The vessel, straining at the rope that bound her to the sh.o.r.e, lay with a clumsy shoulder over the bank that shelved abruptly into the great depths where slimy weeds entangled. Her sails were housed and snug, the men in the bows lay under the flapping corner of the jib and played at cards, though the noise of the raindrops on their canvas roof might well disturb them. Gilian made no pause; he ran up at the tale's conclusion, at a bound he was on the sh.o.r.e, staggering upon the rocks and slipping upon the greasy weeds till he came to the salt bent gra.s.s, and with firmer footing ran like a young deer for the shelter of the wood. The rain battered after him, the wind rose. In front, the wood, so still an hour before, in its winter slumber, with no birds now to mar its dreams, had of a sudden roused to the rumour of the storm. As by an instinct, the young trees on the edge seemed to shudder before the winds came to them. Their slim tips could not surely be bowing, even so little, to the gale that was yet behind Gilian. But he pa.s.sed them and plunged under the tall firs, and he felt secure only when the ruddy needles of other years were a soft carpet underfoot It was true he found shelter here from the rain that slanted terrifically, but it was not for sanctuary from the elements he sought the rude aisles, though now he appreciated the peace of them. It was for escape from himself, from his sense of hopeless, inexplicable longing, from some tremendous convulsion of his mind created by Black Duncan's fable.

The wood was all a wood of fir, not old nor very young, but at that mid age when it has to all of country blood an invitation to odorous dusks and pathless wanderings below laced branches. The sun never could reach the heart of it, except at the hour of setting, when it flamed b.l.o.o.d.y through the pillars. The rain never seemed to penetrate, for the fir-needles underfoot grew more dusty year by year. But when the rain beat as it did now, through the whole of it went a sound of gobbling and drumming, and the wind, striking upon the trunks as if they were the strings of Ossian, harped a great and tremendous tune, wanting start or ending. And by-and-by there came company for Gilian as he sheltered in the wood. Birds of all kinds beat hurriedly through the trees and settled upon the boughs with a shudder of the quill, pleased to be out of the inclement open and cosily mantled in.

The boy went into the very inmost part of the wood without knowing the reason why thus he should fly from the ship that so recently had enchanted him, from the tales he loved. But in the soothing presence of the firs and the content of the animals sheltering from the storm, he found a momentary peace from the agitation that had set up in him, roused at the song of the girl, the story of the mariner. The emotions, the fears, longings, discontents that jangled through him as they had never done before relapsed to a mood level and calm, as if they, too, had sheltered from the storm like the birds upon the trees.

But by-and-by he became ashamed of his action, that must seem so foolish to the friends he had left in the ship without a word of explanation.

His face flamed hotly at the thought of his rude departure. He would give a world to be able to go back again as if nothing had happened and sit unchallenged in the cosy den of the Jean. And musing thus he went through the wood till he came upon the bank of the Duglas, roaring grey and ragged, a robber from the hills, bearing spoil of the upper reaches, the town-lands, the open and windswept plains. It carried the trunks of great trees that had lain since other storms upon its banks, and with a great chafing and cracking no less than the wooden bridge from Clonary which the children were wont to cross from those parts on their way to school.

"That will go battering on the vessel," he thought, looking amazed at its ponderous beams flicking through the water and over the little cascades as if they had been feathers blown by an evening breeze. "That will go battering on the _Jean_" he thought, and of a sudden it seemed his manifest duty to warn the occupants of the ship to defend themselves from the unexpected attack.

He followed the bridge for a little, fascinated, wondering what was to become of it next in the tumult of waters till he came to the falls, where he had looked for a check to it. But it stayed no more than a moment on the lip of the precipice swung up a jagged edge above the deep, then crashed into the linn, where it seemed to swerve and turn, giddy with its adventure. Gilian stood spellbound on the banks looking at it so far down, then he turned, and cutting off the bend of the river, made for the sh.o.r.e.

He crashed through bracken and bramble and through the fir-wood again, startling the sheltering birds by his hurry, emerging upon the face of the brae in sight of the _Jean_ and the sea. In his absence a great change had come upon the wave, upon the hilly distance, upon the whole countenance of nature. The rain was no longer in drumming torrents, but in a soft and almost imperceptible veil; but if the rain had lost the wind had gained. And as he pa.s.sed from the edge of the wood, all the trees seemed to tw.a.n.g and creak, or cracked loudly, parting perhaps at some dear nerve where sap and beauty would no longer course. In every bush along the edge of the wood there seemed a separate chorus of voices, melodious and terrific, whistle and whoop, shriek and moan. Even the gra.s.s nodding in the wind lent a thin voice to the chorus, a voice such as only the sharp and sea-trained ear may comprehend, that beasts hear long before the wind itself is apparent, so that they remove themselves to the bieldy sides of the hills before tumult breaks.

But it was the aspect of the sea that most surprised the boy, for where before there had been but a dreaming plain of smiles there was the riot of waters. The black lips of the wave parted and showed the white fangs underneath, or spat the spume of pa.s.sion into the face of the day. It looked as if every glen and every gully, every corry and eas on that mountainous coast was spending its breath upon the old sea, the poor old sea that would be let alone to dream and rest, but must suffer the humours of the mischievous winds.

It was but for a moment Gilian lent his eye to the open and troubled expanse. He saw there no sign of ship, but looking lower into sh.o.r.e he beheld the _Jean_ in travail at the Duglas mouth. The tide had come fully in while he was absent, the delta that before had been so much lagoon and isle was become an estuary, where, in the unexpected tide and rush of the river, the logs of fir and oak were all adrift about the sides of the vessel. Every hand was busy. They poled off as best they might the huge trunks that battered at the carvel planks and pressed upon the tw.a.n.ging cable. Forward of the mast Black Duncan stood commanding in loud shouts that could not reach the boy through the wind's bellowing, and as he shouted, he lent, like a good seaman, vigour to a spar and pushed off the besieging timbers, all his weight aslant upon the wood, his arms tense, a great and wholesome figure of endeavour.

But not Black Duncan nor his striving seamen so busy in that confusion of wind and water were the first to catch the boy's eye. It was Nan, struggling by her captain's side at the unshipped tiller, and in the staggering ship seeking to send it home in the avoiding helm-head. Her hair blew round her with the vaunting spirit of a banner, her body in every move was rich with a sort of exaltation.

As yet the bridge had not reached them. It might have been checked altogether in the linn, or it might still be slowly grinding its way round the great bend of the river, that Gilian had cut off by his plunge through the wood. But at least he was there to alarm, for its a.s.sault, borne down on the spate, would be worse by far than that of the timber.

He beat his way again, bent, through the wind, to the water-edge now so far in and separate from the ship, and cried out a loud warning. It seemed to himself as he did so the voice of an infant, so weak was it, so shrill and piping, buffeted about by Heaven's large and overwhelming utterance. They paid no heed at first, but by-and-by they heard him.

"The bridge! G.o.d! do you tell me?" cried Black Duncan in a visible consternation. "Is it far up?"

Gilian put his hand to his mouth and trumpeted his response.

"The bend! My sorrow! she's as good as on us then. We must be at our departures."

The mariners scurried about the deck; Black Duncan threw off the prisoning cable; there were shouts, swift looks, and a breathless pause; the _Jean_ swung round before the corner of her jib laboured clumsily for a moment unbelieving of her release, then drifted slowly from the river mouth, her little boat and her tiller left behind, the first caught by the warring tree-trunks, the latter dashed from Nan's hands by the swing of an unfastened boom. As helpless as the logs she had been encountering, she was loose before the wind that drove her parallel with the sh.o.r.e at no safe distance from its fringe of rocks.

Gilian, scarcely knowing what he did, ran along the sh.o.r.e, following her course, looking at her with a wild eye. The men were calling to him, waving, pointing, but what they meant he could not surmise; all his interest was in the girl who stood motionless, seemingly aghast at her mishap, with her hair still blowing about her.

To the north where he was running, black ma.s.ses of clouds were piling, and the sea, so far as the eye could reach, was weltering more cruelly than before. Seagulls screamed without ceasing, and the human imitation of their calls roused uncanny notions that they welcomed the vessel to her doom. She seemed so helpless, so hopeless, dashed upon by the spume of those furious lips, bit by the grinding teeth.

But yet he ran on and on over the salt gra.s.s or the old wrack that the sea-spray wet to a new slime, never pausing but for a moment now and then to try and understand what the men on deck were shouting to him.

Off the sh.o.r.e north of the Duglas is a rock called Ealan Dubh, or the Black Island, a single bare and rounded block without a blade of gra.s.s on it, that juts out of the sea in all weathers and tides and is grown on thickly with little sh.e.l.l-fish. To-day it could not be seen, but the situation of it was plain in the curling crest of the white waves that bent constantly over it Straight for this rock the _Jean_ was driving and a great pity came over Gilian, a pity for himself as he antic.i.p.ated the sickening crash upon the rock, the rip of the timber, the gurgle at the holes, the sundering of the bolted planks, the collapse of the mast, the ultimate horrible plunge. He was Black Duncan, the swimmer, fighting hard for life between the ship and the sh.o.r.e; he was the girl, with wet hair flapping blindly at the eyes, clinging with bleeding finger-nails to the rough sh.e.l.ls that cl.u.s.tered on the rock. It was horrible, horrible! And then many tales from the shelves of Marget Maclean came to his memory where one in such circ.u.mstances had done a brave thing. To save the girl and bring her from the rock ash.o.r.e--that was the thing to be done--but how? Even the sea fairy, as he had said, might be worth drowning for. Helplessly he looked up and down the sh.o.r.e. There was nothing to see but the torn fringe of the tide, the waving branches of the coast He had no more than grasped the solitude of the country-side (feeling himself something of G.o.d's proxy thus to be watching the destruction of the ship) when the _Jean_ went upon the rock. Her shock upon it was not to be heard from the sh.o.r.e, and she did not break up all at once as he had antic.i.p.ated; she paused as it might seem, quite willingly, in her career before the wind and slewed round a tarry broadside to the crested wave. She began to settle in the water by her riven quarter, but Gilian did not see that, for it came about slowly.

All he could see was that Black Duncan and his men upon the higher part of the slanted deck were calling to him more loudly than before and pointing with frenzied gestures back in the direction whence they had come.

He looked back, he could not comprehend.

More loudly yet they called. They cl.u.s.tered, the three of them on the shrouds, and in one voice tried to bellow down the gale.

He could not understand. He turned a pitiful figure on the sh.o.r.e, his mind tumultuous with wrestling thoughts and dreads, with images of the rough depths where the girl's hair would sway like weed in a green haze in an everlasting stillness.

Again the seamen called, and it seemed, as he looked at their meaningless gesticulations, that the bowsprit of the vessel now pointed higher than before. The appalling story thus told to him had barely got home when he saw a change in the conduct of the seamen. They ceased to cry and wave; they looked no longer at him but in the direction whence he had come, and turning, he saw the vessel's little boat bobbing in the sea-troughs. It had an occupant too, a lad not greatly older than himself, using only a guiding oar, who so was directing the boat in the drifting waves towards the Ealan Dubh and the counter of the _Jean_.

Then the whole folly of his conduct, the meaning of the seamen's cries, the obvious and simple thing he should have done came to Gilian--he discovered himself the dreamer again. A deep contempt for himself came over him and he felt inclined to run back to the solace of the woods with a shame more burdensome than before, but the doings of the lad who had but to wade to pick up the lost boat and was now bearing down on the doomed vessel prevented him. He watched with a fascination the things being done that he should have done himself, he made himself, indeed, the lad who did them. It was as if in a dream, looking upon himself with a stranger's admiration, he saw the little boat led dexterously beside the vessel in spite of the tumbling waves, and Black Duncan, out upon her bowsprit, board her, lift his master's daughter in, and row laboriously ash.o.r.e. Then Gilian turned and made a poor, contemptuous retreat.

CHAPTER XVIII--DISCOVERY

The town was dripping at its eaves and glucking full of waters at rone-mouths and syvers when he got into it after his disgraceful retreat He was alone in the street as he walked through it, a wet woebegone figure with a jacket-collar high up to the ears to meet the nip of the elements. Donacha Breck, leaning over his counter and moodily looking at the hens sheltering their wind-blown feathers under his barrow, saw him pa.s.s and threw over his shoulder to his wife behind a comment upon the eccentricity of the Paymaster's boy.

"He's scarcely all there," said he, "by the look of him. He's wandering about in the rah as if it was a fine summer day and the sun shining."

Crossing from the school to his lodging, an arm occupied by a great bundle of books, the other contending with an umbrella, was the dominie, and he started at the sight of his errant pupil who nearly ran against him before his presence was observed.

"Well, Gilian?" said he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weatherc.o.c.k jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs till they almost snapped.

Gilian stopped, looked hard at the ground, said never a word. And old Brooks, over him, gazed at the wet figure with puzzlement and pity.

"You beat me; you beat me quite!" said he. "There's the making of a fine man in you; you have sharpness, shrewdness, a kind of industry, or what may be doing for that same; every chance of a paternal kind--that's to say a home complete and comfortable--and still you must be acting like a wean! You were not at the school to-day. I'm keeping it from Miss Campbell as long as I can, but I'll be bound to tell her of your truancy this time."

He risked the surrounding hand a moment from his books, bent a little and tapped the boy's jacket pocket.

"Ay! A book again!" said he slyly. "What is it this time? But never mind; it does not matter. I'll warrant it is not Mr. b.u.t.ter's Spellings nor Murray the Grammarian, but some trash of a novelle. Any exercise for _your_ kind but the appointed task! I wish--I wish--Tuts! laddie, you are wet to the skin, haste ye home and get a heat."

Gilian did not need a second bidding; but ran up the street, without slacking his pace till he got to the foot of the Paymaster's stair, where the wind from the pend-close was howling most dismally. He lingered on the stair, extremely loth to face Miss Mary with a shame so plain upon his countenance as he imagined it must be. No way that he could tell the story of the _Jean's_ disaster would leave out his sorry share in it. A quick ear heard him on the stair; the door opened.

"Oh, you rascal!" cried Miss Mary, her anxious face peering down at him.

"You were never in the school till this time." She put her hand upon his bonnet and his sleeve and found them soaking. "Oh, I knew it! I knew it!" she cried. "Just steeping!"

He found an unexpected relief in her consternation at his condition and in her bustle to get him into dry clothing. After the experience he had come through, the storm and the spectacle he had seen as in a dream from the sh.o.r.e, he indulged in the cordiality and cosiness of the warm kitchen for a little with selfish gladness. But it was only for a little; the disaster to the vessel and the consciousness that his own part in the business would certainly come to light, overwhelmed him again, and it was a most dolorous face that looked at Miss Mary over the viands she had just put before him.

"What ails the callant?" she demanded in a tremble, staring at him.

He burst into tears, the first she had seen on his face since ever he had come to her house, and all her mother's heart was sore.

"What mischief were you in?" she asked, putting an arm about his neck, and her troubled face down upon his hair as he shook in his chair. "I am sure you were not to blame. It could not have been much, Gilian.

Tuts! tuts!" And so she went on in a ludicrous way, coaxing him to indifference for the sin she fancied.

At last he told her the beginnings of his tragedy, that he had seen the _Jean_ wrecked on Ealan Dubh, and the girl Nan on board of her. She was for a moment dumb with horror, believing the end had come to all upon the vessel, but on this Gilian speedily a.s.sured her, and "Oh, am n't I glad!" said she with a simple utterance and a transport on her visage that showed how deep was her satisfaction.

"How did they get ash.o.r.e?" she asked,

"In the small boat," said Gilian uncomfortably. "It caught on the logs at the mouth of the river when she drifted off, and--and--"

"And a boy went out in it and brought them help!" she cried, finely uplifted in a delight that she had guessed the cause of his trepidation.

"Oh, you darling! And not to say a word of it! Am not I the proud woman this day? My dear companion Nan's girl!"

She caught him fervently as he rose ashamed from his seat to explain or to make an escape from the punishment that was in her error, a punishment more severe than if he had been blamed. She was one never p.r.o.ne to the displays of love and rapture, but this time her joy overcame her, and she kissed him with something of a redness on her face. It was to the boy as if he had been smitten on the mouth. He drew back almost rudely in so great a confusion that it but confirmed her guess. "You must come and tell my brothers," said she, "this very moment. Don't say anything about the la.s.s, but they'll be keen to hear about the vessel They sit there hearing nothing of the world's news, unless it comes to the fireside for them, and then I've noticed they're as ready to listen as Peggy would be at the Cross well."

She had him half way to the parlour before he thought of a protest, he had found such satisfaction in being relieved from her mistaken pride in him. Then he concluded it was as well to go through with it, thinking that if the rescue of the girl was not to be in the story, his own shortcomings need not emerge. She pushed him before her into the room; her brothers were seated at the fire, and they only turned when her voice, in a very unaccustomed excitement, broke the quietness of the chamber.