CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE CREW OF THE BONNIE ANNIE.
Having caught as many fish as he wanted, Malcolm rowed to the other side of the Scaurnose. There he landed and left the dinghy in the shelter of the rocks, the fish covered with long broad-leaved tangles, climbed the steep cliff, and sought Blue Peter. The brown village was quiet as a churchyard, although the sun was now growing hot. Of the men some were not yet returned from the night’s fishing, and some were asleep in their beds after it. Not a chimney smoked. But Malcolm seemed to have in his own single being life and joy enough for a world; such an intense consciousness of bliss burned within him, that, in the sightless, motionless village, he seemed to himself to stand like an altar blazing in the midst of desert Carnac. But he was not the only one awake: on the threshold of Peter’s cottage sat his little Phemy, trying to polish a bit of serpentine marble upon the doorstep, with the help of water, which stood by her side in a broken tea-cup.
She lifted her sweet gray eyes, and smiled him a welcome.
“Are ye up a’ready, Phemy?” he said.
“I ha’ena been doon yet,” she answered. “My mither was oot last nicht wi’ the boat, an’ Auntie Jinse was wi’ the bairn, an’ sae I cud du as I likit.”
“An’ what did ye like, Phemy?”
“A’body kens what I like,” answered the child: “I was oot an’ aboot a’ nicht. An’ eh, Ma’colm! I hed a veesion.”
“What was that, Phemy?”
“I was upo’ the tap o’ the Nose, jist as the sun rase, luikin’ aboot me, an’ awa’ upo’ the Boar’s Tail. I saw twa angels sayin’ their prayers. Nae doobt they war prayin’ for the haill warl’, i’ the quaiet o’ the mornin’ afore the din begud. Maybe ane o’ them was that auld priest wi’ the lang name i’ the buik o’ Genesis, ’at hed naither father nor mither—puir man!—him ’at gaed aboot blissin’ fowk.”
Malcolm thought he might take his own time to set the child right, and asked her to go and tell her father that he wanted to see him. In a few minutes Blue Peter appeared, rubbing his eyes—one of the dead called too early from the tomb of sleep.