CHAPTER XVII—THE STORM
The vessel, straining at the rope that bound her to the shore, lay with a clumsy shoulder over the bank that shelved abruptly into the great depths where slimy weeds entangled. Her sails were housed and snug, the men in the bows lay under the flapping corner of the jib and played at cards, though the noise of the raindrops on their canvas roof might well disturb them. Gilian made no pause; he ran up at the tale’s conclusion, at a bound he was on the shore, staggering upon the rocks and slipping upon the greasy weeds till he came to the salt bent grass, and with firmer footing ran like a young deer for the shelter of the wood. The rain battered after him, the wind rose. In front, the wood, so still an hour before, in its winter slumber, with no birds now to mar its dreams, had of a sudden roused to the rumour of the storm. As by an instinct, the young trees on the edge seemed to shudder before the winds came to them. Their slim tips could not surely be bowing, even so little, to the gale that was yet behind Gilian. But he passed them and plunged under the tall firs, and he felt secure only when the ruddy needles of other years were a soft carpet underfoot It was true he found shelter here from the rain that slanted terrifically, but it was not for sanctuary from the elements he sought the rude aisles, though now he appreciated the peace of them. It was for escape from himself, from his sense of hopeless, inexplicable longing, from some tremendous convulsion of his mind created by Black Duncan’s fable.
The wood was all a wood of fir, not old nor very young, but at that mid age when it has to all of country blood an invitation to odorous dusks and pathless wanderings below laced branches. The sun never could reach the heart of it, except at the hour of setting, when it flamed bloody through the pillars. The rain never seemed to penetrate, for the fir-needles underfoot grew more dusty year by year. But when the rain beat as it did now, through the whole of it went a sound of gobbling and drumming, and the wind, striking upon the trunks as if they were the strings of Ossian, harped a great and tremendous tune, wanting start or ending. And by-and-by there came company for Gilian as he sheltered in the wood. Birds of all kinds beat hurriedly through the trees and settled upon the boughs with a shudder of the quill, pleased to be out of the inclement open and cosily mantled in.
The boy went into the very inmost part of the wood without knowing the reason why thus he should fly from the ship that so recently had enchanted him, from the tales he loved. But in the soothing presence of the firs and the content of the animals sheltering from the storm, he found a momentary peace from the agitation that had set up in him, roused at the song of the girl, the story of the mariner. The emotions, the fears, longings, discontents that jangled through him as they had never done before relapsed to a mood level and calm, as if they, too, had sheltered from the storm like the birds upon the trees.
But by-and-by he became ashamed of his action, that must seem so foolish to the friends he had left in the ship without a word of explanation. His face flamed hotly at the thought of his rude departure. He would give a world to be able to go back again as if nothing had happened and sit unchallenged in the cosy den of the Jean. And musing thus he went through the wood till he came upon the bank of the Duglas, roaring grey and ragged, a robber from the hills, bearing spoil of the upper reaches, the town-lands, the open and windswept plains. It carried the trunks of great trees that had lain since other storms upon its banks, and with a great chafing and cracking no less than the wooden bridge from Clonary which the children were wont to cross from those parts on their way to school.
“That will go battering on the vessel,” he thought, looking amazed at its ponderous beams flicking through the water and over the little cascades as if they had been feathers blown by an evening breeze. “That will go battering on the Jean” he thought, and of a sudden it seemed his manifest duty to warn the occupants of the ship to defend themselves from the unexpected attack.
He followed the bridge for a little, fascinated, wondering what was to become of it next in the tumult of waters till he came to the falls, where he had looked for a check to it. But it stayed no more than a moment on the lip of the precipice swung up a jagged edge above the deep, then crashed into the linn, where it seemed to swerve and turn, giddy with its adventure. Gilian stood spellbound on the banks looking at it so far down, then he turned, and cutting off the bend of the river, made for the shore.
He crashed through bracken and bramble and through the fir-wood again, startling the sheltering birds by his hurry, emerging upon the face of the brae in sight of the Jean and the sea. In his absence a great change had come upon the wave, upon the hilly distance, upon the whole countenance of nature. The rain was no longer in drumming torrents, but in a soft and almost imperceptible veil; but if the rain had lost the wind had gained. And as he passed from the edge of the wood, all the trees seemed to twang and creak, or cracked loudly, parting perhaps at some dear nerve where sap and beauty would no longer course. In every bush along the edge of the wood there seemed a separate chorus of voices, melodious and terrific, whistle and whoop, shriek and moan. Even the grass nodding in the wind lent a thin voice to the chorus, a voice such as only the sharp and sea-trained ear may comprehend, that beasts hear long before the wind itself is apparent, so that they remove themselves to the bieldy sides of the hills before tumult breaks.
But it was the aspect of the sea that most surprised the boy, for where before there had been but a dreaming plain of smiles there was the riot of waters. The black lips of the wave parted and showed the white fangs underneath, or spat the spume of passion into the face of the day. It looked as if every glen and every gully, every corry and eas on that mountainous coast was spending its breath upon the old sea, the poor old sea that would be let alone to dream and rest, but must suffer the humours of the mischievous winds.