had suggested. They had scarce accomplished this, when Anne’s voice
came hailing silver-sweet across the water.
With death-white face and shaking limbs, MacCodrum stood holding the
mast, while with a loud voice, so firm and strong that Aulay MacNeil
smiled below his fear, he asked if the Achannas were back yet, and
if so for Donull to row out at once, and she with him if she would
come.
It was nearly half an hour thereafter that Anne rowed out toward the
_Luath_. She had gone at last along the shore to a creek where one
of Marcus’s boats was moored and returned with it. Having taken
Donull on board, she made way with all speed, fearful lest Gloom or
Marcus should intercept her.
It did not take long to explain how she had laughed at Seumas’s vain
efforts to detain her, and had come down to the haven. As she
approached, she heard Mànus singing, and so had herself broken into
a song she knew he loved. Then, by the water-edge she had come upon
Donull lying upon his back, bound and gagged. After she had released
him they waited to see what would happen, but as in the moonlight
they could not see any small boat come in, bound to or from the
smack, she had hailed to know if Mànus were there.
On his side he said briefly that the two Achannas had come to
persuade him to leave without her. On his refusal they had departed
again, uttering threats against her as well as himself. He heard
their quarrelling voices as they rowed into the gloom, but could not
see them at last because of the obscured moonlight.
“And now, Ann-mochree,” he added, “is it coming with me you are, and
just as you are? Sure, you’ll never repent it, and you’ll have all
you want that I can give. Dear of my heart, say that you will be
coming away this night of the nights! By the Black Stone on
Icolmkill I swear it, and by the Sun, and by the Moon, and by
Himself!”
“I am trusting you, Mànus dear. Sure it is not for me to be going
back to that house after what has been done and said. I go with you,
now and always, God save us.”
“Well, dear lass o’ my heart, it’s farewell to Eilanmore it is, for
by the Blood of the Cross I’ll never land on it again!”
“And that will be no sorrow to me, Mànus, my home!”
* * * * *
And this was the way that my friend, Anne Gillespie, left Eilanmore
to go to the isles of the west.
It was a fair sailing, in the white moonshine, with a whispering
breeze astern. Anne leaned against Mànus, dreaming her dream. The
lad Donull sat drowsing at the helm. Forward, Aulay MacNeil, with
his face set against the moonshine to the west, brooded dark.
Though no longer was land in sight, and there was peace among the
deeps of the quiet stars and upon the sea, the shadow of fear was
upon the face of Mànus MacCodrum.
This might well have been because of the as yet unburied dead that
lay beneath the spare sail by the windlass. The dead man, however,
did not affright him. What went moaning in his heart, and sighing
and calling in his brain, was a faint falling echo he had heard, as
the _Luath_ glided slow out of the haven. Whether from the water or
from the shore he could not tell, but he heard the wild, fantastic
air of the “Dàn-nan-Ròn,” as he had heard it that very night upon
the feadan of Gloom Achanna.
It was his hope that his ears had played him false. When he glanced
about him, and saw the sombre flame in the eyes of Aulay MacNeil,
staring at him out of the dusk, he knew that which Oisìn the son of
Fionn cried in his pain: “his soul swam in mist.”
II
For all the evil omens, the marriage of Anne and Mànus MacCodrum
went well. He was more silent than of yore, and men avoided rather
than sought him; but he was happy with Anne, and content with his
two mates, who were now Callum MacCodrum and Ranald MacRanald. The
youth Donull had bettered himself by joining a Skye skipper who was
a kinsman, and Aulay MacNeil had surprised every one, except Mànus,
by going away as a seaman on board one of the _Loch_ line of ships
which sail for Australia from the Clyde.
Anne never knew what had happened, though it is possible she
suspected somewhat. All that was known to her was that Marcus and
Gloom Achanna had disappeared, and were supposed to have been
drowned. There was now no Achanna upon Eilanmore, for Seumas had
taken a horror of the place and his loneliness. As soon as it was
commonly admitted that his two brothers must have drifted out to
sea, and been drowned, or at best picked up by some ocean-going
ship, he disposed of the island-farm, and left Eilanmore forever.
All this confirmed the thing said among the islanders of the west,
that old Robert Achanna had brought a curse with him. Blight and
disaster had visited Eilanmore over and over in the many years he
had held it, and death, sometimes tragic or mysterious, had
overtaken six of his seven sons, while the youngest bore upon his
brows the “dusk of the shadow.” True, none knew for certain that
three out of the six were dead, but few for a moment believed in the
possibility that Alasdair and Marcus and Gloom were alive. On the
night when Anne had left the island with Mànus MacCodrum, he,
Seumas, had heard nothing to alarm him. Even when, an hour after she
had gone down to the haven, neither she nor his brothers had
returned, and the _Luath_ had put out to sea, he was not in fear of
any ill. Clearly, Marcus and Gloom had gone away in the smack,
perhaps determined to see that the girl was duly married by priest
or minister.
He would have perturbed himself a little for days to come, but for a
strange thing that happened that night. He had returned to the house
because of a chill that was upon him, and convinced, too, that all
had sailed in the _Luath_. He was sitting brooding by the peat-fire,
when he was startled by a sound at the window at the back of the
room. A few bars of a familiar air struck painfully upon his ear,
though played so low that they were just audible. What could it be
but the “Dàn-nan-Ròn,” and who would be playing that but Gloom? What
did it mean? Perhaps after all, it was fantasy only, and there was
no feadan out there in the dark. He was pondering this when, still
low but louder and sharper than before, there rose and fell the
strain which he hated, and Gloom never played before him, that of
the _Dàvsa-na mairv_, the “Dance of the Dead.” Swiftly and silently
he rose and crossed the room. In the dark shadows cast by the byre
he could see nothing, but the music ceased. He went out, and
searched everywhere, but found no one. So he returned, took down the
Holy Book, with awed heart, and read slowly till peace came upon
him, soft and sweet as the warmth of the peat-glow.
But as for Anne, she had never even this hint that one of the
supposed dead might be alive, or that, being dead, Gloom might yet
touch a shadowy feadan into a wild remote air of the grave.
When month after month went by, and no hint of ill came to break
upon their peace, Mànus grew light-hearted again. Once more his
songs were heard as he came back from the fishing, or loitered
ashore mending his nets. A new happiness was nigh to them, for Anne
was with child. True, there was fear also, for the girl was not well
at the time when her labor was near, and grew weaker daily. There
came a day when Mànus had to go to Loch Boisdale in South Uist: and
it was with pain and something of foreboding that he sailed away
from Berneray in the Sound of Harris, where he lived. It was on the
third night that he returned. He was met by Katreen MacRanald, the
wife of his mate, with the news that on the morrow after his going
Anne had sent for the priest who was staying at Loch Maddy, for she
had felt the coming of death. It was that very evening she died, and
took the child with her.
Mànus heard as one in a dream. 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 Towre under the shadow of Ban 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 MacNeil sailed northward to see him. Each
time he departed sadder. “The man is going mad, I fear,” he said to
Callum, the last time he saw Mànus.
The long summer nights brought peace and beauty to the isles. 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 dog-fish, the otters, and the
seals, with flocks of sea-fowl beyond number, shared in the common
joy. Mànus MacCodrum alone paid no heed 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.
The midsummer moon found no man on Berneray except MacCodrum, the
Rev. Mr. Black, the minister of the Free Kirk, and an old man named
Anndra McIan. On the night before the last day of the middle month,
Anndra was reproved by the minister for saying that he had seen a
man rise out of one of the graves in the kirkyard, and steal down by
the stone-dykes towards Balnahunnur-sa-mona,[13] where Mànus
MacCodrum lived.
Footnote 13:
_Baille-’na-aonar’sa mhonadh_, “the solitary farm on the
hill-slope.”
“The dead do not rise and walk, Anndra.”
“That may be, maigstir, but it may have been the Watcher of the
Dead. Sure it is not three weeks since Padruig McAlistair was laid
beneath the green mound. He’ll be wearying for another to take his
place.”
“Hoots, man, that is an old superstition. The dead do not rise and
walk, I tell you.”
“It is right you may be, maigstir, but I heard of this from my
father, that was old before you were young, and from his father
before him. When the last-buried is weary with being the Watcher of
the Dead he goes about from place to place till he sees man, woman,
or child with the death-shadow in the eyes, and then he goes back to
his grave and lies down in peace, for his vigil it will be over
now.”
The minister laughed at the folly, and went into his house to make
ready for the Sacrament that was to be on the morrow. Old Anndra,
however, was uneasy. After the porridge, he went down through the
gloaming to Balnahunnur-sa-mona. He meant to go in and warn Mànus
MacCodrum. But when he got to the west wall, and stood near the open
window, he heard Mànus speaking in a loud voice, though he was alone
in the room.
“_B’ionganntach do ghràdh dhomhsa, a’ toirt barrachd air gràdh nam
ban!_”...[14]
Footnote 14:
“Thy love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.”
This, Mànus cried in a voice quivering with pain. Anndra stopped
still, fearful to intrude, fearful also, perhaps, to see some one
there beside MacCodrum, whom eyes should not see. Then the voice
rose into a cry of agony.
“_Aoram dhuit, ay andéigh dhomh fàs aosda!_”[15]
Footnote 15:
“I shall worship thee, ay, even after I have become old.”
With that, Anndra feared to stay. As he passed the byre he started,
for he thought he saw the shadow of a man. When he looked closer he
could see nought, so went his way, trembling and sore troubled.
It was dusk when Mànus came out. He saw that it was to be a cloudy
night; and perhaps it was this that, after a brief while, made him
turn in his aimless walk and go back to the house. He was sitting
before the flaming heart of the peats, brooding in his pain, when
suddenly he sprang to his feet.
Loud and clear, and close as though played under the very window of
the room, came the cold, white notes of an oaten flute. Ah, too well
he knew that wild, fantastic air. Who could it be but Gloom Achanna,
playing upon his feadan; and what air of all airs could that be but
the “Dàn-nan-Ròn”?
Was it the dead man, standing there unseen in the shadow of the
Grave? 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.
Suddenly an access of fury wrought him to madness. With an abrupt
lilt the tune swung into the _Davsà-na mairv_, and thence, after a
few seconds, and in a moment, into that mysterious and horrible
_Codhail-nan-Pairtean_ which none but Gloom played.
There could be no mistake now, nor as to what was meant by the
muttering, jerking air of the “Gathering of the Crabs.”
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!”
But there was no one; nothing; not a sound.
Then, at last, with a listless droop of his arms, MacCodrum turned
and went into the house again. He remembered what Gloom Achanna had
said: “_You’ll hear the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’ the night before you die,
Mànus MacCodrum, and lest you doubt it, you’ll hear it in your
death-hour._”
He did not stir from the fire for three hours; then he rose, and
went over to his bed and lay down without undressing.
He did not sleep, but lay listening and watching. The peats burned
low, and at last there was scarce a flicker along the floor. Outside
he could hear the wind moaning upon the sea. By a strange rustling
sound he knew that the tide was ebbing across the great reef that
runs out from Berneray. By midnight the clouds had gone. 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 tiptoe, and
soundlessly opened the door. The salt wind blew fresh against his
face. The smell of the shore, of wet sea-wrack and pungent
bog-myrtle, of foam and moving water, came sweet to his nostrils. He
heard a skua calling from the rocky promontory. From the slopes
behind, the wail of a moon-restless lapwing rose and fell
mournfully.
Crouching, and with slow, stealthy step, he stole round by the
seaward wall. At the dyke he stopped, and scrutinised it on each
side. He could see for several hundred yards, and there was not even
a sheltering sheep. Then, soundlessly as ever, he crept close to the
byre. He put his ear to chink after chink: but not a stir of a
shadow even. As a shadow, himself, he drifted lightly to the front,
past the hay-rick; then, with swift glances to right and left,
opened the door and entered. As he did so, he stood as though
frozen. Surely, he thought, that was a sound as of a step, out there
by the hay-rick. A terror was at his heart. In front, the darkness
of the byre, with God knows what dread thing awaiting him; behind, a
mysterious walker in the night, swift to take him unawares. The
trembling that came upon him was nigh overmastering. At last, with a
great effort, he moved towards the ledge, where he kept a candle.
With shaking hand he struck a light. The empty byre looked ghostly
and fearsome in the flickering gloom. But there was no one, nothing.
He was about to turn, when a rat ran along a loose-hanging beam, and
stared at him, or at the yellow shine. He saw its black eyes shining
like peat-water in moonlight.
The creature was curious at first, then indifferent. At last, it
began to squeak, and then made a swift scratching with its
fore-paws. Once or twice came an answering squeak; a faint rustling
was audible here and there among the straw.
With a sudden spring Mànus seized the beast. Even in the second in
which he raised it to his mouth and scrunched its back with his
strong teeth, it bit him severely. He let his hands drop, and groped
furtively in the darkness. With stooping head he shook the last
breath out of the rat, holding it with his front teeth, with
back-curled lips. The next moment he dropped the dead thing,
trampled upon it, and burst out laughing. There was a scurrying of
pattering feet, a rustling of straw. Then silence again. A draught
from the door had caught the flame and extinguished it. In the
silence and darkness MacCodrum stood, intent, but no longer afraid.
He laughed again, because it was so easy to kill with the teeth. The
noise of his laughter seemed to him to leap hither and thither like
a shadowy ape. He could see it; a blackness within the darkness.
Once more he laughed. It amused him to see the _thing_ leaping about
like that.
Suddenly he turned, and walked out into the moonlight. The lapwing
was still circling and wailing. He mocked it, with loud shrill
_pēē-wēēty, pēē-wēēty, pēē-wēēt_. The bird swung waywardly, alarmed:
its abrupt cry, and dancing flight aroused its fellows. The air was
full of the lamentable crying of plovers.
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, thatch-roofed 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 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 clamor 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 glistening 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 Seals” 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 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 knees 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.