seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose

their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like
phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus

aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would
fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather

maddening in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was
beaten down by the confounding uproar - a gleeful vacancy possessed

the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I found myself at
times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a

jigging instrument.
I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away

in one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch
darkness of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his

head thrown back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down,
he saw and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above

his head.
'Has he been drinking?' shouted I to Rorie.

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,' returned Rorie in the
same high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.

'Then - was he so - in February?' I inquired.
Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not

sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no
more to be condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous

madman, if you will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.
Yet what a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this

that the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a
wild and almost fearful pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but

drunkenness, out here in the roaring blackness, on the edge of a
cliff above that hell of waters, the man's head spinning like the

Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of death, his ear watching
for the signs of ship-wreck, surely that, if it were credible in

any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle, whose mind
was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest

superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of
shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in

the night with an unholy glimmer.
'Eh, Charlie, man, it's grand!' he cried. 'See to them!' he

continued, dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose
that deafening clamour and those clouds of spray; 'see to them

dancin', man! Is that no wicked?'
He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the

scene.
'They're yowlin' for thon schooner,' he went on, his thin, insane

voice clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, 'an' she's comin'
aye nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they

ken't, the folk kens it, they ken wool it's by wi' them. Charlie,
lad, they're a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They

were a' drunk in the CHRIST-ANNA, at the hinder end. There's nane
could droon at sea wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?'

with a sudden blast of anger. 'I tell ye, it cannae be; they droon
withoot it. Ha'e,' holding out the bottle, 'tak' a sowp.'

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and
indeed I had already thought better of the movement. I took the

bottle, therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived
to spill even more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and

almost strangled me to swallow. My kinsman did not observe the
loss, but, once more throwing back his head, drained the remainder

to the dregs. Then, with a loud laugh, he cast the bottle forth
among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap up, shouting to receive it.

'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel. Ye'll get bonnier
nor that, or morning.'

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred
yards away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the

clear note of a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down
upon the Head, and the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with

a new fury. But we had heard the sound, and we knew, with agony,
that this was the doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what we

had heard was the voice of her master issuing his last command.
Crouching together on the edge, we waited, straining every sense,

for the inevitable end. It was long, however, and to us it seemed
like ages, ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one brief

instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam. I still see
her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across

the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and still
think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the

tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than
lightning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for

ever; the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose and
was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the

tragedy was at an end. The strong ship, with all her gear, and the
lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin, the lives of so many men,

precious surely to others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves,
had all, in that one moment, gone down into the surging waters.

They were gone like a dream. And the wind still ran and shouted,
and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled as

before.
How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and

motionless, is more than I can tell, but it must have been for
long. At length, one by one, and almost mechanically, we crawled

back into the shelter of the bank. As I lay against the parapet,
wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my

kinsman maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy mood.
Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin iteration, 'Sic a fecht

as they had - sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!'
and anon he would bewail that 'a' the gear was as gude's tint,'

because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of
stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name - the CHRIST-ANNA

- would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with shuddering
awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an hour

the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have

fallen asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and
unrefreshed, day had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day;

the wind blew in faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the
Roost was at its lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all

the coasts of Aros remained to witness of the furies of the night.
CHAPTER V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.

Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but
my uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it

a part of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and
quiet, but tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the

eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed
far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating

breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure
in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him,

with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of
the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in

a perpetualterror. My arm was ready to support him, my hand
clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his pitiful

discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
accompanying a child of seven would have had no different

experience.
Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the

night before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those
of a strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the

moment, was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living