"So I had, sir, and fine I'd like the uniforms and the swords and the horses, but I wouldn't have the heart to kill a man, and me never seeing him before. If a man did me a wrong, I'd kill him quick as I'd wash my hands, but never seeing him before, I could na, I just could na--"

"It's a clean thing, the sea," the Raghery man ventured.

"He's so very young," objected Uncle Robin.

"There's nothing but that or the books for me, Uncle Robin. A sailor or a scholar--and I don't think I'd make out well with the books."

"The books aren't all they're cracked up to be, wee Shane. I've written books myself, and who reads them but a wheen of graybeards, and they drowsing by the fire? Knowledge, laddie, I have that.... And it isn't even wisdom. Knowledge is like dry twigs you collect with care to make a bit fire you can warm your shins at, and wisdom is the gift of G.o.d that's like the blossom on the gorse. I've searched books and taken out the marrow of dead men's brains, and after all, even all my knowledge may be wrong.... Your father's name will be remembered as long as the Gaidhlig lasts, for songs that came to him as easily as a woman's kiss.

And your Uncle Alan's footprints are near the pole. And Mungo is remembered forever because he died with a laugh. Not that I'm saying anything against them, wee Shane; better men will never be seen. But Daniel Donelly's name is remembered because he beat Cooper in a fight, and songs were made about it. And I'll be remembered only when some old librarian dusts a forgotten book. And I was supposed to be the wise pup o' the litter, with my books and my study. And all I have now is a troubled mind in my latter days. Aye, the books!..."

"Shall I go to sea, sir?"

"Is it up to me? And how about your mother, laddie?"

"Oh, there's little warmth within her for me, sir. She's a bitter woman.

She does na like my father's breed."

"Are you your father's breed through, wee caddie? Are you Campbell all?

Here, gi' us a look at your face. Aye, the eyes, the nose, the proud throw to the head of you. I'm afeared there's little of your mother in you, laddie; afeared there's none at all."

"I'm no' ashamed o' my kind, sir."

"And you're set on going to sea?"

"I'd like it fine, sir."

"And if it does na turn out the way you thought it would, you're not going to cry or turn sour?"

"I thought you knew me better nor that, Uncle Robin."

"I do." The big man laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and smiled at the shipmaster. "Take him, Raghery man!"

-- 11

Though all was wonder to wee Shane, there was so much of it that it flicked through his head like a dream: the hazy September afternoon; the long, lean vessel like a greyhound; the sails white as a swan's wing; the cordage that rattled like wood; the bare-footed, bearded sailors; the town of Carrickfergus in the offing; the _lap-lap-lap_ of water; the silent man at the wheel; the sudden transition of the friendly Raghery man into a firm, authoritative figure, quick as a cat, rapping out commands like a sergeant-major.

The town of Carrickfergus began to slip by as if drawn by horses. The mate ran up the ladder of the p.o.o.p.

"Topsails, McCafferty!" the Raghery man ordered.

"Topsails, sir."

A minute later there came the mate's voice from amidships:

"Sheet home the topsails--and put your backs into it!"

Patter of feet. An accordion began to whine like a tinker. Creak and strain. Faster lapping of water. A song raised in chorus:

As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street-- Yo-ho! Blow the man down!

As I came a-tacking down Paradise Street-- Give us some time till we blow the man down!

A trim little b.u.mboat I chanced for to meet!

Blow, bullies, blow the man down!

A trim little b.u.mboat I chanced for to meet!

Give us some time till we blow the man down!

She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows!

Yo-ho! Blow the man down!

She was round in the counter and bluff in the bows!

Give us some time till we blow the man down.

Blow the man down!

Blow, bullies! Blow the man down!

PART TWO

THE WAKE AT ARDEE

-- 1

The feeling that was uppermost in him as he sat outside the thatched cottage in the moonlight, while the wake was within, was not grief at his wife's death; not a shattered mind that his life, so carefully laid out not twelve months before, was disoriented; not any self-pity; not any grievance against G.o.d, such as little men might have: but a strange dumb wonder. There she lay within, in her habit of a Dominican lay sister, her hands waxy, her face waxy, her eyelids closed. And six guttering candles were about her, and women droned their prayers with a droning as of bees. There she lay with her hands clasped on a wooden crucifix. And no more would the robins wake her, and they fussing in the great hawthorn-tree over the coming of dawn. No longer would she rake the ash from the peat and blow the red of it to a little blaze. No longer would she beat his dog out of the house with the handle of the broom. No longer would she forgather with the neighbors over a pot of tea for a pleasant vindictive chat. No longer would she look out to sea for him with her half-loving, half-inimical eyes. No longer in her sharpish voice would she recite her rosary and go to bed.

And to-morrow they would bury her--there would be rain to-morrow: the wind was sou'east,--they would lower her, gently as though she were alive, into a rectangular slot in the ground, mutter alien prayers in an alien tongue with business of white magic, pat the mound over as a child pats his castle of sand on the sea-sh.o.r.e, and leave her there in the rain.

A month from now they would say a ma.s.s for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life: with the fussy, excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; with each thing; with everything.

And here was the wonder of it, the strange dumb wonder, that the snapping of her life meant less in reality to him than the snapping of a stay aboard ship. The day after to-morrow he would mount the deck of Patrick Russell's boat, and after a few crisp orders would set out on the eternal sea, as though she were still alive in her cottage, as though indeed she had never even lived, and northward he would go past the purple Mull of Cantyre; past the Clyde, where the Ayrshire sloops danced like bobbins on the water; past the isles, where overhead drove the wedges of the wild swans, trumpeting as on a battle-field; past the Hebrides, where strange arctic birds whined like hurt dogs; northward still to where the northern lights sprang like dancers in the black winter nights; eastward and southward to where the swell of the Dogger Bank rose, where the fish grazed like kine. Over the great sea he would go as though nothing had happened, not even the snapping of a stay--down to the sea, where the crisp winds of dawn were, and the playful, stupid, short-sighted porpoises; the treacherous sliding icebergs; and the gulls that cried with the sea's immense melancholy; and the great plum-colored whales....

-- 2

To his nostrils, sterilized as they were by the salt air of the sea, the rich scents of Louth came in a rushing profusion. The wild roses of June were like the high notes of a violin, and there was clover, and mown hay. In the southeast the clouds were banking, but still the moon rose high, and the cottage was clear as in daylight, clearer even in the mind's eye--the whitewashed walls, the thatch like silver, the swallows'

nests beneath the eaves. The hard round sea-cobbles beneath his feet were clear and individual, and to where he sat in the haggard came a girl's song from down the road:

"Oh, Holland is a wondrous place and in it grows much green.

It's a wild inhabitation for my young love to be in.

There the sugar-cane grows plentiful, and leaves on every tree, But the low, lowlands of Holland are between my love and me."

He listened with a c.o.c.ked ear, and smiled as he thought how easy it would be to stroll down the road to where the singing girl was, and accost her pleasantly: "So he's in Holland, is he? That's the queer and foolish place for him to be, and I here!" There would be banter, quick and smart as a whip, a scuffle, a clumsily placed kiss, laughter, another scuffle, and a kiss that found its mark somehow, then a saunter together down the scented loaning while the June moon rode high and the crickets sang.

O my G.o.d! here he was thinking about love, and his wife lay inside and she dead!

And a new light wonder sprang up and whirled within the big dumb wonder that was on him: that here was he, a lad not yet twenty-two, with a dead wife on his hands, while his shipmates were off with the laughter of young women in their ears after the silent and tense watches of the sea.

His captain had gone home to Newry to where his wife awaited him, the tall, graceful woman with the hair like black silk and the black eyes and the black ear-rings and the slim, white, enigmatic hands. And the first mate had gone to Rostrevor with a blond, giggling girl, and the crew were at Sally Bishop's in Dundalk, draining the pints of frothy porter and making crude material love to Sally Bishop's blowsy brown girls, some chucking their silver out with a laugh--the laugh of men who had fought hurricanes, and some bargaining shrewdly.... But here he was, home, with his wife, and her dead. And if she hadn't been dead, she would have been half loving, half inimical toward him, her arms and bosom open, but a great stranger.... He couldn't understand. Well, she was dead, and ... he didn't know....