Kate paced the shore, and thought within herself the still assured thoughts of one whose mind is made up about the main issue, and who can afford quietly to consider concerning matters less important.
The sea was very still this day about Suliscanna. The white surf-rim round the great cliffs was hardly to be noted. The gap-toothed caves which pierce them were still. The roaring and hissing of the "bullers" were not heard. Only in front of the island to landward the tides swayed and ran like a mill-race, where the ledges rose black and dripping from the deep, and the currents from the ocean swirled onward, or sucked back through the narrows in dangerous whirlpools and strange leaping hillocks of sea-water.
Kate stood wondering at their beauty, without the least idea that these oily swirls and boiling hummocks of smooth green water were among the most dangerous sea perils to be met with all the way from Pentland to Solway.
Suddenly her eyes lit on a dark speck far away out upon the bright plain. It might have been the head of a swimming seal, or the black razor-edge of a large skerry showing over the rush of the tide. But, as she watched, the dot grew blacker and larger. A boat was certainly approaching the island. Kate stood trembling. For the issue meant life and death to her. It might be her tyrant come to claim his captive. It might be her saviour come to save.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
THE TIDE-RACE OF SULISCANNA
Kate McGhie stood looking across the boiling, hillocky water of the Suck of Suliscanna in the direction of the boat, which moment by moment blackened and grew larger, rising steadily towards her out of the east. The day was so still, the tide so smooth as it swept inshore after passing the oily "bullers" of the roost, that she had no idea of the world of danger those in the adventurous bark had to pass before her prow could grate on the white sand of the landing-beach between the opposing headlands of Aionaig and Lianacraig.
Kate's heart beat strangely, almost painfully. It was wonderful, she thought, that men should undergo perils and cross a world's seas for a simple girl's sake. Yet there was pleasure, too, in the thought; for somehow she knew that those who approached loved her and came from far seeking her good.
"It is he—it is surely he!" so her soul chanted its glad triumph within her. "Did I not say that he could break prison-bands and come to find me—that he would overpass unruly seas only to look on my face? Has any maid in the world a lover true like mine? And he will break my prison also and take me away. And with him I am ready to go to the ends of the earth, fearlessly as though he had been my mother."