ESPIRITO SANTO was very much in my reflections. I had been
favourably remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College,
that famous
writer, Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work
on some papers of an ancient date to rearrange and sift of what was
worthless; and in one of these, to my great wonder, I found a note
of this very ship, the ESPIRITO SANTO, with her captain's name, and
how she carried a great part of the Spaniard's treasure, and had
been lost upon the Ross of Grisapol; but in what particular spot,
the wild tribes of that place and period would give no information
to the king's inquiries. Putting one thing with another, and
taking our island
tradition together with this note of old King
Jamie's perquisitions after
wealth, it had come
strongly on my mind
that the spot for which he sought in vain could be no other than
the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a fellow of a
mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh that
good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and
bring back our house of Darnaway to its long-for
gottendignity and
wealth.
This was a design of which I soon had reason to
repent. My mind
was
sharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the
witness of a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's
treasures has been
intolerable to my
conscience. But even at that
time I must
acquit myself of
sordid greed; for if I desired
riches,
it was not for their own sake, but for the sake of a person who was
dear to my heart - my uncle's daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been
educated well, and had been a time to school upon the mainland;
which, poor girl, she would have been happier without. For Aros
was no place for her, with old Rorie the servant, and her father,
who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,
plainly bred up in a
country place among Cameronians, long a
skipper sailing out of the
Clyde about the islands, and now, with
infinite discontent,
managing his sheep and a little 'long shore
fishing for the
necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to me, who was there
but a month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in
that same desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-
gulls, and the Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!
CHAPTER II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS.
IT was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was
nothing for it but to stand on the far shore and
whistle for Rorie
with the boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first
sound, Mary was at the door flying a
handkerchief by way of answer,
and the old long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel
to the pier. For all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull
across the bay; and I observed him several times to pause, go into
the stern, and look over
curiously into the wake. As he came
nearer, he seemed to me aged and
haggard, and I thought he avoided
my eye. The coble had been repaired, with two new thwarts and
several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood, the name
of it unknown to me.
'Why, Rorie,' said I, as we began the return
voyage, 'this is fine
wood. How came you by that?'
'It will be hard to cheesel,' Rorie opined
reluctantly; and just
then, dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the
stern which I had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and,
leaning his hand on my shoulder, stared with an awful look into the
waters of the bay.
'What is wrong?' I asked, a good deal startled.
'It will be a great feesh,' said the old man, returning to his
oars; and nothing more could I get out of him, but strange glances
and an
ominous nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was
infected with a
measure of
uneasiness; I turned also, and studied
the wake. The water was still and
transparent, but, out here in
the middle of the bay,
exceeding deep. For some time I could see
naught; but at last it did seem to me as if something dark - a
great fish, or perhaps only a shadow - followed studiously in the
track of the moving coble. And then I remembered one of Rorie's
superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,
exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it unknown
in all our waters, followed for some years the passage of the
ferry-boat, until no man dared to make the crossing.
'He will be
waiting for the right man,' said Rorie.
Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house
of Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden
was fenced with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there
were chairs in the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains
of brocade hung from the window; a clock stood silent on the
dresser; a lamp of brass was swinging from the roof; the table was
set for dinner with the finest of linen and silver; and all these
new
riches were displayed in the plain old kitchen that I knew so
well, with the high-backed settle, and the stools, and the closet
bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and the
clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the
three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand,
on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare
wooden floor,
and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment -
poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with
homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of
rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in
that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now,
shamed by these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation
and a kind of anger. In view of the
errand I had come upon to
Aros, the feeling was baseless and
unjust; but it burned high, at
the first moment, in my heart.
'Mary, girl,' said I, 'this is the place I had
learned to call my
home, and I do not know it.'
'It is my home by nature, not by the learning,' she replied; 'the
place I was born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither
like these changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with
them. I would have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had
gone down into the sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them
now.'
Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she
shared with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these
words was even graver than of custom.
'Ay,' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet
when my father died, I took his goods without remorse.'
'Your father died a clean strae death, as the folk say,' said Mary.
'True,' I returned; 'and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she
called?'
'They ca'd her the CHRIST-ANNA,' said a voice behind me; and,
turning round, I saw my uncle
standing in the doorway.
He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark
eyes; fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an
air somewhat between that of a
shepherd and that of a man following
the sea. He never laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible;
prayed much, like the Cameronians he had been brought up among; and
indeed, in many ways, used to
remind me of one of the hill-
preachers in the killing times before the Revolution. But he never
got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think, much
guidance, by
his piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid of hell; but
he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with envy, and
was still a rough, cold,
gloomy man.
As he came in at the door out of the
sunlight, with his
bonnet on
his head and a pipe
hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like
Rorie, to have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier
ploughed upon his face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow,
like old stained ivory, or the bones of the dead.
'Ay' he
repeated,
dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the
CHRIST-ANNA. It's an awfu' name.'
I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of
health; for I feared he had perhaps been ill.
'I'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the
body and the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner,' he said
abruptly to Mary, and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir
that we hae
gotten, are they no? Yon's a bonny knock (2), but
it'll no gang; and the napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws;
it's for the like o' them folk sells the peace of God that passeth
under
standing; it's for the like o' them, an' maybe no even sae
muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face and burn in muckle hell;
and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's them, as I read the
passage, the
accursed thing. Mary, ye girzie,' he interrupted
himself to cry with some asperity, 'what for hae ye no put out the
twa candlesticks?'
'Why should we need them at high noon?' she asked.
But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. 'We'll bruik (3)
them while we may,' he said; and so two
massive candlesticks of
wrought silver were added to the table equipage, already so
unsuited to that rough sea-side farm.
'She cam'
ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht,' he went on to
me. 'There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the
sook o' the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and
me,
beating to the wind. She wasnae a handy craft, I'm thinking,
that CHRIST-ANNA; for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A
sair day they had of it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and
it perishin' cauld - ower cauld to snaw; and aye they would get a
bit nip o' wind, and awa' again, to pit the emp'y hope into them.
Eh, man! but they had a sair day for the last o't! He would have
had a prood, prood heart that won
ashore upon the back o' that.'
'And were all lost?' I cried. 'God held them!'
'Wheesht!' he said
sternly. 'Nane shall pray for the deid on my
hearth-stane.'
I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to
accept my disclaimer with
unusualfacility, and ran on once more
upon what had
evidently become a favourite subject.
'We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the
inside of her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles
the sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the
tide's makin' hard an' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end
of Aros, there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag
Bay. Weel, there's the thing that got the grip on the CHRIST-ANNA.
She but to have come in ram-stam an' stern forrit; for the bows of
her are aften under, and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water
o' neaps. But, man! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she
struck! Lord save us a'! but it's an unco life to be a sailor - a
cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's the gliff I got mysel' in the great
deep; and why the Lord should hae made yon unco water is mair than
ever I could win to understand. He made the vales and the
pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome, canty land -
And now they shout and sing to Thee,
For Thou hast made them glad,
as the Psalms say in the metrical
version. No that I would preen
my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind.
"Who go to sea in ships," they hae't again -
And in
Great waters trading be,
Within the deep these men God's works
And His great wonders see.
Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant
wi' the sea. But, troth, if it wasnae prentit in the Bible, I wad
whiles be temp'it to think it wasnae the Lord, but the muckle,
black deil that made the sea. There's naething good comes oot o't
but the fish; an' the spentacle o' God riding on the
tempest, to be
shure, whilk would be what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man,
they were sair wonders that God showed to the CHRIST-ANNA -
wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather: judgments in the mirk
nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And their souls - to think
o' that - their souls, man, maybe no prepared! The sea - a muckle
yett to hell!'
I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved
and his manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at
these last words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his