“‘Cha till, cha till, cha till mi tuille!’”
(I return, I return, I return never more!)
THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD
THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD
The wind that blows on the feet of the dead came calling loud across the Ross as we put about the boat off the Rudhe Callachain. The ebb sucked at the keel, while, like a cork, we were swung lightly by the swell. For we were in the strait between Eilean Dubh and the Isle of the Swine; and that is where the current has a bad pull—the current that is made of the inflow and the outflow. I have heard that a weary woman of the olden days broods down there in a cave, and that day and night she weaves a web of water, which a fierce spirit in the sea tears this way and that as soon as woven.
So we put about, and went before the east wind: and below the dip of the sail a-lee I watched Soa grow bigger and gaunter and blacker against the white wave. As we came so near that it was as though the wash of the sea among the hollows bubbled in our ears, I saw a large bull-seal lying half-in half-out of the water, and staring at us with an angry, fearless look.