IN EXILE.
One evening in the olden time Lavender and Sheila and Ingram and
old Mackenzie were all sitting high up on the rocks near Borvabost,
chatting to each other, and watching the red light pale on the bosom
of the Atlantic as the sun sank behind the edge of the world. Ingram
was smoking a wooden pipe. Lavender sat with Sheila's hand in his. The
old King of Borva was discoursing of the fishing populations round the
western coasts, and of their various ways and habits.
"I wish I could have seen Tarbert," Lavender was saying, "but the Iona
just passes the mouth of the little harbor as she comes up Loch
Fyne. I know two or three men who go there every year to paint the
fishing-life of the place. It is an odd little place, isn't it?"
"Tarbert?" said Mr. Mackenzie--"you wass wanting to know about
Tarbert? Ah, well, it is getting to be a better place now, but a year
or two ago it wass ferry like hell. Oh yes it wass, Sheila, so you
need not say anything. And this wass the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that
the trawling was not made legal then, and the men they were just like
devils, with the swearing and the drinking and the fighting that went
on; and if you went into the harbor in the open day, you would find
them drunk and fighting, and some of them with blood on their faces,
for it wass a ferry wild time. It wass many a one will say that the
Tarbert-men would run down the police-boat some dark night. And what
was the use of catching the trawlers now and again, and taking their
boats and their nets to be sold at Greenock, when they went themselves
over to Greenock to the auction and bought them back? Oh, it was a
great deal of money they made then: I hef heard of a crew of eight men
getting thirty pounds each man in the course of one night, and that
not seldom mirover."
"But why didn't the government put it down?" Lavender asked.
"Well, you see," Mackenzie answered with the air of a man well
acquainted with the difficulties of ruling--"you see that it wass not
quite sure that the trawling did much harm to the fishing. And the
Jackal--that was the government steamer--she was not much good in
getting the better of the Tarbert-men, who are ferry good with their
boats in the rowing, and are ferry cunning whatever. You know, the
buying boats went out to sea, and took the herring there, and then the
trawlers they would sink their nets and come home in the morning as
if they had not caught one fish, although the boat would be white with
the scales of the herring. And what is more, sir, the government knew
ferry well that if trawling was put down, then there would be a ferry
good many murders; for the Tarbert-men, when they came home to drink
whisky, and wash the whisky down with porter, they were ready to fight
anybody."
"It must be a delightful place to live in," Lavender said.
"Oh, but it is ferry different now," Mackenzie continued--"ferry
different. The men they are nearly all Good Templars now, and there is
no drinking whatever, and there is reading-rooms and such things, and
the place is ferry quiet and respectable."
"I hear," Ingram remarked, "that good people attribute the change to
moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down to want of money."
"Papa, this boy will have to be put to bed," Sheila said.
"Well," Mackenzie answered, "there is not so much money in the place
as there wass in the old times. The shop-keepers do not make so much
money as before, when the men were wild and drunk in the daytime, and
had plenty to spend when the police-boat did not catch them. But the
fishermen, they are ferry much better without the money; and I can
say for them, Mr. Lavender, that there is no better fishermen on the
coast. They are ferry fine, tall men, and they are ferry well dressed
in their blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, whether they are
drunk or whether they are sober. Now look at this, sir, that in the
worst of weather they will neffer tek whisky with them when they go
out to the sea at night, for they think it is cowardly. And they are
ferry fine fellows, and gentlemanly in their ways, and they are ferry
good-natured to strangers."
"I have heard that of them on all hands," Lavender said, "and some day
I hope to put their civility and good-fellowship to the proof."
That was merely the idle conversation of a summer evening: no one paid
any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again
of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert. Let us now
shift the scene of this narrative to Tarbert itself.
When you pass from the broad and blue waters of Loch Fyne into the
narrow and rocky channel leading to Tarbert harbor, you find before
you an almost circular bay, round which stretches an irregular line
of white houses. There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor,
lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and
spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is
green under the shadow of each boat. Along the shore stand the tall
poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the
summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the
daylight shining through the empty windows. Beyond the houses, again,
lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of
sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors
of a late autumn. The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and
heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge
of other and varied hues. In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost
underneath the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins
stand, an artist has put a rough-and-ready easel, and is apparently
busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication
of the rich colors of the craft--their ruddy sails, brown nets and
bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls--already appears
on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills
in their soft autumnal tints and of the bold blue and white sky moving
overhead. Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of
the boats has been placed there on purpose. A boy seated on some nets
occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to
inquire when his penance will be over.
A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no
great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of
the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man
is painting. A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and
curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out,
"Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht?--about
eighty tons I should think."
"Yes," Lavender said, without turning round or taking his eyes off the
canvas.
"Whose is she?"
"Lord Newstead's."
"Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know
whether you were here, I said you were. The fellow asked me if I
was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for
you--that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you
would go out to them and take a run up to Ardishaig."
"I can't, Johnny."
"I'd take you out, you know."
"I don't want to go."
"But look here, Lavender," said the younger man, seizing hold of
Lavender's boat and causing the easel to shake dangerously: "he asked
me to luncheon, too."
"Why don't you go, then?" was the only reply, uttered rather absently.
"I can't go without you."
"Well, I don't mean to go."
The younger man looked vexed for a moment, and then said in a tone of
expostulation, "You know it is very absurd of you going on like this,
Lavender. No fellow can paint decently if he gets out of bed in the
middle of the night and waits for daylight to rush up to his easel.
How many hours have you been at work already to-day? If you don't give
your eyes a rest, they will get color-blind to a dead certainty. Do
you think you will paint the whole place off the face of the earth,
now that the other fellows have gone?"
"I can't be bothered talking to you. Johnny. You'll make me throw
something at you. Go away."
"I think it's rather mean, you know," continued the persistent Johnny,
"for a" fellow like you, who doesn't need it, to come and fill the
market all at once, while we unfortunate devils can scarcely get a
crust. And there are two heron just round the point, and I have my
breech-loader and a dozen cartridges here."
"Go away, Johnny!" That was all the answer he got.
"I'll go out and tell Lord News, tead that you are a cantankerous
brute. I suppose he'll have the decency to offer me luncheon, and I
dare say I could get him a shot at these heron. You are a fool not to
come, Lavender;" and so saying the young man put out again, and he was
heard to go away talking to himself about obstinate idiots and greed
and the certainty of getting a shot at the heron.
When he had quite gone, Lavender, who had scarcely raised his eyes
from his work, suddenly put down his palette and brushes--he almost
dropped them, indeed--and quickly put up both his hands to his head,
pressing them on the side of his temples. The old fisherman in the
boat beyond noticed this strange movement, and forthwith caught
a rope, hauled the boat across a stretch of water, and then came
scrambling over bowsprit, lowered sails and nets to where Lavender had
just sat down.
"Wass there anything the matter, sir?" he said with much evidence of
concern.
"My head is a little bad, Donald," Lavender said, still pressing his
hands on his temples, as if to get rid of some strange feeling. "I
wish you would pull in to the shore and get me some whisky."
"Oh ay," said the old man, hastily scrambling into the little black
boat lying beside the smack; "and it is no wonder to me this will come
to you, sir, for I hef never seen any of the gentlemen so long at the
pentin as you--from the morning till the night; and it is no wonder
to me this will come to you. But I will get you the whushky: it is a
grand thing, the whushky."
The old fisherman was not long in getting ashore and running up to the
cottage in which Lavender lived, and getting a bottle of whisky and a
glass. Then he got down to the boat again, and was surprised that he
could nowhere see Mr. Lavender on board the smack. Perhaps he had lain
down on the nets in the bottom of the boat.
When Donald got out to the smack he found the young man lying
insensible, his face white and his teeth clenched. With something of a
cry the old fisherman jumped into the boat, knelt down, and proceeded
in a rough and ready fashion to force some whisky into Lavender's
mouth. "Oh ay, oh yes, it is a grand thing, the whushky," he muttered
to himself. "Oh yes, sir, you must hef some more: it is no matter
if you will choke. It is ferry good whushky, and will do you no harm
whatever; and oh yes, sir, that is ferry well, and you are all right
again, and you will sit quite quiet now, and you will hef a little
more whushky."
The young man looked round him: "Have you been ashore, Donald? Oh
yes--I suppose so. Did I tumble? Well, I am all right now: it was
the glare of the sea that made me giddy. Take a dram for yourself,
Donald."
"There is but the one glass, sir," said Donald, who had picked up
something of the notions of gentlefolks, "but I will just tek the
bottle;" and so, to avoid drinking out of the same glass (which was
rather a small one), he was good enough to take a pull, and a strong
pull, at the black bottle. Then he heaved a sigh, and wiped the top of
the bottle with his sleeve. "Yes, as I was saying, sir, there was none
of the gentlemen I hef effer seen in Tarbert will keep at the pentin
so long ass you; and many of them will be stronger ass you, and will
be more accustomed to it whatever. But when a man iss making money--"
and Donald shook his head: he knew it was useless to argue.
"But I am not making money, Donald," Lavender said, still looking a
trifle pale. "I doubt whether I have made as much as you have since I
came to Tarbert."
"Oh yes," said Donald contentedly, "all the gentlemen will say that.
They never hef any money. But wass you ever with them when they could
not get a dram because they had no money to pay for it?"
Donald's test of impecuniosity could not be gainsaid. Lavender
laughed, and bade him get back into the other boat.
"'Deed I will not," said Donald sturdily.
Lavender stared at him.
"Oh no: you wass doing quite enough the day already, or you would not
hef tumbled into the boat whatever. And supposing that you was to hef
tumbled into the water, you would have been trooned as sure as you
wass alive."
"And a good job, too, Donald," said the younger man, idly looking at
the lapping green water.
Donald shook his head gravely: "You would not say that if you had
friends of yours that was trooned, and if you had seen them when they
went down in the water."
"They say it is an easy death, Donald."
"They neffer tried it that said that," said the old fisherman
gloomily. "It wass one day the son of my sister wass coming over from
Saltcoats--But I hef no wish to speak of it; and that wass but one
among ferry many that I have known."
"How long is it since you were in the Lewis, did you say?" Lavender
asked, changing the subject. Donald was accustomed to have the talk
suddenly diverted into this channel. He could not tell why the young
English gentleman wanted him continually to be talking about the
Lewis.
"Oh, it is many and many a year ago, as I hef said; and you will know
far more about the Lewis than I will. But Stornoway, that is a fine
big town; and I hef a cousin there that keeps a shop, and is a very
rich man whatever, and many's the time he will ask me to come and see
him. And if the Lord be spared, maybe I will some day."
"You mean if you be spared, Donald."
"Oh, ay: it is all wan," said Donald.
Lavender had brought with him some bread and cheese in a piece of
paper for luncheon; and this store of frugal provisions having been
opened out, the old fisherman was invited to join in--an invitation he
gravely but not eagerly accepted. He took off his blue bonnet and said
grace: then he took the bread and cheese in his hand and looked round
inquiringly. There was a stone jar of water in the bottom of the boat:
that was not what Donald was looking after. Lavender handed him the
black bottle he had brought out from the cottage, which was more
to his mind. And then, this humble meal despatched, the old man was
persuaded to go back to his post, and Lavender continued his work.
The short afternoon was drawing to a close when young Johnny Eyre came
sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing
that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. "Are you at work yet,
Lavender?" he said. "I never saw such a beggar. It's getting quite
dark."
"What sort of luncheon did Newstead give you, Johnny?"
"Oh, something worth going for, I can tell you. You want to live in
Tarbert for a month or two to find out the value of decent cooking
and good wine. He was awfully surprised when I described this place to
him. He wouldn't believe you were living here in a cottage: I said
a garret, for I pitched it hot and strong, mind you. I said you were
living in a garret, that you never saw a razor, and lived on oatmeal
porridge and whisky, and that your only amusement was going out at
night and risking your neck in this delightful boat of mine. You
should have seen him examining this remarkable vessel. And there were
two ladies on board, and they were asking after you, too."
"Who were they?"
"I don't know. I didn't catch their names when I was introduced; but
the noble skipper called one of them Polly."
"Oh, I know."
"Ain't you coming ashore, Lavender? You can't see to work now."
"All right! I shall put my traps ashore, and then I'll have a run with
you down Loch Fyne if you like, Johnny."
"Well, I don't like," said the handsome lad frankly, "for it's looking
rather squally about. It seems to me you're bent on drowning yourself.
Before those other fellows went, they came to the conclusion that you
had committed a murder."
"Did they really?" Lavender said with little interest.
"And if you go away and live in that wild place you were talking of
during the winter, they will be quite sure of it. Why, man, you'd come
back with your hair turned white. You might as well think of living by
yourself at the Arctic Pole."
Neither Johnny Eyre nor any of the men who had just left Tarbert knew
anything of Frank Lavender's recent history, and Lavender himself was
not disposed to be communicative. They would know soon enough when
they went up to London. In the mean time they were surprised to find
that Lavender's habits were very singularly altered. He had grown
miserly. They laughed when he told them he had no money, and he
did not seek to persuade them of the fact; but it was clear, at all
events, that none of them lived so frugally or worked so anxiously
as he. Then, when his work was done in the evening, and when they met
alternately at each other's rooms to dine off mutton and potatoes,
with a glass of whisky and a pipe and a game of cards to follow, what
was the meaning of those sudden fits of silence that would strike in
when the general hilarity was at its pitch? And what was the meaning
of the utter recklessness he displayed when they would go out of
an evening in their open sailing boats to shoot sea-fowl, or make a
voyage along the rocky coast in the dead of night to wait for the
dawn to show them the haunts of the seals? The Lavender they had met
occasionally in London was a fastidious, dilettante, self-possessed,
and yet not disagreeable fellow: this man was almost pathetically
anxious about his work, oftentimes he was morose and silent, and then
again there was no sort of danger or difficulty he was not ready to
plunge into when they were sailing about that iron-bound coast. They
could not make it out, but the joke among themselves was that he had
committed a murder, and therefore he was reckless.
This Johnny Eyre was not much of an artist, but he liked the society
of artists: he had a little money of his own, plenty of time, and
a love of boating and shooting, and so he had pitched his tent at
Tarbert, and was proud to cherish the delusion that he was working
hard and earning fame and wealth. As a matter of fact, he never earned
anything, but he had very good spirits, and living in Tarbert is
cheap.
From the moment that Lavender had come to the place, Johnny Eyre made
him his special companion. He had a great respect for a man who could
shoot anything anywhere; and when he and Lavender came back together
from a cruise, there was no use saying which had actually done
the brilliant deeds the evidence of which was carried ashore. But
Lavender, oddly enough, knew little about sailing, and Johnny was
pleased to assume the airs of an instructor on this point; his only
difficulty being that his pupil had more than the ordinary hardihood
of an ignoramus, and was rather inclined to do reckless things even
after he had sufficient skill to know that they were dangerous.
Lavender got into the small boat, taking his canvas with him, but
leaving his easel in the fishing-smack. He pulled himself and Johnny
Eyre ashore: they scrambled up the rocks and into the road, and then
they went into the small white cottage in which Lavender lived. The
picture was, for greater safety, left in Lavender's bed-room, which
already contained about a dozen canvases with sketches in various
stages on them. Then he went out to his friend again.
"I've had a long day to-day, Johnny. I wish you'd go out with me: the
excitement of a squall would clear one's brain, I fancy."
"Oh, I'll go out if you like," Eyre said, "but I shall take very good
care to run in before the squall comes, if there's any about. I don't
think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning
about half an hour ago down in the south, but nothing has come of it.
There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You
don't seem to care about shooting guillemots, Lavender."
"Well, you see, potting a bird that is sitting on the water--" said
Lavender with a shrug.
"Oh, it isn't as easy as you might imagine. Of course you could kill
them if you liked, but everybody ain't such a swell as you are with a
gun; and mind you, it's uncommonly awkward to catch the right moment
for firing, when the bird goes bobbing up and down on the waves,
disappearing altogether every second second. I think it's very good
fun myself. It is very exciting when you don't know the moment the
bird will dive, and whether you can afford to go any nearer. And as
for shooting them on the water, you have to do that, for when do you
get a chance of shooting them flying?"
"I don't see much necessity for shooting them at any time," said
Lavender as he and Eyre went down to the shore again, "but I am glad
to see you get some amusement out of it. Have you got cartridges with
you? Is your gun in the boat?"
"Yes. Come along. We'll have a run out, any how."
When they pulled out again to that cockle-shell craft with its stone
ballast and big brown mainsail, the boy was sent ashore and the two
companions set out by themselves. By this time the sun had gone down,
and a strange green twilight was shining over the sea. As they got
farther out the dusky shores seemed to have a pale mist hanging around
them, but there were no clouds on the hills, for a clear sky shone
overhead, awaiting the coming of the stars. Strange indeed was the
silence out here, broken only by the lapping of the water on the sides
of the boat and the calling of birds in the distance. Far away the
orange ray of a lighthouse began to quiver in the lambent dusk. The
pale green light on the waves did not die out, but the shadows grew
darker, so that Eyre, with his gun close at hand, could not make out
his groups of guillemots, although he heard them calling all around.
They had come out too late, indeed, for any such purpose.
Thither on those beautiful evenings, after his day's work was over,
Lavender was accustomed to come, either by himself or with his
present companion. Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his solitude: he was
invariably too eager to get a shot, his chief delight being to get to
the bow, to let the boat drift for a while silently through the waves,
so that she might come unawares on some flock of sea-birds. Lavender,
sitting in the stern with the tiller in his hand, was really alone in
this world of water and sky, with all the majesty of the night and the
stars around him.
And on these occasions he used to sit and dream of the beautiful time
long ago in Loch Roag, when nights such as these used to come over the
Atlantic, and find Sheila and himself sailing on the peaceful waters,
or seated high up on the rocks listening to the murmur of the tide.
Here was the same strange silence, the same solemn and pale light in
the sky, the same mystery of the moving plain all around them that
seemed somehow to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad. Many a time his
heart became so full of recollections that he had almost called aloud
"Sheila! Sheila!" and waited for the sea and the sky to answer him
with the sound of her voice. In these bygone days he had pleased
himself with the fancy that the girl was somehow the product of all
the beautiful aspects of Nature around her. It was the sea that was in
her eyes, it was the fair sunlight that shone in her face, the breath
of her life was the breath of the moorland winds. He had written
verses about this fancy of hers; and he had conveyed them secretly to
her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them. And many
a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit
would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music,
the music of irreparable loss. What did they say to him, now that
he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out of the strange
past?--
For she and the clouds and the breezes were one.
And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sun
To charm and bewilder all men with the grace
They combined and conferred on her wonderful face.
The sea lapped around the boat, the green light on the waves grew
somehow less intense; in the silence the first of the stars came out,
and somehow the time in which he had seen Sheila in these rare and
magical colors seemed to become more and more remote:
An angel in passing looked downward and smiled,
And carried to heaven the fame of the child;
And then what the waves and the sky and the sun
And the tremulous breath of the hills had begun,
Required but one touch. To finish the whole,
God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul.
And what had he done with this rare treasure entrusted to him? His
companions, jesting among themselves, had said that he had committed
a murder: in his own heart there was something at this moment of a
murderer's remorse.
Johnny Eyre uttered a short cry. Lavender looked ahead and saw that
some black object was disappearing among the waves.
"What a fright I got!" Eyre said with a laugh. "I never saw the fellow
come near, and he came up just below the bowsprit. He came heeling
over as quiet as a mouse. I say, Lavender, I think we might as well
cut it now: my eyes are quite bewildered with the light on the water.
I couldn't make out a kraken if it was coming across our bows."
"Don't be in a hurry, Johnny. We'll put her out a bit, and then let
her drift back. I want to tell you a story."
"Oh, all right," he said; and so they put her head round, and soon she
was lying over before the breeze, and slowly drawing away from those
outlines of the coast which showed them where Tarbert harbor cut into
the land. And then once more they let her drift, and young Eyre took
a nip of whisky and settled himself so as to hear Lavender's story,
whatever it might be.
"You knew I was married?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you ever wonder why my wife did not come here?"
"Why should I wonder? Plenty of fellows have to spend half the
year apart from their wives: the only thing in your case I couldn't
understand was the necessity for your doing it. For you know that's
all nonsense about your want of funds."
"It isn't nonsense, Johnny. But now, if you like, I will tell you why
my wife has never come here."
Then he told the story, out there under the stars, with no thought of
interruption, for there was a world of moving water around them. It
was the first time he had let any one into his confidence, and perhaps
the darkness aided his revelations; but at any rate he went over all
the old time, until it seemed to his companion that he was talking to
himself, so aimless and desultory were his pathetic reminiscences. He
called her Sheila, though Eyre had never heard her name. He spoke of
her father as though Eyre must have known him. And yet this rambling
series of confessions and self-reproaches and tender memories did form
a certain sort of narrative, so that the young fellow sitting quietly
in the boat there got a pretty fair notion of what had happened.
"You are an unlucky fellow," he said to Lavender. "I never heard
anything like that. But you know you must have exaggerated a good deal
about it: I should like to hear her story. I am sure you could not
have treated her like that."
"God knows how I did, but the truth is just as I have told you; and
although I was blind enough at the time, I can read the whole story
now in letters of fire. I hope you will never have such a thing
constantly before your eyes, Johnny."
The lad was silent for some time, and then he said, rather timidly,
"Do you think, Lavender, she knows how sorry you are?"
"If she did, what good would that do?" said the other.
"Women are awfully forgiving, you know," Johnny said in a hesitating
fashion. "I--I don't think it is quite fair not to give her a
chance--a chance of--of being generous, you know. You know, I think
the better a woman is, the more inclined she is to be charitable to
other folks who mayn't be quite up to the mark, you know; and you see,
it ain't every one who can claim to be always doing the right thing;
and the next best thing to that is to be sorry for what you've done
and try to do better. It's rather cheeky, you know, my advising you,
or trying to make you pluck up your spirits; but I'll tell you what
it is, Lavender, if I knew her well enough I'd go straight to her
to-morrow, and I'd put in a good word for you, and tell her some
things she doesn't know; and you'd see if she wouldn't write you a
letter, or even come and see you."
"That is all nonsense, Johnny, though it's very good of you to think
of it. The mischief I have done isn't to be put aside by the mere
writing of a letter."
"But it seems to me," Johnny said with some warmth, "that you are as
unfair to her as to yourself in not giving her a chance. You don't
know how willing she may be to overlook everything that is past."
"If she were, I am not fit to go near her. I couldn't have the cheek
to try, Johnny."
"But what more can you be than sorry for what is past?" said the
younger fellow persistently. "And you don't know how pleased it makes
a good woman to give her the chance of forgiving anybody. And if we
were all to set up for being archangels, and if there was to be no
sort of getting back for us after we had made a slip, where should we
be? And in place of going to her and making it all right, you start
away for the Sound of Islay; and, by Jove! won't you find out what
spending a winter under these Jura mountains means! I have tried it,
and I know."
A flash of lightning, somewhere down among the Arran hills,
interrupted the speaker, and drew the attention of the two young men
to the fact that in the east and south-east the stars were no longer
visible, while something of a brisk breeze had sprung up.
"This breeze will take us back splendidly," Johnny said, getting ready
again for the run in to Tarbert.
He had scarcely spoken when Lavender called attention to a
fishing-smack that was apparently making for the harbor. With all
sails set she was sweeping by them like some black phantom across the
dark plain of the sea. They could not make out the figures on board of
her, but as she passed some one called out to them.
"What did he say?" Lavender asked.
"I don't know," his companion said, "but it was some sort of warning,
I suppose. By Jove, Lavender, what is that?"
Behind them there was a strange hissing noise that the wind brought
along to them, but nothing could be seen.
"Rain, isn't it?" Lavender said.
"There never was rain like that," his companion said. "That is a
squall, and it will be here presently. We must haul down the sails.
For God's sake, look sharp, Lavender!"
There was certainly no time to lose, for the noise behind them was
increasing and deepening into a roar, and the heavens had grown black
overhead, so that the spars and ropes of the crank little boat could
scarcely be made out. They had just got the sails down when the first
gust of the squall struck the boat as with a blow of iron, and sent
her staggering forward into the trough of the sea. Then all around
them came the fury of the storm, and the cause of the sound they had
heard was apparent in the foaming water that was torn and scattered
abroad by the gale. Up from the black south-east came the fierce
hurricane, sweeping everything before it, and hurling this creaking
and straining boat about as if it were a cork. They could see little
of the sea around them, but they could hear the awful noise of it, and
they knew they were being swept along on those hurrying waves toward a
coast which was invisible in the blackness of the night.
"Johnny, we'll never make the harbor: I can't see a light," Lavender
cried, "Hadn't we better try to keep her up the loch?"
"We _must_ make the harbor," his companion said: "she can't stand this
much longer."
Blinding torrents of rain were now being driven down by the force
of the wind, so that all around them nothing was visible but a wild
boiling and seething of clouds and waves. Eyre was up at the bow,
trying to catch some glimpse of the outlines of the coast or to make
out some light that would show them where the entrance to Tarbert
harbor lay. If only some lurid shaft of lightning would pierce the
gloom! for they knew that they were being driven headlong on an
iron-bound coast; and amid all the noise of the wind and the sea they
listened with a fear that had no words for the first roar of the waves
along the rocks.
Suddenly Lavender heard a shrill scream, almost like the cry that a
hare gives when it finds the dog's fangs in its neck, and at the same
moment, amid all the darkness of the night, a still blacker object
seemed to start out of the gloom right ahead of them. The boy had no
time to shout any warning beyond that cry of despair, for with a wild
crash the boat struck on the rocks, rose and struck again, and was
then dashed over by a heavy sea, both of its occupants being thrown
into the fierce swirls of foam that were dashing in and through the
rocky channels. Strangely enough, they were thrown together; and
Lavender, clinging to the sea-weed, instinctively laid hold of his
companion just as the latter appeared to be slipping into the gulf
beneath.
"Johnny," he cried, "hold on!--hold on to me--or we shall both go in a
minute."
But the lad had no life left in him, and lay like a log there, while
each wave that struck and rolled hissing and gurgling through the
channels between the rocks seemed to drag at him and seek to suck him
down into the darkness. With one despairing effort, Lavender struggled
to get him farther up on the slippery sea-weed, and succeeded. But his
success had lost him his own vantage-ground, and he knew that he was
going down into the swirling waters beneath, close by the broken boat
that was still being dashed about by the waves.