CHAPTER XXVII
THE TIDE-RACE OF SULISCANNA
Kate McGhie stood looking across the boiling, hillocky water of theSuck of Suliscanna in the direction of the boat, which moment by momentblackened and grew larger, rising steadily towards her out of the east.The day was so still, the tide so smooth as it swept inshore afterpassing the oily "bullers" of the roost, that she had no idea of theworld of danger those in the adventurous bark had to pass before herprow could grate on the white sand of the landing-beach between theopposing headlands of Aionaig and Lianacraig.
Kate's heart beat strangely, almost painfully. It was wonderful, shethought, that men should undergo perils and cross a world's seas for asimple girl's sake. Yet there was pleasure, too, in the thought; forsomehow she knew that those who approached loved her and came from farseeking her good.
"It is he--it is surely he!" so her soul chanted its glad triumphwithin her. "Did I not say that he could break prison-bands and come tofind me--that he would overpass unruly seas only to look on my face?Has any maid in the world a lover true like mine? And he will break myprison also and take me away. And with him I am ready to go to the endsof the earth, fearlessly as though he had been my mother."
Poor lassie! Little she knew the long, weary travel she had before herere it could come to that.
But even as she watched she became conscious of a quick stir andmovement among the usually so indolent islanders behind her. Hardly shedared to lift her eyes from the approaching boat, which came on witha little square sail rigged on a temporary mast as long as the windheld, and then with flashing dips of rhythmic oars whenever the breezedropped away.
The voices of the men of Suliscanna crying harshly to each other amongthe craig-heads and cliff-edges high above her sounded to Kate's earslike a louder brawling of the sea-fowl. The sound had an edge on it,shrill, keen, and bitter as the east wind in mid-January. Yet there wassomething in it, too, of new. The girl had heard the like of it before,at the kennels of Cumlodan, when the bloodhounds for the Whig-trackingwere waiting to be fed, and springing up with their feet on the bars.
"Eh, sirs me! Guid help the poor souls that are in that boat; theywill either gang doon bodily to feed the fish, or else be casten up ingobbets the size o' my neive upon the shore!" cried the voice of Mrs.McAlister at Kate's elbow.
"They can never weather it, and if they do they are naught advantaged,after all. For the men of the isle are that worked upon with the fearof my lord, and his threat to clean them off the isle of Suliscanna,like a count off a bairn's slate, if they let the lass escape, thatthey declare they will slay the poor lads so soon as ever they set footon the land, if, indeed, they ever win as far."
In her agitated preoccupation the tall woman from Ayrshire had let herhair fall in a bushy mass over her back, as it was her habit to do inthe evenings after supper when preparing for bed. She kept workingat it nervously while she watched, twisting up its comely massesin order to fix them in their places with bone pins; and, anon, asthe boat tacked shorter and shorter to avoid this hidden peril andthat, pulling them out and letting it fall again in wavy coils, sooverpowering had become her agitation.
Suddenly startled by a peculiar wavering cry from the hill, she tookKate's hand and ran with her along the path which led to the rocks ofLianacraig.
"Ye will never be for thinking," Bess Landsborough said to the girlas they ran, "that this is him that likes ye--the lad ye left in theTolbooth irons in Holland, gotten free and come after ye?"
But Kate only clasped her friend's hand tighter and answered nothing.
"Poor lass! poor lass!" she said. "Ye believe that your lad would do asmuckle for you after a' that has come and gane between ye. But lads arenot what they were in my young days! Pray God that ye may be mistaken,for gin this be your lad come seeking ye, I fear he is as good as deadeither from the sharp rocks of Suliscanna or from the sharper knives ofthe wild McAlisters."
From the southern ridge of the headland of Lianacraig Kate and hercompanion could look almost directly down upon the gambols of thetreacherous Suck of Suliscanna. The boat lay clear to their sight uponthe surface of the sea--two men in her, one sitting with the rope ofthe sheet in his hand, and the other at the stern with an oar to turnher off from the hidden dangers, as the seething run of the tidalcurrents brought her head on to some sunken reef or dangerous skerry.Sometimes, ere the voyagers could tack or turn in their unsailorlikefashion, a white spurt of foam would suddenly spring up under theirvery bows as a swell from the Atlantic lumbered lazily in, or again abackdraw of the current would swirl upward from some submarine ledgeand raise a great breaking pyramid of salt-water on a spot where amoment before there had been only the smooth hiss of water moving veryswiftly.
The islanders, who alone realized the terrible danger of the two inthe boat, lay for the most part wholly silent, some on the cliff'simmediate edge, and others behind little sodded breastworks which hadbeen erected, partly to keep the wind off, when, as now, they keptwatch from their posts of observation, and partly for the drying oftheir winter's fuel.
Mistress McAlister indicated the eager gazers with her elbows.
"See the Heelantmen," she said; "they are a' up there! Lord, whatChristians! The verra minister is amang them himsel'--they canna helpit. The spirit is on them ever since langsyne the Spaniard's shipdrave in, and brocht a' that peltry of mahogany aumries and wroughtcupboards, and forbye the queer fashions of knitting that the sailorfolk of the crew learned them after they wan ashore. But they learnlittle from them that's shipwrecked on Suliscanna noo. For themthat's no deid corpses before they come to land get a bit clour wi' astane that soon puts them oot o' conceit wi' a' this world o' sin andsuffering."
Kate's face was white and drawn, but she hardly noticed the woman'sfell prophecies.
For all the while the two men in the boat were laboring hard, fightingtensely for life, and every eye on the island was upon them. They hadreached one of the smoothest and therefore most dangerous places,when suddenly the black back of a skip-jack dolphin curved over likea mill-wheel beside the boat, and a hoarse shout went up from theislanders of Suliscanna, who lay breathlessly waiting the event on therocks of Lianacraig.
"It's a' by wi' the poor lads noo!" said Bess McAlister, "a' but thewarsle in the water and the grip o' the saut in their thrapples! Thedeil's ain beast is doon there watching for them."
"THEN THE SWIRLING TIDE-RACE TOOK HOLD OF HER"]
"God help my Wat!" sobbed Kate, half to herself and half to theDivinity--who, as the Good Book says, can do wonders in the greatwaters.
"Aye, 'deed, lass, as ye say, God help him! He never had mair need. Thedead-fish are louping for him and the other with him."
Just at this moment Kate uttered a cry and clasped her hands, for theboat was heaved up from the side nearest the cliffs on the summit of atoppling pyramid of water. The mast fell over, and the whole breadthof the sail hugged the surface of the sea. Then the swirling tide-racetook hold of her and sucked her under. In a smooth sea, without aparticle of wind, the two men went down within cry of the rocks ofSuliscanna, and not a hand could be stretched out to save them. Onlynow and then something black, a wet, air-filled blob of the sail, thesurge-tossed back of a man, or the angle of the boat, showed dark for amoment upon the surface of the pale water, and then was carried under,all racing northward in the grip of the angry tide current.
Kate McGhie had fallen on her knees.
"God forgive his sins and take me soon to him!" she said.
"Wheest, lass! Nae Papist prayers in my hearin'," said Mrs. McAlisterin her ear. "Gin that be your lad, he's dead and gane. And that's ahantle better than dying on the gully-knives of the McAlisters."
At the sight of the disaster beneath them on the wrinkled face ofthe water, all the islanders had leaped suddenly erect behind theirshelters and craggy hiding-places. Each man stood with his head thrownforward in an attitude of the most intent watchfulness. And oncewhen the stern of the boat cocked up, and a man's arm rose like th
efin of a fish beside it for a moment, every son of Alister expelledthe long-withholden air from his lungs in a sonorous "Hough!" whichindicated that in his opinion all was over. Instantly the islanders ofSuliscanna collected here and there, at likely places along the shore,into quick-gathering knots and clusters which dissolved as quickly.They discussed the disaster from every point of view. The minister wasspecially active, going about from group to group.
"We must e'en submit," he was saying; "it is the will of God. And,after all, though both men and boat had been cast ashore, it is littlelikely that they would have had anything worth lifting on them. Theywere just poor bodies that by misadventure have been cast away in afog, and would have no other gear about them save the clothes on theirbacks."
But Alister McAlister was of another mind.
"Work like this is enough to make an unbeliever out of a God-fearingman," he affirmed to his intimates, "to see what Providence willpermit--a good fishing-boat with a mast and sail in the charge of twolandward men that did not even know where to let her go to pieces, sothat Christians and men of sense might get some good of her. For thefools let her sink plumb down in the Suck of Suliscanna, instead ofdriving her straight inshore against the hill of Aoinaig, whence shewould have come safe as weed-drift to our very feet."
And there were more of Alister's opinion than of the minister's, whosespiritual consolation was discounted, at any rate, by the fact that hewas officially compelled to speak well of Providence.
But before long there was another sound on the Isle of Suliscanna. Awayon the edge of the bay, under the cliffs, a group of men was to be seengrappling some object which repeatedly slipped from their poles betweentwo long shore-skirting reefs. It lay black and limp in the water, andagain and again, breaking from their hands, it returned to the push ofthe tide in the narrow gut with a splash of flaccid weight.
"Lord, what's yon they hae gotten?" cried Mistress McAlister, as soonas she had seen the figures of the men collecting about the thing, likecarrion-crows gathering about a dead sheep on the hill. "Thank God, myAlister loon is away south'ard on the heuchs of Lianacraig!"
She stood on tiptoe and looked for the flash of the killing knife orthe dull crash of the stone with which commonly the wreckers insuredsilence and safety when any came alive ashore along with wreckage ofprice from the great waters.
The heads of the men were all bent inward, but Bess Landsborough saw nothreatening movement of their arms nor yet any signs of a struggle.
She would have drawn Kate away from the scene, but the girl by her sidesuddenly wrenched herself free, and, plucking up her skirts in herhands, ran hot-foot for the northern shore.