AN ANCIENT RUNE
On the next day I rode on my bicycle to Peterhead, and walked on the
pier. It was a bright clear day, and a fresh northern breeze was
blowing. The fishing boats were ready to start at the turn of the tide;
and as I came up the first of them began to pass out through the harbour
mouth. Their movement was beautiful to see; at first slowly, and then
getting faster as the sails were hoisted, till at last they swept
through the narrow entrance, scuppers under, righting themselves as they
swung before the wind in the open sea. Now and again a belated smacksman
came hurrying along to catch his boat before she should leave the pier.
The eastern pier of Peterhead is guarded by a massive wall of granite,
built in several steps or tiers, which breaks the fury of the gale. When
a northern storm is on, it is a wild spot; the waves dash over it in
walls of solid green topped with mountainous masses of foam and spray.
But at present, with the July sun beating down, it was a vantage post
from which to see the whole harbour and the sea without. I climbed up
and sat on the top, looking on admiringly, and lazily smoked in quiet
enjoyment. Presently I noticed some one very like Gormala come hurrying
along the pier, and now and again crouching behind one of the mooring
posts. I said nothing but kept an eye on her, for I supposed that she
was at her usual game of watching some one.
Soon a tall man strode leisurely along, and from every movement of the
woman I could see that he was the subject of her watching. He came near
where I sat, and stood there with that calm unconcerned patience which
is a characteristic of the fisherman.
He was a fine-looking fellow, well over six feet high, with a tangled
mass of thick red-yellow hair and curly, bushy beard. He had lustrous,
far-seeing golden-brown eyes, and massive, finely-cut features. His
pilot-cloth trousers spangled all over with silver herring scales, were
tucked into great, bucket-boots. He wore a heavy blue jersey and a cap
of weazel skin. I had been thinking of the decline of the herring from
the action of the trawlers in certain waters, and fancied this would be
a good opportunity to get a local opinion. Before long I strolled over
and joined this son of the Vikings. He gave it, and it was a decided
one, uncompromisingly against the trawlers and the laws which allowed
them to do their nefarious work. He spoke in a sort of old-fashioned,
biblical language which was moderate and devoid of epithets, but full
of apposite illustration. When he had pointed out that certain fishing
grounds, formerly most prolific of result to the fishers, were now
absolutely worthless he ended his argument:
"And, sure, good master, it stands to rayson. Suppose you be a farmer,
and when you have prepared your land and manured it, you sow your seed
and plough the ridges and make it all safe from wind and devastatin'
storm. If, when the green corn be shootin' frae the airth, you take your
harrow and drag it ath'art the springin' seed, where be then the promise
of your golden grain?"
For a moment or two the beauty of his voice, the deep, resonant,
earnestness of his tone and the magnificent, simple purity of the man
took me away from the scene. He seemed as though I had looked him
through and through, and had found him to be throughout of golden
worth. Possibly it was the imagery of his own speech and the colour
which his eyes and hair and cap suggested, but he seemed to me for an
instant as a small figure projected against a background of rolling
upland clothed in ripe grain. Round his feet were massed the folds of
a great white sheet whose edges faded into air. In a moment the image
passed, and he stood before me in his full stature.
I almost gasped, for just behind him, where she had silently come,
stood Gormala, gazing not at the fisherman but at me, with eyes that
positively blazed with a sort of baleful eagerness. She was looking
straight into my eyes; I knew it when I caught the look of hers.
The fisherman went on talking. I did not, however, hear what he was
saying, for again some mysterious change had come over our surroundings.
The blue sea had over it the mystery of the darkness of the night; the
high noon sun had lost its fiery vigour and shone with the pale yellow
splendour of a full moon. All around me, before and on either hand, was
a waste of waters; the very air and earth seemed filmed with moving
water, and the sound of falling waters was in my ears. Again, the golden
fisherman was before me for an instant, not as a moving speck but in
full size now he lay prone; limp and lifeless, with waxen cold cheeks,
in the eloquent inaction of death. The white sheet--I could see now that
it was a shroud--was around him up to his heart. I seemed to feel
Gormala's eyes burning into my brain as I looked. All at once everything
seemed to resume its proper proportion, and I was listening calmly to
the holding forth of the Viking.
I turned instinctively and looked at Gormala. For an instant her eyes
seemed to blaze triumphantly; then she pulled the little shawl which she
wore closer round her shoulders and, with a gesture full of modesty and
deference turned away. She climbed up the ridges of the harbour wall and
sat looking across as at the sea beyond, now studded with a myriad of
brown sails.
A little later the stolid indifference as to time slipped all at once
from the fisherman. He was instinct with life and action, and with a
touch of his cap and a "Farewell good Master!" stood poised on the very
edge of the pier ready to spring on a trim, weather-beaten smack which
came rushing along almost grazing the rough stone work. It made our
hearts jump as he sprang on board and taking the tiller from the hand
of the steersman turned the boat's head to the open sea. As she rushed
out through the harbour mouth we heard behind us the voice of an old
fisherman who had hobbled up to us:
"He'll do that once too often! Lauchlane Macleod is like all these men
from Uist and the rest of the Out Islanders. They don't care 'naught
about naught.'"
Lauchlane Macleod! The very man of whom Gormala had prophesied! The very
mention of his name seemed to turn me cold.
After lunch at the hotel I played golf on the links till evening drew
near. Then I got on my bicycle to return home. I had laboured slowly up
the long hill to the Stirling quarry when I saw Gormala sitting on the
roadside on a great boulder of red granite. She was evidently looking
out for me, for when I came near she rose up and deliberately stood in
the roadway in my path. I jumped off my wheel and asked her point blank
what she wanted with me so much that she stopped me on the road.
Gormala was naturally an impressive figure, but at present she looked
weird and almost unearthly. Her tall, gaunt form lit by the afterglow in
a soft mysterious light was projected against the grey of the darkening
sea, whose sombreness was emphasised by the brilliant emerald green of
the sward which fell from where we stood to the jagged cliff-line.
The loneliness of the spot was profound. From where we stood not a house
was to be seen, and the darkening sea was desert of sails. It seemed as
if we two were the only living things in nature's vast expanse. To me
it was a little awesome. Gormala's first mysterious greeting when I had
seen the mourning for the child, and her persistent following of me ever
since, had begun to get on my nerves. She had become a sort of enforced
condition to me, and whether she was present in the flesh or not, the
expectation or the apprehension of her coming--I hardly knew which it
was--kept my thoughts perpetually interested in her. Now, her weird,
statuesque attitude and the scene around us finished my intellectual
subjugation. The weather had changed to an almost inconceivable degree.
The bright clear sky of the morning had become darkly mysterious, and
the wind had died away to an ominous calm. Nature seemed altogether
sentient, and willing to speak directly to a man in my own receptive
mood. The Seer-woman evidently knew this, for she gave fully a minute of
silence for the natural charm to work before she spoke. Then in a solemn
warning voice she said:
"Time is flying by us; Lammas-tide is nigh." The words impressed me, why
I know not; for though I had heard of Lammas-tide I had not the smallest
idea of what was meant by it. Gormala was certainly quick with her
eyes--she had that gypsy quality in remarkable degree--and she seemed to
read my face like an open book. There was a suppressed impatience in her
manner, as of one who must stop in the midst of some important matter to
explain to a child whose aid is immediately necessary:
"Ye no ken why? Is it that ye dinna heed o' Lammas-tide, or that ye no
ken o' the prophecy of the Mystery of the Sea and the treasures that
lie hid therein." I felt more than ever abashed, and that I should have
known long ago those things of which the gaunt woman spoke, towering
above me as I leaned on my wheel. She went on:
"An' ye no ken, then listen and learn!" and she spoke the following rune
in a strange, staccato cadence which seemed to suit our surroundings
and to sink into my heart and memory so deep that to forget would be
impossible:
"To win the Mystery o' the Sea,
"An' learn the secrets that there be,
"Gather in one these weirds three:
"A gowden moon on a flowin' tide,
"And Lammas floods for the spell to bide;
"And a gowden mon wi' death for his bride."
There was a long pause of silence between us, and I felt very strangely.
The sea before me took odd, indefinite shape. It seemed as though it was
of crystal clearness, and that from where I gazed I could see all its
mysteries. That is, I could see so as to know there were mysteries,
though what they were individually I could not even dream. The past and
the present and the future seemed to be mingled in one wild, chaotic,
whirling dream, from the mass of which thoughts and ideas seemed now and
again to fly out unexpectedly on all sides as do sparks from hot iron
under the hammer. Within my heart grew vague indefinite yearnings,
aspirations, possibilities. There came a sense of power so paramount
that instinctively I drew myself up to my full height and became
conscious of the physical vigour within me. As I did so I looked around
and seemed to wake from a dream.
Naught around me but the drifting clouds, the silent darkening land and
the brooding sea. Gormala was nowhere to be seen.