Angus Macrae silently drew back, rose, and lit the pine torch. Flaring abruptly into the dark before a gust of wind, it was like a blood-red wound in the flank of some vast black creature of night.
Having fastened the torch to the rope, he swung it far down the narrow funnel, up which came the smell of wrack and sea-damp and an obscure, muffled sound.
Still there was nothing visible. No shout followed the sudden glare.
The old man stood silent, craning forward with brooding eyes; for now he was thinking of the two sons he had lost. With a shudder, he moved slowly back and turned to Ranald.
"Will you go down?"
"Ay, father, that I will: if you will breathe the holy word before me and after me. The kelpie ... the Sea-Woman ... won't catch me, for I am sure of hand and foot."
"So your brother Seumas thought."
Ranald hesitated, looked at the cave-mouth, then at his father.
"Is it true Seumas died in that way?"
"It is true. The tide hemmed him in, and a heavy sea foamed at the mouth of the cavern. There was no chance but to gain some ledge high above the Sea-Woman's Pool. He did gain a hold on a ledge, for long afterward we found his knife on it. Then the accursed kelpie rose out of her lair and took him by the legs, and pulled him down, and tore him, and broke the bones of him—my son, my son, my beautiful Seumas!"