The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

Then for a long season I could look no more. But when I had recovered me a little, and could again command my heart, I saw a great part of the crew swarm thick as flies—fetching, carrying, and working like bees upon spilled honey about the corner where had lain the bodies of the lad and the woman. But it was not in the ordinary way that these were being prepared for burial. In the centre of the cave sat Sawny Bean, with some of the younger sort of the women pawing over him and bandaging his wounded shoulder. He was growling and spitting inarticulately all the while like a wild cat. And every time his shoulder hurt him as the women worked with the wound and mouthed it, he would take his other hand and strike one of them down, as though it was to her that he owed the twinge of pain.

Presently the monster arose and took the gold brocade again in his hand. I thought that of a certainty now our time was come, and I looked at Nell Kennedy.

God knows what was in my eyes. My heart within me was ready to break, for the like of this pass had never man been in. That I should have to smite my love to the death within an hour of my first kiss and the first owning of her affection.

But she that loved me read my thought in mine eyes.

She bared her neck for me, so that I could see its tender whiteness in the flicker of the fire.

'Strike there,' she said, 'and let me die in your arms, who art my own heart's love, Launcelot Kennedy.'

I heard the beast-man's step on the stair. I looked from Nell's dear neck to her eyes and back again to her bosom. Then I lifted my hand with the steel in it, and nerved myself for the striking, for I must make no mistake. And even in that moment I saw the gleam of a dagger in Marjorie's hand also.

Suddenly a tremendous rush of sound filled the cave. The blade fell from my hand, and by instinct, not knowing what we did, Nell and I clasped one another. The clamour seemed to be about us and all round us. Roaring echoes came back to us. The bowels of the earth quaked. Yet methought there was something strongly familiar in the sound of it. I turned me about, and there, standing erect with all his little height was the Dominie. His cheeks were distended, and he was blowing upon his great war-pipes such a thunderous pibroch as never had been heard east of the Minch since the island pipes skirled on the Red Harlaw.

What madcap possession had come upon his mind, I know not. But the effect I can tell. The pack of fiends that caroused and slew beneath, stood stricken a moment in amaze at the dreadful, incomprehensible sounds. Then they fled helter-skelter, yellyhooing with fear, down the narrow sea-way from which the tide had now fully ebbed. And when I looked again, there was not a soul to be seen. Only over the edge of a lappered cauldron the body of the murdered woman (or, at least, a part of it), lay doubled—a bloody incentive to make haste out of this direful Cave of Death.

The Dominie stepped down from our hidden alcove as though he had been leading a march, strutting and passaging like the King's piper marching about the banqueting table at Holyrood. I declare the creature seemed 'fey.' He was certainly possessed with a devil. But the very fearlessness of the deed won into our veins also, for with steel or pistol in each of our hands we marched after him—ready, and, indeed, eager, to encounter aught that might come in our way. Ay, and even thus we passed out of the cave, hasting down the long passage without a quiver of the heart or a blenching of the cheek—so suddenly and so starkly, by way of unexpected hope, had the glorious music brought the hot blood back to our hearts, even as it had stricken our cruel foes with instant terror.