his heart smote him as he saw Alan's eyes turn upon him with a glance
wild and mournful. Had he indeed succumbed to the sea madness which ever
and again strikes into a terrible melancholy one here and there among
those who dwell in the remote isles? But even as he looked, he noted
another expression come into the wild strained eyes; and almost before
he realised what had happened, Alan was on his feet and pointing with
rigid arm.
For there, in that nigh unreachable and for ever unvisited solitude, was
the figure of a man. He stood on the summit of the huge basalt altar,
and appeared to have sprung from out the rock, or, himself a shadowy
presence, to have grown out of the obscure unrealities of the darkness.
Ian stared, fascinated, speechless.
Then with a spring he was on the ledge. Swift and sure as a wild cat, he
scaled the huge mass of the altar.
Nothing; no one! There was not a trace of any human being. Not a bird,
not a bat; nothing. Moreover, even in that slowly blackening darkness,
he could see that there was no direct connection between the summit or
side with the blank, precipitous wall of basalt beyond. Overhead there
was, so far as he could discern, a vault. No human being could have
descended through that perilous gulf.
Was the island haunted? he wondered, as slowly he made his way back to
the boat. Or had he been startled by some wild fantasy, and imagined a
likeness where none had been? Perhaps even he had not really seen any
one. He had heard of such things. The nerves can soon chase the mind
into the shadow wherein it loses itself.
Or was Alan the vain dreamer? That, indeed, might well be. Mayhap he had
heard some fantastic tale from Morag MacNeill, or from old Marsail
Macrae; the islanders had _sgeul_ after _sgeul_ of a wild strangeness.
In silence he guided the boats back into the outer arcade, where a faint
sheen of moonlight glistened on the water. Thence, in a few minutes, he
oared that wherein he and Alan sat, with the other fastened astern, into
the open.
When the moonshine lay full on Alan's face, Ian saw that he was thinking
neither of himself nor of where he was. His eyes were heavy with dream.
What wind there was blew against their course, so Ian rowed unceasingly.
In silence they passed once again the headland of Aoidhu; in silence
they drifted past a single light gleaming in a croft near Aonaig--a red
eye staring out into the shadow of the sea, from the room where the
woman Marsail lay dying; and in silence their keels grided on the patch
of shingle in Caisteal-Rhona haven.
For days thereafter Alan haunted that rocky, cavernous wilderness where
he had seen the Herdsman.
It was in vain he had sought everywhere for some tidings of this
mysterious dweller in those upland solitudes. At times he believed that
there was indeed some one upon the island of whom, for inexplicable
reasons, none there would speak; but at last he came to the conviction
that what he had seen was an apparition, projected by the fantasy of
overwrought nerves. Even from the woman Morag MacNeill, to whom he had
gone with a frank appeal that won its way to her heart, he learned no
more than that an old legend, of which she did not care to speak, was in
some way associated with his own coming to Rona.
Ian, too, never once alluded to the mysterious incident of the green
arcades which had so deeply impressed them both: never after Alan had
told him that he had seen a vision.
But as the days passed, and as no word came to either of any unknown
person who was on the island, and as Alan, for all his patient wandering
and furtive quest, both among the upland caves and in the green arcades,
found absolutely no traces of him whom he sought, the belief that he had
been duped by his imagination deepened almost to conviction.
As for Ian, he, unlike Alan, became more and more convinced that what he
had seen was indeed no apparition. Whatever lingering doubt he had was
dissipated on the eve of the night when old Marsail Macrae died. It was
dusk when word came to Caisteal-Rhona that Marsail felt the cold wind
on the soles of her feet. Ian went to her at once, and it was in the
dark hour which followed that he heard once more, and more fully, the
strange story which, like a poisonous weed, had taken root in the minds
of the islanders. Already from Marsail he had heard of the Prophet,
though, strangely enough, he had never breathed word of this to Alan,
not even when, after the startling episode of the apparition in the
Teampull-Mara, he had, as he believed, seen the Prophet himself. But
there in the darkness of the low, turfed cottage, with no light in the
room save the dull red gloom from the heart of the smoored peats,
Marsail, in the attenuated, remote voice of those who have already
entered into the vale of the shadow, told him this thing, in the
homelier Gaelic--
"Yes, Ian mac Iain-Ban, I will be telling you this thing before I
change. You are for knowing, sure, that long ago Uilleam, brother of him
who was father to the lad up at the castle yonder, had a son? Yes, you
know that, you say, and also that he was called Donnacha Ban? No,
mo-caraid, that is not a true thing that you have heard, that Donnacha
Ban went under the waves years ago. He was the seventh son, an' was born
under the full moon; 'tis Himself will be knowing whether that was for
or against him. Of these seven none lived beyond childhood except the
two youngest, Kenneth an' Donnacha. Kenneth was always frail as a
February flower, but he lived to be a man. He an' his brother never
spoke, for a feud was between them, not only because that each was
unlike the other, an' the younger hated the older because through him he
was the penniless one, but most because both loved the same woman. I am
not for telling you the whole story now, for the breath in my body will
soon blow out in the draught that is coming upon me; but this I will say
to you: darker and darker grew the gloom between these brothers. When
Giorsal Macdonald gave her love to Kenneth, Donnacha disappeared for a
time. Then, one day, he came back to Borosay, an' smiled quietly with
his cold eyes when they wondered at his coming again. Now, too, it was
noticed that he no longer had an ill-will upon his brother, but spoke
smoothly with him an' loved to be in his company. But to this day no one
knows for sure what happened. For there was a gloaming when Donnacha Ban
came back alone in his sailing-boat. He an' Kenneth had sailed forth, he
said, to shoot seals in the sea-arcades to the west of Rona, but in
these dark and lonely passages they had missed each other. At last he
had heard Kenneth's voice calling for help, but when he had got to the
place it was too late, for his brother had been seized with the cramps,
an' had sunk deep into the fathomless water. There is no getting a body
again that sinks in these sea-galleries. The crabs know that.
"Well, this and much more was what Donnacha Ban told to his people. None
believed him; but what could any do? There was no proof; none had ever
seen them enter the sea-caves together. Not that Donnacha Ban sought in
any way to keep back those who would fain know more. Not so; he strove
to help to find the body. Nevertheless, none believed; an' Giorsal nic
Dugall Mor least of all. The blight of that sorrow went to her heart.
She had death soon, poor thing! but before the cold greyness was upon
her she told her father, an' the minister that was there, that she knew
Donnacha Ban had murdered his brother. One might be saying these were
the wild words of a woman; but, for sure, no one said that thing upon
Borosay or Rona, or any of these isles. When all was done, the minister
told what he knew, an' what he thought, to the Lord of the South Isles,
and asked what was to be put upon Donnacha Ban. 'Exile for ever,' said
the chief, 'or if he stays here, the doom of silence. Let no man or
woman speak to him or give him food or drink, or give him shelter, or
let his shadow cross his or hers.'
"When this thing was told to Donnacha Ban Carmichael, he laughed at
first; but as day after day slid over the rocks where all days fall, he
laughed no more. Soon he saw that the chief's word was no empty word;
an' yet would not go away from his own place. He could not stay upon
Borosay, for his father cursed him; an' no man can stay upon the island
where a father's curse moves this way an' that, for ever seeing him.
Then, some say a madness came upon him, and others that he took wildness
to be his way, and others that God put upon him the shadow of
loneliness, so that he might meet sorrow there and repent. Howsoever
that may be, Donnacha Ban came to Rona, an' by the same token, it was
the year of the great blight, when the potatoes and the corn came to
naught, an' when the fish in the sea swam away from the isles. In the
autumn of that year there was not a soul left on Rona except Giorsal an'
the old man Ian, her father, who had guard of Caisteal-Rhona for him who
was absent. When, once more, years after, smoke rose from the crofts,
the saying spread that Donnacha Ban, the murderer, had made his home
among the caves of the upper part of the isle. None knew how this saying
rose, for he was seen of none. The last man who saw him--an' that was a
year later--was old Padruig M'Vurich the shepherd. Padruig said that, as
he was driving his ewes across the north slope of Ben Einaval in the
gloaming, he came upon a silent figure seated upon a rock, with his chin
in his hands, an' his elbows on his knees--with the great, sad eyes of
him staring at the moon that was lifting itself out of the sea. Padruig
did not know who the man was. The shepherd had few wits, poor man! and
he had known, or remembered, little about the story of Donnacha Ban
Carmichael; so when he spoke to the man, it was as to a stranger. The
man looked at him and said--
"'You are Padruig M'Vurich, the shepherd.'
"At that a trembling was upon old Padruig, who had the wonder that this
stranger should know who and what he was.
"'And who will you be, and forgive the saying?' he asked.
"'_Am Faidh_--the Prophet,' the man said.
"'And what prophet will you be, and what is your prophecy?' asked
Padruig.
"'I am here because I wait for what is to be, and that will be the
coming of the Woman who is the Daughter of God.'
"And with that the man said no more, an' the old shepherd went down
through the gloaming, an', heavy with the thoughts that troubled him,
followed his ewes down into Aonaig. But after that neither he nor any
other saw or heard tell of the shadowy stranger; so that all upon Rona
felt sure that Padruig had beheld no more than a vision. There were some
who thought that he had seen the ghost of the outlaw Donnacha Ban; an'
mayhap one or two who wondered if the stranger that had said he was a
prophet was not Donnacha Ban himself, with a madness come upon him; but
at last these sayings went out to sea upon the wind, an' men forgot.
But, an' it was months and months afterwards, an' three days before his
own death, old Padruig M'Vurich was sitting in the sunset on the rocky
ledge in front of his brother's croft, where then he was staying, when
he heard a strange crying of seals. He thought little of that; only,
when he looked closer, he saw, in the hollow of the wave hard by that
ledge, a drifting body.
"'_Am Faidh--Am Faidh!_' he cried; 'the Prophet, the Prophet!'
"At that his brother an' his brother's wife ran to see; but it was
nothing that they saw. 'It would be a seal,' said Pol M'Vurich; but at
that Padruig had shook his head, an' said no for sure, he had seen the
face of the dead man, an' it was of him whom he had met on the hillside,
an' that had said he was the Prophet who was waiting there for the
second coming of God.
"And that is how there came about the echo of the thought that Donnacha
Ban had at last, after his madness, gone under the green wave and was
dead. For all that, in the months which followed, more than one man said
he had seen a figure high up on the hill. The old wisdom says that when
God comes again, or the prophet who will come before, it will be as a
herdsman on a lonely isle. More than one of the old people on Rona and
Borosay remembered that _sgeul_ out of the _Seanachas_ that the
tale-tellers knew. There were some who said that Donnacha Ban had never
been drowned at all, an' that he was this Prophet, this Herdsman. Others
would not have that saying at all, but believed that the wraith was
indeed Am Buachaill Ban, the Fair-haired Shepherd, who had come again
to redeem the people out of their sorrow. There were even those who said
that the Herdsman who haunted Rona was no other than Kenneth Carmichael
himself, who had not died but had had the mind-dark there in the
sea-caves where he had been lost, an' there had come to the knowledge of
secret things, and so was at last Am Faidh Chriosd."
A great weakness came upon the old woman when she had spoken thus far.
Ian feared that she would have breath for no further word; but after a
thin gasping, and a listless fluttering of weak hands upon the coverlet,
whereon her trembling fingers plucked aimlessly at the invisible
blossoms of death, she opened her eyes once more, and stared in a dim
questioning at him who sat by her bedside.
"Tell me," whispered Ian, "tell me Marsail, what thought it is that is
in your own mind?"
But already the old woman had begun to wander.
"For sure, for sure," she muttered, "_Am Faidh ... Am Faidh_ ... an' a
child will be born ... the Queen of Heaven, an' ... that will be the
voice of Domhuill, my husband, I am hearing ... an' dark it is, an' the
tide comin' in ... an'----"
Then, sure, the tide came in, and if in that darkness old Marsail Macrae
heard any voice at all, it was that of Domhuill who years agone had sunk
into the wild seas off the head of Barra.
An hour later Alan walked slowly under the cloudy night. All he had
heard from Ian came back to him with a strange familiarity. Something of
this, at least, he had known before. Some hints of this mysterious
Herdsman had reached his ears. In some inexplicable way his real or
imaginary presence there upon Rona seemed a pre-ordained thing for him.
He knew that the wild imaginings of the islanders had woven the legend
of the Prophet, or of his mysterious message, out of the loom of the
deep longing whereon is woven that larger tapestry, the shadow-thridden
life of the island Gael. Laughter and tears, ordinary hopes and
pleasures, and even joy itself, and bright gaiety, and the swift,
spontaneous imaginations of susceptible natures--all this, of course, is
to be found with the island Gael as with his fellows elsewhere. But
every here and there are some who have in their minds the inheritance
from the dim past of their race, and are oppressed as no other people
are oppressed by the gloom of a strife between spiritual emotion and
material facts. It is the brains of dreamers such as these which clear
the mental life of the community; and it is in these brains are the
mysterious looms which weave the tragic and sorrowful tapestries of
Celtic thought. It were a madness to suppose that life in the isles
consists of nothing but sadness and melancholy. It is not so, or need
not be so, for the Gael is a creature of shadow and shine. But whatever
the people is, the brain of the Gael hears a music that is sadder than
any music there is, and has for its cloudy sky a gloom that shall not
go; for the end is near, and upon the westernmost shores of these remote
isles the voice of Celtic sorrow may be heard crying, "_Cha till, cha
till, cha till mi tuille_": "I will return, I will return, I will return
no more."
Alan knew all this well; and yet he too dreamed his dream--that, even
yet, there might be redemption for the people. He did not share the wild
hope which some of the older islanders held, that Christ Himself shall
come again to redeem an oppressed race; but might not another saviour
arise, another redeeming spirit come into the world? And if so, might
not that child of joy be born out of suffering and sorrow and crime; and
if so, might not the Herdsman be indeed a prophet, the Prophet of the
Woman in whom God should come anew as foretold?
With startled eyes he crossed the thyme-set ledge whereon stood
Caisteal-Rhona. Was it, after all, a message he had received, and was
that which had appeared to him in that lonely cavern of the sea but a
phantom of his own destiny? Was he himself, Alan Carmichael, indeed _Am
Faidh_, the predestined Prophet of the isles?
V
Ever since the night of Marsail's death, Ian had noticed that Alan no
longer doubted, but that in some way a special message had come to him,
a special revelation. On the other hand, he had himself swung further
into his conviction that the vision he had seen in the cavern was, in
truth, that of a living man. On Borosay, he knew, the fishermen believed
that the _aonaran nan creag_, the recluse of the rocks, as commonly they
spoke of him, was no other than Donnacha Ban Carmichael, survived there
through these many years, and long since mad with his loneliness and
because of the burden of his crime.
But by this time the islanders had come to see that Alan MacAilean was
certainly not Donnacha Ban. Even the startling likeness no longer
betrayed them in this way. The ministers and the priests on Berneray and
Barra scoffed at the whole story, and everywhere discouraged the idea
that Donnacha Ban could still be among the living. But for the common
belief that to encounter the Herdsman, whether the lost soul of Donnacha
Ban or indeed the strange phantom of the hills of which the old legends
spoke, was to meet inevitable disaster, the islanders might have been
persuaded to make such a search among the caves of Rona as would almost
certainly have revealed the presence of any who dwelt therein.
But as summer lapsed into autumn, and autumn itself through its golden
silences waned into the shadow of the equinox, a strange, brooding
serenity came upon Alan. Ian himself now doubted his own vision of the
mysterious Herdsman--if he indeed existed at all except in the
imaginations of those who spoke of him either as the Buachaill Ban, or
as the _aonaran nan creag_. If a real man, Ian believed that at last he
had passed away. None saw the Herdsman now; and even Morag MacNeill, who
had often on moonlight nights been startled by the sound of a voice
chanting among the upper solitudes, admitted that she now heard nothing
unusual.
St. Martin's summer came at last, and with it all that wonderful,
dreamlike beauty which bathes the isles in a flood of golden light, and
draws over sea and land a veil of deeper mystery.
One late afternoon, Ian, returning to Caisteal-Rhona after an
unexplained absence of several hours, found Alan sitting at a table.
Spread before him were the sheets of one of the strange old Gaelic tales
which he had ardently begun to translate. Alan lifted and slowly read
the page or paraphrase which he had just laid down. It was after the
homelier Gaelic of the _Eachdaireachd Challum mhic Cruimein_.
"And when that king had come to the island, he lived there in the shadow
of men's eyes; for none saw him by day or by night, and none knew whence
he came or whither he fared; for his feet were shod with silence, and
his way with dusk. But men knew that he was there, and all feared him.
Months, even years, tramped one on the heels of the other, and perhaps
the king gave no sign, but one day he would give a sign; and that sign
was a laughing that was heard somewhere, upon the lonely hills, or on
the lonely wave, or in the heart of him who heard. And whenever the king
laughed, he who heard would fare ere long from his fellows to join that
king in the shadow. But sometimes the king laughed only because of vain
hopes and wild imaginings, for upon these he lives as well as upon the
strange savours of mortality."
That night Alan awakened Ian suddenly, and taking him by the hand made
him promise to go with him on the morrow to the Teampull-Mara.
In vain Ian questioned him as to why he asked this thing. All Alan would
say was that he must go there once again, and with him, for he believed
that a spirit out of heaven had come to reveal to him a wonder.
Distressed by what he knew to be a madness, and fearful that it might
prove to be no passing fantasy, Ian would fain have persuaded him
against this intention. Even as he spoke, however, he realised that it
might be better to accede to his wishes, and, above all, to be there
with him, so that it might not be one only who heard or saw the expected
revelation.
And it was a strange faring indeed, that which occurred on the morrow.
At noon, when the tide was an hour turned in the ebb, they sailed
westward from Caisteal-Rhona. It was in silence they made that strange
journey together; for, while Ian steered, Alan lay down in the hollow of
the boat, with his head against the old man's knees, and slept, or at
least lay still with his eyes closed.
When at last they passed the headland and entered the first of the
sea-arcades, Alan rose and sat beside him. Hauling down the now useless
sail, Ian took an oar and, standing at the prow, urged the boat inward
along the narrow corridor which led to the huge sea-cave of the Altar.
In the deep gloom--for even on that day of golden light and beauty the
green air of the sea-cave was heavy with shadow--there was a deathly
chill. What dull light there was came from the sheen of the green water
which lay motionless along the black basaltic ledges. When at last the
base of the Altar was reached, Ian secured the boat by a rope passed
around a projecting spur, and then seated himself in the stern beside
Alan.
"Tell me, Alan-a-ghaoil, what is this thing that you are thinking you
will hear or see?"
Alan looked at him strangely for a while, but, though his lips moved, he
said nothing.
"Tell me, my heart," Ian urged again, "who is it you expect to see or
hear?"
"_Am Buachaill Ban_," Alan answered, "the Herdsman."
For a moment Ian hesitated. Then, taking Alan's hand in his and raising
it to his lips, he whispered in his ear--
"There is no Herdsman upon Rona. If a man was there who lived solitary,
the _aonaran nan creag_ is dead long since. What you have seen and heard
has been a preying upon you of wild thoughts. Be thinking no more now of
this vision."
"This man," Alan answered quietly, "is not Donnacha Ban, but the Prophet
of whom the people speak. He himself has told me this thing. Yesterday I
was here, and he bade me come again. He spoke out of the shadow that is
about the Altar, though I saw him not. I asked him if he were Donnacha
Ban, and he said 'No.' I asked him if he were _Am Faidh_, and he said
'Yes.' I asked him if he were indeed an immortal spirit and herald of
that which was to be, and he said 'Even so.'"
For a long while after this no word was spoken. The chill of that remote
place began to affect Alan, and he shivered slightly at times. But more
he shivered because of the silence, and because that he who had promised
to be there gave no sign. Sure, he thought, it could not be all a
dream; sure, the Herdsman would come again.
Then at last, turning to Ian, he said, "We must come on the morrow, for
to-day he is not here."
"I will do what you ask, Alan-mo-ghaol."
But of a sudden Alan stepped on the black ledges at the base of the
Altar, and slowly mounted the precipitous rock.
Ian watched him till he became a shadow in that darkness. His heart
leaped when suddenly he heard a cry fall out of the gloom.
"Alan, Alan!" he cried, and a great fear was upon him when no answer
came; but at last he heard him clambering slowly down the perilous slope
of that obscure place. When he reached the ledge Alan stood still
regarding him.
"Why do you not come into the boat?" Ian asked, terrified because of
what he saw in Alan's eyes.
Alan looked at him with parted lips, his breath coming and going like
that of a caged bird.
"What is it?" Ian whispered.
"Ian, when I reached the top of the Altar, and in the dim light that was
there, I saw the dead body of a man lying upon the rock. His head was
lain back so that the gleam from a crevice in the cliff overhead fell
upon it. The man had been dead many hours. He is a man whose hair has
been greyed by years and sorrow, but the man is he who is of my blood;
he whom I resemble so closely; he that the fishermen call the hermit of
the rocks; he that is the Herdsman."
Ian stared, with moving lips: then in a whisper he spoke--