The Mystery of the Sea
New 6s. Novels
THE ETERNAL CITY
BY HALL CAINE
THE ASSASSINS
BY N. M. MEAKIN
SCARLET AND HYSSOP
BY E. F. BENSON
THE LUCK OF THE VAILS
BY E. F. BENSON
THE STORY OF EDEN
BY DOLF WYLLARDE
A PROPHET OF THE REAL
BY ESTHER MILLER
SONS OF THE SWORD
BY MARGARET L. WOODS
BY BREAD ALONE
BY J. K. FRIEDMAN
THE RIGHT OF WAY
BY GILBERT PARKER
FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER
BY MAXWELL GRAY
JACK RAYMOND
BY E. L. VOYNICH
LOVE AND HIS MASK
BY MÉNIE MURIEL DOWN
TANGLED TRINITIES
BY DANIEL WOODROFFE
GILLETTE'S MARRIAGE
BY MAMIE BOWLES
VOYSEY
BY R. O. PROWSE
SAWDUST
BY DOROTHEA GERARD
FOREST FOLK
BY JAMES PRIOR
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
The
Mystery of the Sea
By
Bram Stoker
Author of "Dracula"
[Illustration]
London
William Heinemann
1902
_All rights reserved._
_This Edition enjoys copyright in all
countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and has been copyrighted in
the United States of America by
Bram Stoker, 1902._
TO
DAISY GILBEY RIVIERE
OF THE
THIRD GENERATION
OF
LOVING AND LOYAL FRIENDS
[Illustration]
"To win the mystery o' the sea,
"An' learn the secrets that there be,
"Gather in ane these weirds three:
"A gowden moon on a flowin' tide;
"An' Lammas floods for the spell to bide;
"An' a gowden mon wi death for his bride."
[Gælic verse and English translation.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SECOND SIGHT 3
II. GORMALA 9
III. AN ANCIENT RUNE 16
IV. LAMMAS FLOODS 23
V. THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA 32
VI. THE MINISTERS OF THE DOOM 44
VII. FROM OTHER AGES AND THE ENDS OF THE EARTH 51
VIII. A RUN ON THE BEACH 66
IX. CONFIDENCES AND SECRET WRITING 80
X. A CLEAR HORIZON 94
XI. IN THE TWILIGHT 104
XII. THE CIPHER 113
XIII. A RIDE THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS 122
XIV. A SECRET SHARED 130
XV. A PECULIAR DINNER PARTY 138
XVI. REVELATIONS 145
XVII. SAM ADAMS'S TASK 152
XVIII. FIREWORKS AND JOAN OF ARC 159
XIX. ON CHANGING ONE'S NAME 165
XX. COMRADESHIP 173
XXI. THE OLD FAR WEST AND THE NEW 180
XXII. CROM CASTLE 187
XXIII. SECRET SERVICE 195
XXIV. A SUBTLE PLAN 200
XXV. INDUCTIVE RATIOCINATION 207
XXVI. A WHOLE WEDDING DAY 215
XXVII. ENTRANCE TO THE CAVERN 222
XXVIII. VOICES IN THE DARK 229
XXIX. THE MONUMENT 237
XXX. THE SECRET PASSAGE 244
XXXI. MARJORY'S ADVENTURE 251
XXXII. THE LOST SCRIPT 260
XXXIII. DON BERNARDINO 269
XXXIV. THE ACCOLADE 277
XXXV. THE POPE'S TREASURE 285
XXXVI. THE RISING TIDE 293
XXXVII. ROUND THE CLOCK 302
XXXVIII. THE DUTY OF A WIFE 310
XXXIX. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 317
XL. THE REDEMPTION OF A TRUST 326
XLI. TREASURE TROVE 335
XLII. A STRUGGLE 346
XLIII. THE HONOUR OF A SPANIARD 355
XLIV. THE VOICE IN THE DUST 364
XLV. DANGER 374
XLVI. ARDIFFERY MANSE 382
XLVII. THE DUMB CAN SPEAK 394
XLVIII. DUNBUY HAVEN 403
XLIX. GORMALA'S LAST HELP 413
L. THE EYES OF THE DEAD 423
LI. IN THE SEA FOG 433
LII. THE SKARES 443
LIII. FROM THE DEEP 451
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[Illustration]
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA
CHAPTER I
SECOND SIGHT
I had just arrived at Cruden Bay on my annual visit, and after a late
breakfast was sitting on the low wall which was a continuation of the
escarpment of the bridge over the Water of Cruden. Opposite to me,
across the road and standing under the only little clump of trees in the
place was a tall, gaunt old woman, who kept looking at me intently. As I
sat, a little group, consisting of a man and two women, went by. I found
my eyes follow them, for it seemed to me after they had passed me that
the two women walked together and the man alone in front carrying on his
shoulder a little black box--a coffin. I shuddered as I thought, but
a moment later I saw all three abreast just as they had been. The old
woman was now looking at me with eyes that blazed. She came across the
road and said to me without preface:
"What saw ye then, that yer e'en looked so awed?" I did not like to
tell her so I did not answer. Her great eyes were fixed keenly upon me,
seeming to look me through and through. I felt that I grew quite red,
whereupon she said, apparently to herself: "I thocht so! Even I did not
see that which he saw."
"How do you mean?" I queried. She answered ambiguously: "Wait! Ye shall
perhaps know before this hour to-morrow!"
Her answer interested me and I tried to get her to say more; but she
would not. She moved away with a grand stately movement that seemed to
become her great gaunt form.
After dinner whilst I was sitting in front of the hotel, there was a
great commotion in the village; much running to and fro of men and women
with sad mien. On questioning them I found that a child had been drowned
in the little harbour below. Just then a woman and a man, the same that
had passed the bridge earlier in the day, ran by with wild looks. One of
the bystanders looked after them pityingly as he said:
"Puir souls. It's a sad home-comin' for them the nicht."
"Who are they?" I asked. The man took off his cap reverently as he
answered:
"The father and mother of the child that was drowned!" As he spoke I
looked round as though some one had called me.
There stood the gaunt woman with a look of triumph on her face.
* * * * *
The curved shore of Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, is backed by a waste of
sandhills in whose hollows seagrass and moss and wild violets, together
with the pretty "grass of Parnassus" form a green carpet. The surface of
the hills is held together by bent-grass and is eternally shifting as
the wind takes the fine sand and drifts it to and fro. All behind is
green, from the meadows that mark the southern edge of the bay to the
swelling uplands that stretch away and away far in the distance, till
the blue mist of the mountains at Braemar sets a kind of barrier. In
the centre of the bay the highest point of the land that runs downward
to the sea looks like a miniature hill known as the Hawklaw; from this
point onward to the extreme south, the land runs high with a gentle
trend downwards.
Cruden sands are wide and firm and the sea runs out a considerable
distance. When there is a storm with the wind on shore the whole bay is
a mass of leaping waves and broken water that threatens every instant
to annihilate the stake-nets which stretch out here and there along the
shore. More than a few vessels have been lost on these wide stretching
sands, and it was perhaps the roaring of the shallow seas and the terror
which they inspired which sent the crews to the spirit room and the
bodies of those of them which came to shore later on, to the churchyard
on the hill.
If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand
hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks
which work the extremities are its teeth. To the north the rocks of red
granite rise jagged and broken. To the south, a mile and a half away as
the crow flies, Nature seems to have manifested its wildest forces. It
is here, where the little promontory called Whinnyfold juts out, that
the two great geological features of the Aberdeen coast meet. The red
sienite of the north joins the black gneiss of the south. That union
must have been originally a wild one; there are evidences of an upheaval
which must have shaken the earth to its centre. Here and there are great
masses of either species of rock hurled upwards in every conceivable
variety of form, sometimes fused or pressed together so that it is
impossible to say exactly where gneiss ends or sienite begins; but
broadly speaking here is an irregular line of separation. This line
runs seawards to the east and its strength is shown in its outcrop. For
half a mile or more the rocks rise through the sea singly or in broken
masses ending in a dangerous cluster known as "The Skares" and which has
had for centuries its full toll of wreck and disaster. Did the sea hold
its dead where they fell, its floor around the Skares would be whitened
with their bones, and new islands could build themselves with the piling
wreckage. At times one may see here the ocean in her fiercest mood;
for it is when the tempest drives from the south-east that the sea is
fretted amongst the rugged rocks and sends its spume landwards. The
rocks that at calmer times rise dark from the briny deep are lost to
sight for moments in the grand onrush of the waves. The seagulls which
usually whiten them, now flutter around screaming, and the sound of
their shrieks comes in on the gale almost in a continuous note, for the
single cries are merged in the multitudinous roar of sea and air.
The village, squatted beside the emboucher of the Water of Cruden at the
northern side of the bay is simple enough; a few rows of fishermen's
cottages, two or three great red-tiled drying-sheds nestled in the
sand-heap behind the fishers' houses. For the rest of the place as it
was when first I saw it, a little lookout beside a tall flagstaff on
the northern cliff, a few scattered farms over the inland prospect, one
little hotel down on the western bank of the Water of Cruden with a
fringe of willows protecting its sunk garden which was always full of
fruits and flowers.
From the most southern part of the beach of Cruden Bay to Whinnyfold
village the distance is but a few hundred yards; first a steep pull up
the face of the rock; and then an even way, beside part of which runs
a tiny stream. To the left of this path, going towards Whinnyfold, the
ground rises in a bold slope and then falls again all round, forming a
sort of wide miniature hill of some eighteen or twenty acres. Of this
the southern side is sheer, the black rock dipping into the waters of
the little bay of Whinnyfold, in the centre of which is a picturesque
island of rock shelving steeply from the water on the northern side, as
is the tendency of all the gneiss and granite in this part. But to east
and north there are irregular bays or openings, so that the furthest
points of the promontory stretch out like fingers. At the tips of these
are reefs of sunken rock falling down to deep water and whose existence
can only be suspected in bad weather when the rush of the current
beneath sends up swirling eddies or curling masses of foam. These little
bays are mostly curved and are green where falling earth or drifting
sand have hidden the outmost side of the rocks and given a foothold to
the seagrass and clover. Here have been at some time or other great
caves, now either fallen in or silted up with sand, or obliterated with
the earth brought down in the rush of surface-water in times of long
rain. In one of these bays, Broad Haven, facing right out to the Skares,
stands an isolated pillar of rock called locally the "Puir mon" through
whose base, time and weather have worn a hole through which one may walk
dryshod.
Through the masses of rocks that run down to the sea from the sides
and shores of all these bays are here and there natural channels with
straight edges as though cut on purpose for the taking in of the cobbles
belonging to the fisher folk of Whinnyfold.
When first I saw the place I fell in love with it. Had it been possible
I should have spent my summer there, in a house of my own, but the want
of any place in which to live forbade such an opportunity. So I stayed
in the little hotel, the Kilmarnock Arms.
The next year I came again, and the next, and the next. And then I
arranged to take a feu at Whinnyfold and to build a house overlooking
the Skares for myself. The details of this kept me constantly going to
Whinnyfold, and my house to be was always in my thoughts.
Hitherto my life had been an uneventful one. At school I was, though
secretly ambitious, dull as to results. At College I was better off, for
my big body and athletic powers gave me a certain position in which I
had to overcome my natural shyness. When I was about eight and twenty I
found myself nominally a barrister, with no knowledge whatever of the
practice of law and but little less of the theory, and with a commission
in the Devil's Own--the irreverent name given to the Inns of Court
Volunteers. I had few relatives, but a comfortable, though not great,
fortune; and I had been round the world, dilettante fashion.