Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

by Robert Cleland

As they won their way upwards, the darkness grew less intense, and the flooding of the road less serious; but it was not till they had reached the level of the moorland looking straight out to sea, that they were able to realize the full fury of the tempest, which threatened each moment to catch them up in its arms and dash them to the ground. The rain, however, had abated, and there was refreshment in the salt keen breath of the distant sea. An occasional rift in the clouds let through a feeble glimmer, and as they staggered along they could make out the broken horizon line of the black tumbling waters.

A flash--and the distant boom of a gun. 'I'm thinkin', sir, there's a ship out yon'er. It's a sair nicht to be on the water.'

Presently another flash--and a rocket cleft its way aloft through the darkness, while the roar of the angry ocean, as they drew near, grew louder and louder.

They now began to descend from the higher level, encountering on the downward course a repetition of the perils and difficulty which had hindered their ascent. Their attention was fully engrossed in picking their steps and left them no leisure to observe other things. At the bottom of the hill there was a considerable breadth of flooded meadow, and there a wooden bridge half submerged spanned the flooded waters of the Effick, shivering in the boiling flood, and threatening to give way beneath them as they hurried across. They now found themselves on the sea road, level and well made, and their troubles or at least the dangers of the way were at an end.

And now for the first time they could realize the horror of the raging sea, with the great billows hurling themselves against the shore, and casting their sheets of foam high in the air, and drenching the road in showers of spray. Again they see the flash of a minute gun, but its voice is drowned in the tumult of the elements. The flash now, not as before, far out at sea--the ship was coming perilously near the shore.

'I'm fear'd they'll hae sair wark to win round Inverlyon pint, noo,' said Sandie; 'they're ower far in shore!'--'The Lord pity them!' he went on, as another flash showed the vessel to be still nearing the land. 'They're driftin' fair in for the Effick Mouth! The Lord hae mercy on their souls!'

'How is the tide to-night, Sandie?' the minister enquired. 'Do you think we can cross the mouth of the bay by the sands under the rocks? It will be wet, of course, with the spray from the waves, but we are too wet ourselves to mind that, and it saves full four miles of the way.'

'Na, sir! The sea's in the nicht, an' there's five feet o' water on the sands. We maun gang round.'

As they journeyed along, they twice again saw the flash of the signal guns; the second time the ship herself became visible, very near the shore, a helpless waif apparently, tossed on the summit of a mountain surge. The bulwarks, which showed as those of a large vessel, stood out black against the murky horizon for an instant, and then sank again among the tumbling waves. Two of her masts were gone, but the third entangled in the wreck of rigging, still held out. Presently there was a crash audible above the storm. Another, and they saw the ship impaled on the jagged rocks at the mouth of the bay. The furious billows rushed up after her, wave on wave, as if refusing to be baulked of their prey, washed over her from end to end, broke down the remaining mast, and shook and ground her among the rocks. A few cries were carried shoreward, shrill above the tempest, and then went out in the night. Another crash--and the wreck parted asunder and fell back into the sea, and was whirled away among the furious breakers, which tore it plank from plank, and strewed the relics of that goodly ship for miles along the shore.

It was wearing towards morning, and the wind was perceptibly falling when these wayfarers reached their destination. A candle burning in the window seemed the only sign of life in the whole slumbering town; and even that guttered and flickered low in its socket, an emblem of the life slowly burning itself out on the adjoining bed. A stentorious breathing, coming at irregular and ever-lengthening intervals, told that Sandie's granny was already setting out on her long journey--that she had closed her eyes for ever on all the things of time, even the ministrations of religion; and that the mysteries to which those ministrations can, at the best, but darkly point, would shortly be uncovered to her immortal view.