Strabagy Bay cuts deep into the peninsula. A rider must skirt its edge with patience, rewarded now and again by some vision of surprise, as he finds himself at a turn in the pathway on the summit of a precipice 1200 feet above the water, or in a sheltered cove where waves of céladon and malachite plash upon a tawny bed. At one point, if the tide happens to be in, he must sit and await its ebb; for the only passage is by a ford across the sand, which is dangerous to the stranger at high-water. Not so to the dwellers in this latitude, for they speed like monkeys along the overhanging crags, or like the waddling penguins and sea-parrots that are padding yonder crannies with the softest down from off their breasts for the behoof of a yet unborn brood.
Towards Malin Head the ground rises gradually from a shingly beach till it breaks off abruptly to seaward in a sheer wall of quartz and granite--a vast frowning face, vexed by centuries of tempest, battered by perennial storms, comforted by the clinging embrace of vegetation, red and russet heath of every shade, delicate ferns drooping from cracks and fissures, hoary lichens, velvet mosses, warm-tinted cranesbill; from out of which peeps here and there the glitter of a point of spar, a stain of metal or of clay, a sparkling vein of ore. The white-crested swell which never sleeps laps round its foot in curdled foam; for the bosom of the Atlantic is ever breathing--heaving in arterial throbs below, however calm it may seem upon the surface. Away down through the crystal water you can detect the blackened base resting on a bank of weed--dense, slippery citrine hair, swinging in twilit masses slowly to and fro, as if humming to itself, under the surface, of the march of Time, whose hurry affects it not; for what have human cares, human soul-travail, human agony, to do with this enchanted spot, which is, as it were, just without the threshold of the world? The winter waves, which dash high above the bluffs in spray, have fretted, by a perseverance of many decades, a series of caverns half-submerged; viscous arcades, where strange winged creatures lurk that hate the light; beasts that, hanging like some villanous fruit in clusters, blink with purblind eyes at the fishes which dart in and out, fragments of the sunshine they abhor; at the invading shoals of seals, which gambol and turn in clumsy sport, with a glint of white bellies as they roll, and a shower of prismatic gems.
In June the salmon arrive in schools, led each by a solemn pioneer, who knows his own special river; and then the fisher-folk are busy. So are the seals, whose appetite is dainty. Yet the hardy storm-children of Ennishowen love the seals although they eat their fish--for their coats are warm and soft to wear; their oil gives light through the long winter evenings for weaving of stuff and net-mending. There is a superstition which accounts for their views as to the seals; for they believe them to be animated by the souls of deceased maiden-aunts. It is only fair, in the inevitable equalisation of earthly matter, that our maiden-aunts should taste of our good things, and that we in our turn should live on theirs.
A mile from the shore--at Swilly's mouth--stands Glas-aitch-é Island, a mere rock, a hundred feet above sea-level, crowned by an antique fortress, which was modernised and rendered habitable by a caprice of the late lord. At the period which now occupies us, it consisted of a dwelling rising sheer from the rock on three sides; its rough walls pierced by small windows, and topped by a watch-tower, on which was an iron beacon-basket. The fourth side looked upon a little garden, where, protected by low scrub and chronically asthmatic trees, a few flowers grew unkempt--planted there by my lady when she first visited the place as mistress. On this side, too, was a little creek which served as harbour for the boats--a great many boats of every sort and size; for the only amusement at Glas-aitch-é was boating, with a cast for a salmon or a codling now and again, and an occasional shot at a seal or cormorant.
My lady arrived there in the yacht, and spent her afternoon alone as she wished, for it was late at night before Shane and Doreen were rowed across--the latter wearied by the long ride, but calmed in spirit by communing with nature.
It was with a gloomy face and set lips that the Countess of Glandore wandered from room to room, all damp and chill from long neglect, each chair and table telling its own tale, each faded carpet and curtain whispering of the hated past, with its desperate anguish of humiliation. For this was the heart-chord which twanged most painfully in my lady's breast upon revisiting the place again. 'Set right the wrong while yet there is time'--how often had that wailing cry echoed in her ears! Yet while there still was time that wrong was never righted; for my lady had been so humbled, so abased, so utterly wrenched and mangled, during the year she had dwelt upon that island with my lord, that she revolted, with indignant protest, at a possibility of having to traverse the dark Valley of the Shadow yet again.
As she looked at the chairs and tables, the whole bitterness of that degradation flooded back on her. She recalled how, sobbing on that sofa, she had prayed for death with scorching tears; how, standing by that casement, the sublime panorama of Donegal had been shut out by boiling drops of agony.
She sat down on an old chair, and looked back upon her life since last she touched its worm-eaten woodwork. A life lulled sometimes to a half forgetfulness, which was nearer to positive happiness than she ever expected to attain. The reflection returned again and again to her, that what had been done was my lord's fault, not hers--that she had acquiesced as the weaker vessel, and had washed her hands of the consequences. But then, several times, her peace had been rudely broken by vague terror of troubles renewed.
Would she be able to avert them? Would her puny woman's arm be strong enough to grapple with Fate? Events certainly looked threatening. Terence had involved himself in a forlorn hope. What if he should fall? My lady rose hastily, and flinging wide the window, panted there for breath. She realised, with a tingling horror of abasement, that if he fell, her own burthen would be lightened--that far away, muffled in her inmost soul, there was a voice babbling a hint that it would be a mercy if he fell. Her own son! It was a mother's inner voice that spoke! She pressed her face helplessly upon the tattered curtain, as she had used to do when imploring a release, and groaned aloud--it was well that the others had not yet arrived.
Then, her mental vision sharpened by this pang, she wandered on, oblivious of the stories murmured by the tables and the chairs--for she was peering with all her might into the future now. Things were going crooked. There could be no denying that. She had schemed for the best. What would come of her scheming? Shane was deplorably difficult to manage--looked so like his father sometimes when angered, that she recoiled as she remembered the expression of his visage when she moaned over her fate to him upon this very spot all those years ago. He grew daily more difficult to manage, did Shane; because he was a Cherokee, a Hellfire; and it stands to reason that an important attribute for a Hellfire to cultivate must be a scorn of maternal lecturing and fiddlefaddle.