“Are you the Ceann-Cinnidh?” he cried.
“Are you the head of this clan of the sea-folk?”
The huge beast ceased its swaying. Its curled lips moved from its fangs.
“Speak, Seal, if there’s no curse upon you! Maybe, now, you’ll be Anndra himself, the brother of my father! Speak! H’st—are you hearing that music on the shore? ’Tis the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’! Death o’ my soul, it’s the ‘Dàn-nan-Ròn’!
“Aha, ’tis Gloom Achanna out of the Grave. Back, beast, and let me move on!”
With that, seeing the great bull did not move, he struck it full in the face with clenched fist. There was a hoarse, strangling roar, and the seal champion was upon him with lacerating fangs.
Mànus swayed this way and that. All he could hear now was the snarling and growling and choking cries of the maddened seals. As he fell, they closed in upon him. His screams wheeled through the night like mad birds. With desperate fury he struggled to free himself. The great bull pinned him to the rock; a dozen others tore at his white flesh, till his spouting blood made the rocks scarlet in the white shine of the moon.
For a few seconds he still fought savagely, tearing with teeth and hands. Once, a red irrecognisable mass, he staggered to his knees. A wild cry burst from his lips, when from the shore-end of the reef came loud and clear the lilt of the rune of his fate.
The next moment he was dragged down and swept from the reef into the sea. As the torn and mangled body disappeared from sight, it was amid a seething crowd of leaping and struggling seals, their eyes wild with affright and fury, their fangs red with human gore.
And Gloom Achanna, turning upon the reef, moved swiftly inland, playing low on his feadan, as he went.