As Eean rolled his wee girl in a pea-jacket, and set her near him at the helm, he could not help crooning to himself some verses from Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus."
"It was the schooner Hesperus,
hat sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May."
Away went the boats. The women and children watched them from the cliff-top till a gathering haze swallowed them up, then went somewhat sadly back to their homes. "I dinna like the looks of the weather," said a fisherman's wife that evening after sunset. "The moon has an unco' queer look about it, and there are clouds rising in the east that'll soon chase ilke starn [star] out o' the lift."
"Hush, Jemmie, hush!" said Eppie, heaping more peat and wood on the fire. "Our men have been mercifully preserved on mony a stormy nicht, and I've little fear of them noo, even should the wind blaw ower the hills in hurricanes."
About ten o'clock that night Eppie was dosing in her chair, for her day's work had been hard, when an anxious knocking was heard at the door, and she speedily got up and drew aside the bolt, admitting three neighbours.
"Oh, woman, woman!" they cried, "hear at the wind, and Johnnie Stevens' glass is doon, doon, doon! It'll be the wildest nicht at sea that ever a boat was oot in."
"Sit down by the fire," said Eppie. "I've been listenin' to the wind. It's no a cheery sound; but oh, women, do you no ken that the Lord can hold the sea in the hollow of his han'?"
But I fear Eppie was trying to impart to her neighbours a comfort she herself was very far indeed from possessing. No one thought of bed or rest that night. Nor could the wives who had gathered around Eppie's blazing hearth sit long in one place. They must keep pacing about, often going anxiously to peer out into the darkness, shuddering and shivering as they heard the wild howl of the tempest and the rattle of hail and sleet on the window panes. The kindly-hearted Eppie kept them talking as much as possible, and she herself seemed no whit affected, though in reality her heart was a heavy one indeed. But there were, in spite of all she could do, spells of silence, broken only by the wail and "howther" of the wind, and the sobs of those grief-stricken women.
It must have been well on towards morning when every eye was turned towards the door, for the "sneck was tirled"; and next moment the outer door was opened.