IN PEEL CASTLE
When Danny reached the outside of the house, the night was even more
dark and dumb than before. He turned to the right under the hill known
as the Giant's Fingers, and took the cliff road to the town. The deep
boom of the waters rolling slowly on the sand below came up to him
through the dense air. He could hear the little sandpiper screaming at
Orry's Head across the bay. The sea-swallow shot past him, too, with its
low mournful cry. Save for these, everything was still.
Danny had walked about a quarter of a mile, when he paused for a moment
at the gate of a cottage that stood halfway down the hill to the town.
There was a light in the kitchen, and from where he stood in the road
Danny could see those who were within. As if by an involuntary movement,
his cap was lifted from his head and fumbled in his fingers, while his
eyes gazed yearningly in at the curtainless window. Then he remembered
the harsh word of Kerruish Kinvig, and started off again more rapidly.
It was as though he had been kneeling at a fair shrine when a cruel hand
befouled and blurred it.
Danny was superstitious. He was full to the throat of fairy lore and
stories of witchcraft. The night was dark; the road was lonely; hardly a
sound save that of his own footsteps broke the stillness, and the
ghostly memories would arise. To banish them Danny began to whistle,
and, failing with that form of musical society, to sing. His selection
of a song was not the happiest under the circumstances. Oddly enough, it
was the doleful ballad of Myle Charaine. Danny sang it in Manx, but here
is a stave of it in the lusty tones of the fine old "Lavengro"--
"O, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold?
Lone, lone, you have left me here.
O, not in the curragh, deep under the mold,
Lone, lone, and void of cheer."
There was not much cheer that Danny could get out of Myle Charaine's
company, but he could not at the moment think of any ballad hero who was
much more heartsome. He had a good step of the road to go yet. Somehow
the wild legend of the Moddey Dhoo would creep up into Danny's mind. In
the days when the old castle was garrisoned, the soldiers in the
guardroom were curious about a strange black dog that came every night
and lay in their midst. "It's a devil," said one. "I'll follow it and
see," said another. When the dog arose to go, the intrepid soldier went
out after it. His comrades tried to prevent him. "I'll follow it," he
said, "if it leads to hell." A minute afterward there was an unearthly
scream; the soldier rushed back pale as a corpse, and with great staring
eyes. He said not a word, and died within the hour. The Moddey Dhoo kept
tormenting poor Danny to-night. So he set up the song afresh, and to
heighten the sportive soul of it, he began to run. Once having taken to
his heels, Danny ran as if the black dog itself had been behind him. By
the time he reached the town he was fairly spent. Myle Charaine and the
Moddey Dhoo together had been too much for Danny. What with the combined
exertion of legs and lungs, the lad was perspiring from head to foot.
The house of the harbor-master was a little ivy-covered cottage that
stood on the east end of the quay, near the bridge that crossed the
river. The harbor-master himself was an unmarried elderly man, who
enjoyed the curious distinction of having always worn short petticoats.
His full and correct name seems almost to have been lost. He was known
as Tommy-Bill-beg, a by-name which had at least a certain genealogical
value in showing that the harbor-master was Tommy the son of Little
Bill. When Danny reached the cottage he knocked, and had no answer. Then
he lifted the latch and walked in. The house was empty, though a light
was burning. It had two rooms and no more. One was a dark closet of a
sleeping-crib. The other, the living room, was choked with nearly every
conceivable article of furniture and species of domestic ornament.
Shells, fish-bones, bits of iron and lead ore, sticks and pipes lay on
tables, chairs, chests, settles, and corner cupboards. A three-legged
stool stood before the fire-place; and with all his wealth of rickety
furniture, this was probably the sole article which the harbor-master
used.
There was a facetious-faced timepiece on the mantel-piece; and when
folks pitied the isolation of Tommy-Bill-beg, and asked him if he never
felt lonely, he always replied, "Not while I hear the clock tick." But
Tommy-Bill-beg had not heard the clock tick for twenty years. He
resembled Jemmy Quark in being almost stone-deaf, and had a further bond
of union with the gardener of Balladhoo in being musical. He played no
instrument, however, except his voice, which he believed to be of the
finest quality and compass. The harbor-master was wofully wrong as to
the former, but right as to the latter; he had a voice like a rasp, and
as loud as a fog-horn. Printed copies of ballads were pinned up on
various parts of the wall of his kitchen. Tommy-Bill-beg could not read
a line; but he would rather have died than allow that this was so, and
he never sang except from print.
Danny Fayle knew well how often the musical weakness of the
harbor-master was played upon by the Peel men; and when he found the
cottage empty he suspected that some wags of fisher-fellows had decoyed
Tommy-Bill-beg away to the "Jolly Herrings" for the sport of having him
sing on this their last night ashore. Danny set off for the inn, which
was in Castle Street. He walked along the quay, intending to turn up a
passage.
The night seemed darker than ever now, and not a breath of wind was
stirring. The harbor on Danny's left was some twenty yards across, and
another twenty yards divided the mainland from the island rock, on which
stood the ruins of the old fortress. The tide was out, and the
fishing-luggers lay at secure anchorage on the shingle, and in six
inches of mud. The pier was straight ahead, and there the light should
now be burning.
As Danny approached the passage that led up to Castle Street he heard
the distant rumble of noisy singing. Yes, it came from the "Jolly
Herrings" beyond question, and Tommy-Bill-beg was there airing his
single vanity.
Danny was about to turn up the passage when, in a lull in the singing,
he thought he caught the sound of voices and of the tread of feet. Both
came from the rock outside, and Danny could not resist the temptation to
walk on and listen.
There could be no doubt of it. Some people were going up to the castle.
What could they want in that desolate place at night, and thus late? In
Danny's mind the ancient castle had always been encircled by ghostly
imaginings. Perhaps it was fear that drew him to it now. Probably
ordinary common-sense would have suggested that Danny should run off
first to the harbor-master with the message that he had been charged to
deliver, but Danny had neither part nor lot in that ordinary
inheritance.
Near the bottom of the ebb tide the neck that divided the pier from the
castle could be forded. Danny stole down the pier steps and crossed the
ford as noiselessly as he could. A flight of other steps hewn out of
the rock went up from the water's edge to the deep portcullis. Danny
crept up. He found that the old notched and barred door leading into the
castle stood open. Danny stood and listened. The footsteps that he heard
before were now far ahead of him. It was darkest of all under these
thick walls. Danny had to pass the doorway of the ruined guardroom,
terrible with the tradition of the black dog. As he went by the door he
turned his head toward it in the darkness. At that instant he thought he
heard something stir. He gasped, but could not scream. He stretched his
arms fearfully toward the sound. There was nothing. All was still once
more; only the receding footsteps dying away. Danny thought he had
deceived himself. It was as though he had heard the rustle of a dress,
but it must have been the soft rustle of leaves.
Yet there were no trees in the castle.
Danny stepped forward into the courtyard. His feet fell softly on the
grass that now grew there. But he stopped again, and his heart seemed to
stand still. He could have sworn that behind him he heard a light
stealthy tread. Danny dropped to his knees, breathless and trembling.
It was gone. The deep, thick boom of the sea came from the shore far
behind, and the thin, low plash of broken waters from the rocks beneath.
The footsteps had ceased now, but Danny could hear voices. He rose to
his feet and walked toward whence they came.
He found himself outside the crumbling walls of the roofless chapel of
St. Patrick. He heard noises from within, and crouched behind a stone.
Presently a light was struck. It lighted all the air above it. Danny
crept up to the chapel wall and peered in at one of the lancet windows.
A company of men were there, but he could not distinguish their faces.
The single lantern they carried was now turned with its face to the
ground. One of them had a crowbar with which he was prizing up a stone.
It was a gravestone. The men were tearing open an old vault.
There was some muttering, and one of the men seemed to protest. "Stop!"
he cried; "I'm not going to have a hand in a job like this. I'm bad
enough, God knows, but no man shall say that I helped to violate a
grave."
Danny shook from head to foot. He knew that voice. Just then the
sea-swallow shot again overhead, uttering its low, mournful cry. At the
same instant Danny thought he heard a half-stiffed moan not far from his
side, and once more his ear caught that soft rustling sound. Quivering
in every limb, he could not stir. He must stand and be silent. He clung
to the stone wall with convulsive fingers.
The man with the crowbar laughed. "Dowse that now," he said, and laughed
again.
"Och, the timid he is to be sure, and the religious, too, all at once."
Danny knew that voice also, and knew as well that to utter a word or
sound at that moment might be as much as his life was worth. The men
were raising the stone.
"Here, bear a hand," said one.
"Never," said the first speaker.
There was a low, grating laugh. One of the men leaped into the vault.
"Now, then, tail on here more hands. Let's have it, quick."
Then Danny saw that, lying on the ground, was something that he had not
observed before. It was like a thick black roll some four feet long. Two
of the men got hold of it to hand it to the man below.
"Come! lay down, d'ye hear?"
Danny's terror mastered him. He turned to run. Then the man who had
spoken first cried, "What's that?"
There was a moment's pause.
"What's what?" said the man in the vault.
"I'll swear on my soul I saw a woman pass the porch."
A bitter little laugh followed.
"Och, it's always a woman he's seeing."
Danny had found his legs at last. Flying along the grass as softly as a
lapwing, he reached the old gate. Then he turned and listened. No; there
was nothing to show that he had been heard. He crept down the steps to
the water's edge. There in a creek he saw a boat which he had not
observed on going up. He looked at the name.
It was "Ben-my-Chree."
Danny turned to the ford. The tide had risen a foot since he crossed,
but he paddled through the water and gained the pier. Then he ran home
as fast as his long legs would carry him, wet with sweat and speechless
with dismay.
Next morning Danny remembered that he had forgotten all about the
harbor-master and the light.
"Och, the cursed young imp that he is," cried his uncle, Bill Kisseck,
hitching his hand into Danny's guernsey at the neck, and steadying him
as if he had been a sack with an open mouth. "Aw, the booby; just
taking a rovin' commission and snappin' his finger at the ould masther.
What d'ye think would a happent to you, ye beach-comber, if some ship
had run ashore and been wrecked and scuttled and all hands lost, and not
a pound of cargo left at her, and never a light on the pier, and all
along of you, ye idiot waistrel!"