The herring shoal, which in the early summer comes down from Norway
to the western coast of Man, drifts eastward as the year advances,
past the Calf Island, the Sound and the Spanish Head, with their
deafening clamour of ten thousand sea-fowl, to where the big waves of
the Atlantic roll to their organ music, and the porpoises tumble
through the blue waters of the Channel on their way back to the
frozen seas.
In the late autumn of the year of Victor Stowell's trial and
imprisonment the fishermen from Ramsey and Douglas, going south to
their fishing ground in the evening of the day, would find as they
sailed past Castletown, and opened the Poolvaish, that the sun had
set behind Castle Rushen and its square tower stood up black against
the crimsoning sky.
Then they would go down on their knees on the decks of their boats,
just as in old days they used to do after they had shot their nets at
night, to acknowledge their Maker, and pray, in their Manx, to St.
Bridget and St. Patrick to send them safely home in the morning with
a full cargo of "the living and the dead."
But it was not the harvest of the sea they were thinking of then. It
was of the two who lay interned within the walls of the grim
fortress--the man who had voluntarily made the great Sacrifice for
his sin, and the woman, who in the greatness of her love was living
out his punishment beside him.
In my early manhood I used to hear old Methodist fishermen say that
when they rose from their knees, after their rough hands had been
held close over their eyes, and looked back at the Castle, they would
sometimes see a golden cross plainly outlined in the sky above it.
Perhaps it was only another of their Manx superstitions, but it
seemed to bring a certain inspiration to their simple hearts for all
that, by reminding them of a story which resembled (very remotely and
feebly) the great one which they told each other every Sunday in
their little wayside chapels--the story of Him Who "gave the world
away and died."
"He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the
dead; He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of
God the Father Almighty...."