"THERE'S GOLD ON THE CUSHAGS YET."
Then there came a breath of wind. At first it was soft as an angel's
whisper. It grew stronger, and ruffled the sea. Every man lifted his
eyes and looked at his mates. Each was struggling with a painful idea
that perhaps he was the victim of a delusion of the sense. But the chill
breath of the wind was indeed among them.
"Isn't it beginning to puff up from the sou'west?" asked Crennell, in an
uncertain whisper. At that old Quilleash jumped to his feet. The idea of
the supernatural had gone from him. "Now for the sheets and to make
sail," he cried, and spat the quid.
One after one the men got up and bustled about. Their limbs were
wellnigh frozen stiff. All was stir and animation in an instant. Pulling
at the ropes, the men had begun to laugh, yes, with their husky,
grating, tear-drowned voices, even to laugh through their grisly beards.
A gruesome sense of the ludicrous had taken hold of them. It was the
swift reaction from solemn thoughts. When the boat felt her canvas she
shook herself like a sea-bird trying her wings, then shot off at full
flight.
"Bear a hand there. Lay on, man alive. Why, you're going about like a
brewing-pan, old fellow. Pull, boy, pull. What are your arms for, eh?"
Old Quilleash's eyes, which had been dim with tears a moment ago,
glistened with grisly mischief. "Who hasn't heard that a Manxman's arms
are three legs?" he said with a hungry grin. How the men laughed! What
humor there was now in the haggard old saw!
"Where are you for, Billy?" cried Corkell.
"Peel, boy, Peel, d---- it, Peel," shouted Quilleash.
"Hurroo! Bould fellow! Ha, ha, he, he."
"Hurroo! There's gold on the cushags yet."
How they worked! In two minutes the mast was stepped, the mainsail and
mizzen were up, and they filled away and stood out. From the shores of
death they had sailed somehow into the waters of life, and hope was
theirs once more.
They began to talk of what had caused the wind. "It was the blessed St.
Patrick," said Corkell. St. Patrick was the patron saint of that sea,
and Corkell was more than half a Catholic, his mother being a fish-wife
from Kinsale.
"Saint Patrick be ----," cried Ned Teare, with a scornful laugh, and
they got to words and at length almost to blows.
Old Quilleash was at the tiller. "Drop it," he shouted, "we're in the
down stream for Contrary, and we'll be in harbor in ten minutes."
"God A'mighty! it's running a ten-knots tide," said Teare.
In less than ten minutes they were sailing under the castle islet up to
the wooden pier, having been eighteen hours on the water.
Not a man of the four had given a thought to Dan, whether he wished to
go back to the island, or to make a foreign port where his name and his
crime would be unknown. Only the lad Davy had hung about him where he
sat by the hatches. Dan's pale face was firm and resolute, and the dream
of a smile was on his hard-drawn lips. But his despair had grown into
courage, and he knew no fear at all.
The sun was down, the darkness was gathering, and through the day-mist
the dew fog was rising as the fishing-boat put to under the lee of a
lantern newly lighted, that was stuck out from the end of the pier on a
pole. The quay was almost deserted. Only the old harbor-master was
there, singing out, as by duty bound, his lusty oaths at their
lumberings. Never before did the old grumbler's strident voice sound so
musical as now, and even his manifest ill-temper was sweet to-night, for
it seemed to tell the men that thus far they were not suspected.
The men went their way together, and Dan went off alone. He took the
straightest course home. Seven long miles over a desolate road he
tramped in the darkness and never a star came out, and the moon, which
was in its last quarter, struggling behind a rack of cloud, lightened
the sky sometimes, but did not appear. As he passed through Michael he
noticed, though his mind was preoccupied and his perception obscure,
that the street was more that usually silent, and that few lights burned
behind the window-blinds. Even the low porch of the "Three Legs," when
Dan came to it, was deserted, and hardly the sound of a voice came from
within the little pot-house. Only in a vague way did these impressions
communicate themselves to Dan's stunned intelligence as he plodded
along, but hardly had he passed out of the street when he realized the
cause of the desolation. A great glow came from a spot in front of him,
as of many lanterns and torches burning together, and though in his
bewilderment he had not noticed it before, the lights lit all the air
about them. In the midst of these lights there came and went out of the
darkness the figures of a great company of people, sometimes bright with
the glare on their faces, sometimes black with the deep shadow of the
torchlight.
Obscure as his ideas were, Dan comprehended everything in an instant,
and, chilled as he was to the heart's core by the terrors of the last
night and day, his very bones seemed now to grow cold within him.
It was a funeral by torchlight, and these maimed rites were, by an
ancient usage, long disused, but here revived, the only burial of one
whose death had been doubtful, or whose body had washed ashore on the
same day.
The people were gathered on the side of the churchyard near to the high
road, between the road and the church. Dan crept up to the opposite
side, leaped the low cobble wall, and placed himself under the shadow of
the vestry by the chancel. He was then standing beneath the window he
had leaped out of in his effort to escape the Bishop on that Christmas
Eve long ago of his boyish freak at Oiel Verree.
About an open vault three of four mourners were standing, and, a little
apart from them a smoking and flickering torch cast its light on their
faces. There was the Bishop, with his snowy head bare and deeply bowed,
and there by his elbow was Jarvis Kerruish in his cloak and beaver, with
arms folded under his chin. And walking to and fro, from side to side,
with a quick nervous step, breaking out into alternate shrill cries and
harsh commands to four men who had descended into the vault, was the
little, restless figure of the Deemster. Behind these, and about them
was the close company of the people, with the light coming and going on
their faces, a deep low murmur, as of many whispers together, rising out
of their midst.
Dan shook from head to foot. His heart seemed to stand still. He knew on
what business the mourners were met; they were there to bury Ewan. He
felt an impulse to scream, and then another impulse to turn and fly. But
he could not utter the least cry, and quivering in every limb he could
not stir. Standing there in silence he clung to the stone wall with
trembling fingers.
The body had been lowered to its last home, and the short obsequies
began. The service for the dead was not read, but the Bishop stretched
out his hands above the open vault and prayed. Dan heard the words, but
it was as if he heard the voice only. They beat on his dazed, closed
mind as a sea-gull, blown by the wind, beats against a window on a
stormy night. While the Bishop prayed in broken accents, the deep thick
boom of the sea came up from the distant shore between the low-breathed
murmurs of the people.
Dan dropped to his knees, breathless and trembling. He tried to pray,
too, but no prayer would come. His mind was beaten, and his soul was
barren. His father's faltering voice ceased, and then a half-stifled
moan burst from his own lips. In the silence the moan seemed to fall on
every ear, and the quick ear of the Deemster was instantly arrested.
"Who's that?" he cried, and twisted about.
But all was still once more, and then the people began to sing. It was a
strange sight, and a strange sound: the torches, the hard furrowed faces
in the flickering light, the white-headed Bishop, the restless Deemster,
and the voices ringing out in the night over the open grave. And from
where he knelt Dan lifted his eyes, and by the light of the torches he
saw the clock in the church tower; the hands still stood at five.
He rose to his feet and turned away. His step fell softly on the grass
of the churchyard. At one instant he thought that there were footsteps
behind him. He stopped and stretched his arms half-fearfully toward the
sound. There was nothing. After he had leaped the cobble wall, he was
conscious that he had stopped again, and was listening as though to
learn if he had been observed.