weed was like a closing door;
’Tis closing doors they hear at last who hear no more, no more.
My Grief,
No more!
The tide was in the salt sea-weed, and like a knife it tore;
The wild sea-wind went moaning, sooing, moaning o’er and o’er;
The deep sea-heart was brooding deep upon its ancient lore—
I heard the sob, the sooing sob, the dying sob at its core,
My Grief,
Its core!
The white sea-waves were wan and gray its ashy lips before,
The yeast within its ravening mouth was red with streaming gore;
O red sea-weed, O red sea-waves, O hollow baffled roar,
Since one thou hast, O dark dim Sea, why callest thou for more,
My Grief,
For more!
In the quiet moonlight the chant, with its long, slow cadences, sung
as no other man in the isles could sing it, sounded sweet and remote
beyond words to tell. The glittering shine was upon the water of the
haven, and moved in waving lines of fire along the stone ledges.
Sometimes a fish rose, and split a ripple of pale gold; or a
sea-nettle swam to the surface, and turned its blue or greenish
globe of living jelly to the moon dazzle.
The man in the water made a sudden stop in his treading and listened
intently. Then once more the phosphorescent light gleamed about his
slow-moving shoulders. In a louder chanting voice came once again:
Each wave that stirs the sea-weed is like a closing door;
’Tis closing doors they hear at last who hear no more—no more,
My Grief,
No more!
Yes, his quick ears had caught the inland strain of a voice he knew.
Soft and white as the moonshine came Anne’s singing as she passed
along the corrie leading to the haven. In vain his travelling gaze
sought her; she was still in the shadow, and, besides, a slow
drifting cloud obscured the moonlight. When he looked back again a
stifled exclamation came from his lips. There was not a sign of
Gloom Achanna. He had slipped noiselessly from the boat, and was now
either behind it, or had dived beneath it, or was swimming under
water this way or that. If only the cloud would sail by, muttered
Mànus, as he held himself in readiness for an attack from beneath or
behind. As the dusk lightened, he swam slowly toward the boat, and
then swiftly round it. There was no one there. He climbed on to the
keel, and stood, leaning forward, as a salmon-leisterer by
torchlight, with his spear-pointed boat-hook raised. Neither below
nor beyond could he discern any shape. A whispered call to Aulay
MacNeil showed that he, too, saw nothing. Gloom must have swooned,
and sunk deep as he slipped through the water. Perhaps the dog-fish
were already darting about him.
Going behind the boat Mànus guided it back to the smack. It was not
long before, with MacNeil’s help, he righted the punt. One oar had
drifted out of sight, but as there was a sculling-hole in the stern
that did not matter.
“What shall we do with it?” he muttered, as he stood at last by the
corpse of Marcus.
“This is a bad night for us, Aulay!”
“Bad it is; but let us be seeing it is not worse. I’m thinking we
should have left the boat.”
“And for why that?”
“We could say that Marcus Achanna and Gloom Achanna left us again,
and that we saw no more of them nor of our boat.”
MacCodrum pondered a while. The sound of voices, borne faintly
across the water, decided him. Probably Anne and the lad Donull were
talking. He slipped into the boat, and with a sail-knife soon ripped
it here and there. It filled, and then, heavy with the weight of a
great ballast-stone which Aulay had first handed to his companion,
and surging with a foot-thrust from the latter, it sank.
“We’ll hide the—the man there—behind the windlass, below the spare
sail, till we’re out at sea, Aulay. Quick, give me a hand!”