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 perpetual terror. 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 flames, he
cou