'She came up from the water,' he said to them, in a voice no man knew. 'It was I who brought her out of the water, and fought for her with the demons under the rocks, and beat all of them off. But one of them I did not make the sign of the Cross before, and that one is the King of Spain; and so he has wrought me this mischief, and made all my labour as nothing; and she is in the water again, and I must be going to fetch her out rightly this time.'
Murtogh sprang like a deer into the air, with a mighty bound which bore him far over the edge of the cliff. Some there were, in the throng that sprang forward, agile enough to be looking down the abyss before his descent was finished. These, to their amazement, beheld a miracle. For the great fall did not kill Murtogh Mordha, but the waters boiled and rose to meet him, and held him up on their tossing currents as he swam forward, and marked with a pallid breadth of foam his path out to sea, farther and farther out, till the mists hid him from human view.
The wailing song of Owny Hea rose through the wet air above the keening of the women in the bawn. But louder still was the voice of the lad who wore his father's ring, and drew now from beneath his mantle his father's sword.
'I am Donogh son of Murtogh Mordha!' he shouted, 'and I am Lord in Dunlogher, and when I am of my full strength I will kill the King of Spain, and give his castles and all his lands and herds and women to you for your own!'
The three towers of Dunlogher are broken, and the witch has fled from its grey lake, and no man knows where the bones of its forgotten sept are buried. But the evil currents will never tire of writhing, and the shadows which are no shadows are forever changing, in the Path of Murty the Proud.
THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF
BY Q