From the southern ridge of the headland of Lianacraig Kate and her companion could look almost directly down upon the gambols of the treacherous Suck of Suliscanna. The boat lay clear to their sight upon the surface of the sea—two men in her, one sitting with the rope of the sheet in his hand, and the other at the stern with an oar to turn her off from the hidden dangers, as the seething run of the tidal currents brought her head on to some sunken reef or dangerous skerry. Sometimes, ere the voyagers could tack or turn in their unsailorlike fashion, a white spurt of foam would suddenly spring up under their very bows as a swell from the Atlantic lumbered lazily in, or again a backdraw of the current would swirl upward from some submarine ledge and raise a great breaking pyramid of salt-water on a spot where a moment before there had been only the smooth hiss of water moving very swiftly.
The islanders, who alone realized the terrible danger of the two in the boat, lay for the most part wholly silent, some on the cliff's immediate edge, and others behind little sodded breastworks which had been erected, partly to keep the wind off, when, as now, they kept watch from their posts of observation, and partly for the drying of their winter's fuel.
Mistress McAlister indicated the eager gazers with her elbows.
"See the Heelantmen," she said; "they are a' up there! Lord, what Christians! The verra minister is amang them himsel'—they canna help it. The spirit is on them ever since langsyne the Spaniard's ship drave in, and brocht a' that peltry of mahogany aumries and wrought cupboards, and forbye the queer fashions of knitting that the sailor folk of the crew learned them after they wan ashore. But they learn little from them that's shipwrecked on Suliscanna noo. For them that's no deid corpses before they come to land get a bit clour wi' a stane that soon puts them oot o' conceit wi' a' this world o' sin and suffering."
Kate's face was white and drawn, but she hardly noticed the woman's fell prophecies.
For all the while the two men in the boat were laboring hard, fighting tensely for life, and every eye on the island was upon them. They had reached one of the smoothest and therefore most dangerous places, when suddenly the black back of a skip-jack dolphin curved over like a mill-wheel beside the boat, and a hoarse shout went up from the islanders of Suliscanna, who lay breathlessly waiting the event on the rocks of Lianacraig.
"It's a' by wi' the poor lads noo!" said Bess McAlister, "a' but the warsle in the water and the grip o' the saut in their thrapples! The deil's ain beast is doon there watching for them."
"THEN THE SWIRLING TIDE-RACE TOOK HOLD OF HER"
"God help my Wat!" sobbed Kate, half to herself and half to the Divinity—who, as the Good Book says, can do wonders in the great waters.