Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 7, 1899

THE CELTIC MONTHLY.
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equivalent to a protest, that Ewan could not be
clearer to her if he brought her liack his weight
in gold, in her heart of hearts she was none the
less happy because Ewan refused to eat the
bread of idleness on her account. So it was a
proud lass indeed who watched her lover out of
sight that night — her lover so strong and clever,
who had learnt to talk that difticult English
language so beautifully since he had begun to
wear the magic badge of R. N. R. upon his
breast, and who, as an outcome of his industrious
exertions, would put to sea on the morrow in a
bran new smack of his own, in which he and
Jess had already enjoyed a first secret sail, lest,
as superstition decreed, spectators should covet
her.
" Good-bye ! " came the fisherman's strong
young voice midway across the ford; and bravely
went Jess's answer, despite its sadness :
"Slan-leat" (farewell).
ClIAITER II. To THE ReSCUE
There had been little warning of the hurricane
before it rose. A cold, still night, a pale moon
flooding the wide wastes of newly fallen snow,
the great sea asleep. By early noon a raging
tempest, a dark rack scurrying across a darker
sky, the broad Minch a seething whirlpool.
Jess stood at her little doorway as the short
afternoon closed quickly in, and gazed upon the
scene with fear and trembling in her eyes. She
was no coward. She had struggled through
storm and snow to bring home the cow which
throve so wondrously on the only pasture she
had ever known — the sea-wavi^ .strewn shore.
She had baked and brewed, and busied herself
with the old man's comforts, and crooned a
snatch of song through it all, too; musing on
Ewan, and with never a thought of danger in
her heart. For her the ocean had no terrors.
Her cradle-songs had been the lullaby of billows.
As a child she had sported with the breakers, or
woven fairy tales out of the lapping of waves.
In calm or storm it was her beloved world still,
the world which was her life.
But now as she clung, beaten by the hurricane,
to the rough boulder-work of the cot wall, lier
bosom heaved and two tears stood in her brave
brown eyes. Out of a dozen or more fishing-
boats driven before the gale in the Broad Bay
this morning three of the number had not
succeeded in making land, and, indirectly, it
had come to the girl's knowledge that Ewan
Morrison's was among the missing.
It was but four days since the lovers had
bidden each other farewell. Jess was telling
herself now, with the pitiful resignation so
characteristic of the Hebridean, that it had been
for ever. Her years had been made up of toil
and privation, of inurement to the hazard of
" They who go down to the sea in ships, that do
business in great waters." She had known so
little of joy till Ewan came and wrapped it about
her life, that her despair lesembled more the
awaking from a happy dream than the realisation
that her heart must break should Ewan come no
more.
Outside the wind howled ; while ever and
anon the distant thunder of the sea roused Jess
from her slumbers on her lowly pallet where she
had laid down to rest at last, dressed as she was,
overcome by forebodings and fatigue.
It was close upon midnight when Jess awoke
suddenly with the sound of loud knocking
ringing in her ears Her first sensation was of
incredulity and alarm. For an instant she sat
up trembling, waiting for its re})etition ; then
reproving herself for her fear, she sprang to her
feet, undid the latch, and threw open the cabin-
door.
A sharp gust of wind blew out the newly-
lighted candle she held in her hand, but by the
pale gleam of the moon she saw the snow had
not long ceased to fall, and lay a pure, untrodden
track before her. No human foot had traversed
this white carpet. That knocking must have
lieen a dream, the outcome of her anxious fears
for her lover's safety. Yet she closed and barred
the door reluctantly ; the awakening had been
very real, the summons imperative. True, it
might have been one of the peats composing the
thatch which had become dislodged, which the
wind lifting had . rebounded along the roof.
Jess, being a sensible lass, tried her l)est to
convince herself of this matter-of-fact explanation
of the mystery, and stretched her weary limba
anew in search of rest. She had undergone a
long day of hard toil, and wakeful as her har-
rowed brain was. Nature asserted itself in her
tired body, and in a few moments she was
sleeping profoundly.
How long she slept she knew not. The same
loud knocking as heretofore brought her
struggling, but half awake, with latch and bolt.
"Who is there!" she panted, in her native
Gaelic, while yet the door was barely open.
No one was there.
The shivering girl looked out upon the same
untrodden stretch of snow. The moon gleamed
above her, lighting up the dark ford, the white
shore beyond. There was the sound of the wild
sea beating there — there was the low sobbing of
the wind — and Je.ss stood paralysed.
This time there was no doubt in her mind —
those knocks were a reality. They had broken
in upon a happy dream. She was at the ingle
waiting for Ewan, as he came marching blithely
towards her from the drill battery, with the sun-
light glancing on his bonny suit of blue and his
boyish face gleaming beneath his cloth bonnet.