“Eachainn listened, but he could hear no wailing beann-sith, no unwonted sound.
“‘Sure, I hear nothing but the wind moaning through the Great Stones, an’ beyond them the noise of the Flowin’ Tide.’
“‘The Flowing Tide! the Flowing Tide!’ cried Carminish, and no longer with the hush in the voice. ‘An’ what is it you hear in the Flowing Tide?’
“Eachainn looked in silence. What was the thing he could say? For now he knew.
“‘Ah, och, och, ochone, you may well sigh, Eachainn Mhic Eachainn! For the ninth wave o’ the Flowing Tide is coming out o’ the North Sea upon this shore, an’ already I can hear it calling ‘Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!… Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!’
“And with that Carminish dashed out the light that was upon the table, and leaped upon Eachainn, and dinged him to the floor, and would have killed him, but for the growing noise of the sea beyond the Stannin’ Stones o’ Callernish, and the woe-weary sough o’ the wind, an’ the calling, calling, ‘Come, come away! Come, come away!’
“And so he rose and staggered to the door, and flung himself out into the night: while Eachainn lay upon the floor and gasped for breath, and then crawled to his knees, an’ took the Book from the shelf by his fern-straw mattress, an’ put his cheek against it, an’ moaned to God, an’ cried like a child for the doom that was upon Ivor McIvor Mhic Niall, who was of his own blood, and his own dall at that.
“And while he moaned, Carminish was stalking through the great, gaunt, looming Stones of the Druids that were here before St Colum and his Shona came, and laughing wild. And all the time the tide was coming in, and the tide and the deep sea and the waves of the shore, and the wind in the salt grass and the weary reeds and the black-pool gale, made a noise of a dreadful hymn, that was the death-hymn, the going-rune of Ivor the son of Ivor of the kindred of Niall.
“And it was there that they found his body in the grey dawn, wet and stiff with the salt ooze. For the soul that was in him had heard the call of the ninth wave that was for him. So, and may the Being keep back that hour for us, there was a burden upon that ebb on the morning of that day.
“Also, there is this thing for the hearing. In the dim dark before the curlew cried at dawn, Eachainn heard a voice about the house, a voice going like a thing blind and baffled,