“It will be a storm from the sea,” she said; “the scarts an’ gulls hae been flying landward sin’ daybreak, an’ I hae never seen the ground-swell come home heavier against the rocks. Waes me for the puir sailors that maun bide under it a’!”
“In the long stormy nights,” said her companion, “I cannot sleep for thinking of them; though I have no one to bind me to them now. Only look how the sea rages among the rocks as if it were a thing of life—that last wave rose to the crane’s nest. And look, yonder is a boat rounding the rock with only one man in it. It dances on the surf as if it were a cork, and the little bit sail, so black and wet, seems scarcely bigger than a napkin. Is it not bearing in for the boat-haven below?”
“My poor old eyes,” replied the widow, “are growing dim, an’ surely no wonder; but yet I think I should ken that boatman. Is it no Eachen Macinla o’ Tarbat?”
“Hard-hearted old man!” exclaimed the maiden, “what can be taking him here? Look how his skiff shoots in like an arrow on the long roll o’ the surf!—and now she is high on the beach. How cruel it was of him to rob you of your little property in the very first of your grief! But see, he is so worn out that he can hardly walk over the rough stones. Ah me, he is down!—wretched old man, I must run to his assistance; but no, he has risen again. See, he is coming straight to the house; and now he is at the door.” In a moment after, Eachen entered the cottage.
“I am perishing, Lillias,” he said, “with cold and hunger, an’ can gang nae farther—surely ye’ll no shut your door on me in a night like this?”
The poor widow had been taught in a far different school. She relinquished to the worn-out boatman her seat by the fire, now hurriedly heaped with fresh fuel, and hastened to set before him the simple viands which her cottage afforded.
As the night darkened, the storm increased. The wind roared among the rocks like the rattling of a thousand carriages over a paved street; and there were times when, after a sudden pause, the blast struck the cottage as if it were a huge missile flung against it, and pressed on its roof and walls till the very floor rocked, and the rafters strained and quivered like the beams of a stranded vessel. There was a ceaseless patter of mingled rain and snow—now lower, now louder; and the fearful thunderings of the waves as they raged among the pointed crags, were mingled with the hoarse roll of the stones along the beach. The old man sat beside the fire fronting the widow and her companion, with his head reclined nearly as low as his knee, and his hands covering his face. There was no attempt at conversation. He seemed to shudder every time the blast yelled along the roof, and as a fiercer gust burst open the door, there was a half-muttered ejaculation.
“Heaven itsel’ hae mercy on them! for what can man do in a night like this?”
“It is black as pitch!” exclaimed the maiden, who had risen to draw the bolt, “and the drift flees so thick that it feels to the hand like a solid snow-wreath. And, oh, how it lightens!”
“Heaven itsel’ hae mercy on them!” again ejaculated the old man. “My two boys,” said he, addressing the widow, “are at the far Firth; an’ how can an open boat live in a night like this!”