Mackenzie touched him on the shoulder, and the old man started. “Is it you, Mr. McKenzie?” he said in Gaelic. “It is a great fright you have given me.”
“Come down to the house, John. The lads from Habost and Alister, and some more will be coming; and you will get a ferry good dram, John, to put wind in the pipes.”
“It’s no dram I’m thinking of, Mr. Mackenzie,” said the old man. “And you will have plenty of company without me. But I will come down to the house, Mr. Mackenzie – oh, yes, I will come down to the house – but in a little while I will come to the house.”
Mackenzie turned from him with a petulant exclamation, and went along and down the hill rapidly, as he could hear voices in the darkness. He had just got into the house when his visitors arrived. The door of the room was opened, and there appeared some six or eight tall and stalwart men, mostly with profuse brown beards and weather-beaten faces, who advanced into the chamber with some show of shyness. Mackenzie offered them a rough and hearty welcome, and as soon as their eyes had got accustomed to the light bade them help themselves to the whisky on the table. With a certain solemnity each poured out a glass and drank “Shlainte!” to his host as if it were some funeral rite. But when he bade them replenish their glasses, and got them seated with their faces to the blaze of the peats, then the flood of Gaelic broke loose. Had the wise little girl from Suainabost warned these big men? There was not a word about Sheila uttered. All their talk was of the reports that had come from Caithness, and of the improvements of the small harbor near the Butt, and of the black sea-horse that had been seen in Lock Suainabhal, and of some more sheep having been found dead on the Pladda Isles, shot by the men of the English smacks. Pipes were lit, the peat stirred up anew, another glass or two of whisky drunk, and then, through the haze of the smoke, the brown faces of the men could be seen in eager controversy, each talking faster than the other, and comparing facts and fancies that had been brooded over through solitary nights of waiting on the sea. Mackenzie did not sit down with them; he did not even join them in their attention to the curious whisky-flasks. He paced up and down the opposite side of the room, occasionally being appealed to with a story or question, and showing by his answers that he was but vaguely hearing the vociferous talk of his companions. At last he said, “Why the teffle does not John the Piper come? Here, you men – you sing a song, quick! None of your funeral songs, but a good brisk one of trinking and fighting.”
But were not nearly all their songs – like those of all dwellers on a rocky and dangerous coast – of a sad and sombre hue, telling of maidens whose lovers were drowned, and of wives bidding farewell to husbands they were never to see again? Slow and mournful are the songs that the Northern fishermen sing as they set out in the evening, with the creaking of the long oars keeping time to the music, until they get out beyond the shore to hoist the red mainsail and catch the breeze blowing over from the regions of the sunset. Not one of these Habost fishermen could sing a brisk song, but the nearest approach to it was a ballad in praise of a dark-haired girl, which they, owning the Nighean dubh, were bound to know. And so one young fellow began to sing, “Mo Nighean dubh d’fhas boidheach dubh, mo Nighean dubhna treig mi,”1 in a slow and doleful fashion, and the others joined in the chorus with a like solemnity. In order to keep time, four of the men followed the common custom of taking a pocket handkerchief (in this case an immense piece of brilliant red silk, which was evidently the pride of its owner), and holding it by the four corners letting it slowly rise and fall as they sang. The other three men laid hold of a bit of rope, which they used for the same purpose. “Mo Nighean dubh,” unlike most of the Gaelic songs, has but a few verses; and, as soon as they were finished, the young fellow, who seemed pleased with his performance, started another ballad. Perhaps he had forgotten his host’s injunction, perhaps he knew no merrier song, but at any rate he began to sing the “Lament of Monaltrie.” It was one of Sheila’s songs. She had sung it the night before in this very room, and her father had listened to her describing the fate of young Monaltrie as if she had been foretelling her own, and scarcely dared to ask himself if ever again he should hear the voice that he loved so well. He could not listen to the song. He abruptly left the room and went out once more into the cool night-air and the darkness. But even here he was not allowed to forget the sorrow he had been vainly endeavoring to banish, for in the far distance the pipes still played the melancholy wail of Lochaber.
Lochaber no more! Lochaber no more!
– that was the only solace brought him by the winds from the sea; and there were tears running down the hard gray face as he said to himself, in a broken voice, “Sheila, my little girl, why did you go away from Borva?”
CHAPTER II.
THE FAIR-HAIRED STRANGER
“WHY you must be in love with her yourself!”
“I in love with her? Sheila and I are too old friends for that!”
The speakers were two young men seated in the stern of the steamer Clansman as she ploughed her way across the blue and rushing waters of the Minch. One of them was a tall young fellow of three-and-twenty, with fair hair and light blue eyes, whose delicate and mobile features were handsome enough in their way, and gave evidence of a nature at once sensitive, nervous and impulsive. He was clad in light gray from head to heel – a color that suited his fair complexion and yellow hair; and he lounged about the white deck in the glare of the sunlight, steadying himself from time to time as an unusually big wave carried the Clansman aloft for a second or two, and then sent her staggering and groaning into a hissing trough of foam. Now and again he would pause in front of his companion, and talk in a rapid, playful, and even eloquent fashion for a minute or two; and then, apparently a trifle annoyed by the slow and patient attention which greeted his oratorical efforts, would start off once more on his unsteady journey up and down the white planks.
The other was a man of thirty-eight, of middle height, sallow complexion and generally insignificant appearance. His hair was becoming prematurely gray. He rarely spoke. He was dressed in a suit of rough blue cloth, and indeed looked somewhat like a pilot who had gone ashore, taken to study and never recovered himself. A stranger would have noticed the tall and fair young man who walked up and down the gleaming deck, evidently enjoying the brisk breeze that blew about his yellow hair, and the sunlight that touched his pale and fine face or sparkled on his teeth when he laughed, but would have paid little attention to the smaller, brown-faced, gray-haired man, who lay back on the bench with his two hands clasped around his knee, and with his eye fixed on the southern heavens, while he murmured to himself the lines of some ridiculous old Devonshire ballad or replied in monosyllables to the rapid and eager talk of his friend.
Both men were good sailors, and they had need to be, for although the sky above them was as blue and clear as the heart of the sapphire, and although the sunlight shone on the decks and the rigging, a strong north-easter had been blowing all the morning, and there was a considerable sea on. The far blue plain was whitened with the tumbling crests of the waves, that shone and sparkled in the sun, and ever and anon a volume of water would strike the Clansman’s bow, rise high in the air with the shock, and fall in heavy showers over the forward decks. Sometimes, too, a wave caught her broadside, and sent a handful of spray over the two or three passengers who were safe in the stern; but the decks here remained silvery and white, for the sun and wind speedily dried up the traces of the sea-showers.
At length the taller of the young men came and sat down by his companion: “How far to Stornoway yet?”
“An hour.”
“By Jove, what a distance! All day yesterday getting up from Oban to Skye, all last night churning our way up to Loch Gair, all to-day crossing to this outlandish island, that seems as far away as Iceland; – and for what?”
“But don’t you remember the moonlight last night as we sailed by the Cuchullins? And the sunrise this morning as we lay in Loch Gair? Were not these worth coming for.”
“But that was not what you came for, my dear friend. No. You came to carry off this wonderful Miss Sheila of yours, and of course you wanted somebody to look on; and here I am, ready to carry the ladder and the dark lantern and the marriage-license. I