“Death?”
“It is you that will be saying it.”
“Well,” he resumed, after a moment’s hush, “a man may live by the sea for five-score years and never hear that ninth wave call in any Srùth-màra; but soon or late he will hear it. An’ many is the Flood that will be silent for all of us; but there will be one Flood for each of us that will be a dreadful Voice, a voice of terror and of dreadfulness. And whoever hears that voice, he for sure will be the burden in the Ebb.”
“Has any heard that Voice, and lived?”
McLean looked at me, but said nothing. Phadric Macrae rose, tautened a rope, and made a sign to me to put the helm a-lee. Then, looking into the green water slipping by—for the tide was feeling our keel, and a stronger breath from the sea lay against the hollow that was growing in the sail—he said to Ivor:
“You should be telling her of Ivor MacIvor Mhic Niall.”
“Who was Ivor MacNeill?” I said.
“He was the father of my mother,” answered McLean, “and was known throughout the north isles as Ivor Carminish: for he had a farm on the eastern lands of Carminish which lie between the hills called Strondeval and Rondeval, that are in the far south of the Northern Hebrides, and near what will be known to you as the Obb of Harris.
“And I will now be telling you about him in the Gaelic, for it is more easy to me, and more pleasant for us all.