But the heat and the suffocation in this atmosphere became almost insupportable. The men, with bare heads, and jerseys unbuttoned at the neck, were continually going to the cask of fresh water beside the windlass. Nor was there any change when the night came on. If anything, the night was hotter than the evening had been. They awaited in silence what might come of this ominous calm.
Hamish came aft.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Keith," said he, "but I am thinking we will have an anchor-watch to-night."
"You will have no anchor-watch to-night," Macleod answered, slowly, from out of the darkness. "I will be all the anchor-watch you will need, Hamish, until the morning."
"You, sir!" Hamish cried. "I have been waiting to take you ashore: and surely it is ashore that you are going!"
Just as he had spoken there was a sound that all the world seemed to stand still to hear. It was a low murmuring sound of thunder; but it was so remote as almost to be inaudible. The next moment an awful thing occurred. The two men standing face to face in the dark suddenly found themselves in a blaze of blinding steel-blue light; and at the very same instant the thunder-roar crackled and shook all around them like the firing of a thousand cannon. How the wild echoes went booming over the sea! Then they were in the black night again. There was a period of awed silence.
"Hamish," Macleod said, quickly, "do as I tell you now! Lower the gig; take the men with you, and Christina, and go ashore, and remain in the sheiling till the morning."
"I will not!" Hamish cried. "Oh, Sir Keith, would you have me do that?"
Macleod had anticipated his refusal. Instantly he went forward and called up Christina. He ordered Duncan Cameron and John Cameron to lower away the gig. He got them all in but Hamish.
"Hamish," said he, "you are a smaller man than I. Is it on such a night, that you would have me quarrel with you? Must I throw you into the boat?"