At the extreme end, where these rocks broke suddenly into deep water, a figure was standing fishing, a tall, broad-shouldered figure, looking even larger than it actually was, as everything did against that vacant background.
Grania hastened her steps. A curious look was beginning to dawn in her face: an habitual, or rather a recurrent, one, as anyone would have known who had been in the habit of watching her. It was a look of vague expectation, undefined but unmistakable; a look of suppressed excitement, which seemed to pervade her whole frame. What there was to expect, or what there was to be particularly excited about, she would have been puzzled herself to explain. There the feeling was, however, and so far it had survived many disappointments.
Murdough Blake turned as they came up, vehement displeasure clouding his good-looking, blunt-featured face.
‘It is the devil’s own bad fishing it is to-day, so it is!’ he exclaimed, pointing to the rock beside him, upon which a few small pollock and bream were flapping feebly in their last agonies. ‘Two hours, my God! it is I am here—two hours and more! I ask you, Grania O’Malley, is that a proper lot of fish for two hours’ catching? And Teige O’Shaughnessy that caught seven-and-forty in less time yesterday—seven-and-forty, not one less, and he a boccach![4] Is it fair? My God! I ask you is it fair?’
Phelim had squatted down like a small seal upon a flat-topped bit of rock, evidently expecting to wait there for another hour at least. Murdough, however, was delighted at their coming. He had been only pining for an excuse to break off his occupation.
‘It is not myself will stop any longer for such fishing as that, so it is not!’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘My faith and word no! Why would I stop? Is it to be looking at the sea? God knows I have seen enough of the sea! Enough and more than enough!’
Grania offering no objection to this very natural indignation, he rolled up his line, collected the fish, and they turned back together across the rocks.
CHAPTER II
They were now upon the loneliest piece of the whole island. Far and near not a human creature or sign of humanity, save themselves, was to be seen. The few villages of Inishmaan were upon the other side, the few spots of verdure which might here and there have been discerned by long search were all but completely lost in the prevailing stoniness, and to eyes less accustomed than theirs nothing could have been more deplorable than the waste of desolation spread out here step above step, stony level above stony level, till it ended, appropriately enough, in the huge ruinous fort of Dun Connor, grey even amongst that greyness, grim even by comparison with what surrounded it, and upon which it looked austerely down.
It was one of those days, too, when the islands, susceptible enough at times of beauty, stand out nakedly, almost revoltingly, ugly. The low sky; the slate-coloured waste of water; the black hanks of driftweed flung hither and thither upon the rocks; the rocks themselves, shapeless, colourless, half-dissolved by the rains that eternally beat on them; the white pools staring upwards like so many dead eyes; the melancholy, roofless church; the great, grey fort overhead, sloughing away atom by atom like some decaying madrepore; the few pitiful attempts at cultivation—the whole thing, above, below, everywhere, seeming to press upon the senses with an impression of ugliness, an ugliness enough to sicken not the eyes or the heart alone, but the very stomach.