CHAPTER XXVI
A BOAT IN SIGHT AT SULISCANNA
There was one spot on Suliscanna, the island to which she had beenbrought, that Kate especially loved. It was where the great Lianacraigprecipice, a thousand feet of hard rock, curiously streaked with thegreen of serpentine and the white of the breeding and roosting oceanbirds, sank sheer into the foam-fringed emerald wash of the sea.
At the eastward end of the vast wall there began a beach of pure whitesand, curving round in a clean sickle-sweep for a mile and a half tothe mural face of the cliffs of Aoinaig, which served for its northerngateway.
To this wide strand, with its frowning guardian watch-towers of tallcliff on either side, Kate came every day, week in and week out,during the first months of her isolation. She took her way thitherfrom the low, thatched hut of Mistress Alister McAlister, in which shedwelt in a cleanliness and comfort more reminiscent of Carrick thancharacteristic of the neighboring houses of Suliscanna. The cattle didnot occupy the first apartment in the house of Mistress McAlister.The floor did not, as was commonly the case, rise gradually towardsthe roof upon a rich deposit of "peat-coom" and general _debris_,solidified by the spent water of the household and the trampling ofmany feet.
The house in which Kate dwelt on Suliscanna was paved with flags ofslate, which Alister and his wife had put in position, to the greatscandal of the entire island--including the minister of the SmallIsles himself, who preached most powerfully against the practice aspampering to poor human vanity, and causing foolish people to grasp atworldly state and pomp, and so neglect the glories of another and abetter world.
But Mistress McAlister had her answer ready to that.
"I am of opinion," she retorted, when the sermon was reported to her,"that Alister and me will no be left strange and friendless up yonderon the streets of gold, just because we happen to prefer clean stanesto dirty peat and fish-banes here below."
And for this pointed rejoinder Mistress McAlister was debarred thetable of communion.
"I'm no carin'," she said. "There's guid and godly ministers in my aincountry that has suffered mickle for godliness. What matters it if I dosuffer a wee here for cleanliness? The one is sib to the other, theysay. And wha kens but after all it may help one's eternal interest tobide away from sic a kirk as they have here?--no' a wiselike word nor asolemn reproof from the beginning to the end of the exercises!"
This bright morning Kate stood alone on the white fringe of sand. Sheshaded her eyes with her hand as she looked at the far blue hills ofthe main-land, and often she sighed heavily.
For weeks she had watched for a boat to come. She had cast every bottleshe could obtain on the island into the race of the tide which passedLianacraig, each with a message enclosed telling of her place ofseclusion. Now she could only pace the shore and wait.
"He _will_ come," she said to herself, with a limitless faith. "I amsure he loves me, and that he will find me. Prison bars could notcontain him, nor dangers daunt him. I know he will follow and find me.God make it soon--before the other comes."
Her mind went back to the cold, sinister eyes of my Lord of Barra, andshe shuddered even in the hot sunshine.
"Then would the danger begin," she said; "for though all these folksare kind to me, yet not even the minister nor Betsy Landsborough wouldstir a hand to save me from the chief. Such a marriage is customary.It is the way of the clan. The Lords of Barra have ever chosen theirbrides in this fashion, they say. I am here alone on an island withoutboats. The chief has ordered it so. None are allowed to approach orland on Suliscanna till the master comes to claim the captive and theslave."
The girl's wonderful dark eyes had mysterious depths in them as shewent over in her heart the perils and difficulties of her unknownfuture.
"But never, while I live, will I be untrue to him whom I love. If Icannot be his, at least I shall never be another's. And if they try toforce me to that which I loathe--thank God there is always a way out!Gladly would I die rather than that any other should take the placethat is his alone--my king, my husband!"
She spoke the last words very softly, but her eyes looked wistfully outtowards the far hills beyond the sea, over which she waited for him tocome. Then she blushed red from neck to brow at the sound of her ownwhisper. She even turned her about swiftly to see that none had heard,and that no bird of the air could carry the matter.
But only the sea-swallows circled widely above, along the black wetskerries the gulls wailed, and the silly moping guillemots sat inrows upon the rocks of Lianacraig. All were intent upon their ownconcerns that bright morning, and up among the tiny green crofts shesaw Mistress McAlister, a lowland sunbonnet on her head, flashingin and out of her door in that lively and sprightly fashion whichdistinguished her movements from the solid sloth characteristic of eventhe busiest moments of the other good-wives of Suliscanna.
Kate paced the shore, and thought within herself the still assuredthoughts of one whose mind is made up about the main issue, and who canafford quietly to consider concerning matters less important.
The sea was very still this day about Suliscanna. The white surf-rimround the great cliffs was hardly to be noted. The gap-toothed caveswhich pierce them were still. The roaring and hissing of the "bullers"were not heard. Only in front of the island to landward the tidesswayed and ran like a mill-race, where the ledges rose black anddripping from the deep, and the currents from the ocean swirled onward,or sucked back through the narrows in dangerous whirlpools and strangeleaping hillocks of sea-water.
Kate stood wondering at their beauty, without the least idea that theseoily swirls and boiling hummocks of smooth green water were among themost dangerous sea perils to be met with all the way from Pentland toSolway.
Suddenly her eyes lit on a dark speck far away out upon the brightplain. It might have been the head of a swimming seal, or the blackrazor-edge of a large skerry showing over the rush of the tide. But,as she watched, the dot grew blacker and larger. A boat was certainlyapproaching the island. Kate stood trembling. For the issue meant lifeand death to her. It might be her tyrant come to claim his captive. Itmight be her saviour come to save.