A moment of silence followed, and the cry was then repeated, thinner, fainter, already further away. It seemed withdrawn, sunk more deeply into the night, higher up, too, floating away northwards into remoter vales and glens that lay beyond the shore-line. Though still a single cry, there were distinct breaks of utterance in it this time, as of words. It was, of a kind—speech: a Message, a Summons, a Command that somehow held entreaty at its heart.
And this time the appeal in it was irresistible. Father and son started forwards as though deliberately pulled; while from himself shot outwards that loosening portion of his being that all the evening had sought release. The vehicle of his yearnings, passionately summoned, leaped to the ancient call of the Earth's eternally young life. This vital essence of his personality, volatile as air and fierce as lightning, flashed outwards from its hidden prison where it lay choked and smothered by the weights and measures of modern life. For the beauty and splendor of that far voice wrung his very heart and set it free. He knew a quasi-physical wrench of detachment. A wild and tameless glory fused the fastenings of ages.
Only the motionless solidity of the great figure beside him prevented somehow the complete escape, and made him understand that the Call just then was not for all three of them, especially not for himself. The parent rose beside him, massive and stable, secure as the hills which were his true home, and the boy broke suddenly into happy speech which was wild and singing.
He looked up swiftly into his parent's steady visage.
"Father!" he cried in tones that merged half with the wind, half with the sea, "it is his voice! Chiron calls—!" His eyes shone like stars, his young face was alight with joy and passion.—"Go, father, you, or—"
He stopped an instant, catching the Irishman's eyes upon his own across the form between them.
"—or you!" he added with a laughter of delight; "you go!"
The big figure straightened up, standing back a pace from the rails. A low sound rolled from him that was like an echo of thunder among hills. With slow, laborious distinctness it broke off into fragments that were words, with great difficulty uttered, but with a final authority that rendered them command.
"No," O'Malley heard, "you—first. And—carry word—that we—are—on the way." Staring out across the sea and sky he boomed it deeply. "You—first. We—follow—!" And the speech seemed to flow from the entire surface of his body rather than from the lips alone. The sea and air mothered the syllables. Thus might the Night herself have spoken.
Chiron! The word, with its clue of explanation, flamed about him with a roar. Was this, then, the type of cosmic life to which his companions, and himself with them, inwardly approximated…?