GOD'S WRITING ON THE SEA

When the knocking ceased at Kisseck's, and Mona's footsteps were heard to turn away, Corteen and Killip knelt on the floor and felt the body of the master, and knew that he was dead.

"Let's get off anyway," said one; "let's away to sea, as the gel said. The fac's is agen us all."

"Maybe the man was right," said the other. "It's like enough she's got the Castle Rushen fellows behind her, and they'll be on us quick. Come, bear a hand."

Their voices sounded hollow. They lifted Kisseck on to their shoulders. A thin red stream was flowing from his breast. Corteen picked up a cap from the floor, and stanched the blood. It was Danny's cap, and as they passed out it fell again in the porch.

Danny himself stepped away from the door to let them pass. He had watched their movements with big wide eyes. They went by him without a word. When they were gone, he followed them mechanically, scarcely knowing what he did. With bare head, and the pistol still hanging in his rigid hand, he stepped out into the night.

It was very dark now. They could see nothing save the glow of the fire burning furiously over the Poolvash. And only the sharp crackle of the kindling gorse and the deep moan of the distant sea could they hear. They took the low path back to the Lockjaw, where they had left the boats. The body was heavy, their steps were uncertain in the darkness, and their capture seemed imminent. As they passed the mouth of the old pit, Corteen proposed to throw the body into it. Killip assented; but Danny, who had not uttered word or sound until now, cried, "No, no, no." Then they hurried along.

When they reached the Lockjaw they descended to the bay, got into one of the boats, and pushed off. The other boat—the police-boat that Danny had brought from the castle—they pulled into mid-stream, and there sent it adrift. It ran ashore at the next flood tide, two miles further up the shore. When they got clear outside of the two streams that flow round the Head, they were amazed to find the "Ben-my-Chree" bearing down on them in the uncertain light. What had happened was this:

On running down the lamp that was put up on the ruined end of the pier, the two men who had charge of the fishing-boat had lain-to and stayed aboard for some minutes. Davy Cain and Tommy Tear, having effected their purpose ashore, had stolen away from their simple companions, and were standing on the quay. The two couples of men were exchanging words in eager whispers when they heard shouts from the castle. "What's that? Kisseck's voice?" "No." "Something has gone wrong. Let us set sail and away." So they stood out again to sea, passing close by the Castle Rock. They now realized that the voice they had remembered was the voice of Kinvig. That was enough to tell them that mischief had been brewing. They rounded the island and saw the fire over the head of the Lockjaw. They filled away and kept the boat off to her course. Soon they saw the dingey athwart their hawse and pulled to. Corteen and Killip lifted the body of Kisseck into the fishing-boat, and Danny Fayle, all but as silent and rigid, was pulled up after it. As the lad was dragged over the gunwale the pistol dropped from his hand and fell with a splash into the sea. A word of explanation ensued, and once more they were standing out to sea, with their dread freight of horror and crime.

The wind was fresh outside. It was on their starboard quarter as they now made for the north. They saw the fire burning to leeward. It sent a long, red sinuous track of light across the black water that flowed between them and the land. Danny stood forward, never speaking, never spoken to, gazing fixedly at that sinuous track. To his affrighted senses it was as the serpent of guilt that kept trailing behind him.

When they were well away, and the men had time to comprehend in its awful fulness what had occurred, they stood together aft and whispered. They had placed the body of the master by the hatchways, and again and again they turned their heads toward it in the darkness. It was as though the body might even yet stand up in their midst, and any man at any moment might find it face to face with him, eye to eye. The certainty that it was dead had not taken hold of all of them. It still bled, and one of the crew, Quilleash, an old man reputed to possess a charm to stop blood, knelt down beside Kisseck, and whispered in his ear.

"A few good words can do no harm anyway," said Tear, and even Davy Cain was too much aghast to jeer at the superstition.

"Sanguis mane in te, Sicut Christus se," whispered the old man in his native tongue into the deaf ear, and then followed a wild command to the blood to cease flowing in the name of the three godly men who came to Rome—Christ, Peter, and Paul.

The blood stopped indeed. But "Chamarroo as clagh" ("As dead as a stone"), said the old man, looking up.

Danny stood and looked on in silence. His spirit seemed to be gone, as though it could awake to life again only in another world.

When death was certain the men began to mourn over Kisseck, and recount their memories concerning him.

"Well, Bill's cruise is up, poor fellow; and a rael good skipper anyway."

"Poor Bill! What's that it's sayin'?—'He who makes a ditch for another may fall into it himself.'"

None spoke to Danny. A kind of awe fell on them in their dealings with the lad. They let him alone. It was as if he had been the instrument in greater hands.

"He hadn't a lazy bone in him, hadn't Bill. Aw, well, God will be aisy on the poor chap."

"You have to summer and winter a man before you know him. And leave it to me to know Kisseck. I've shared work, shared meat with him this many a year."

"And a fine big chap, and as straight as the backbone of a herring. Aw, well, well, well."

"Still, for sure, Bill made a man toe the mark. I'm thinking, poor chap, he's got summat to answer for anyway. Well, well, every man must go to the mill with his own sack."

Then they compared memories of how the dead man had foreseen his end. One remembered that Kisseck had said he knew he should not die in his bed. Another recalled the fact that on Good Friday morning Kisseck struck the griddle that hung in the ingle and tumbled it into the fire. This tangible warning of approaching death the witness had seen with his own eyes. A third man remembered that Kisseck had met a cat when going home on Oie houiney (Hallow Eve). And if these prognostications had counted for little, there was the remaining and awful fact that on New Year's Eve Bridget Kisseck had raked the fire on going to bed, and spread the ashes on the floor with the tongs, and next morning had found that print of a foot pointing toward the door which was the certain forewarning of death in the household within a year.

They were doubling the Point of Ayre, with no clear purpose before them, and with some misgivings as to whether they had done wisely in setting out to sea at all, when the wind fell to a dead calm. Then through the silence and darkness they heard large drops of rain fall on the deck. Presently there came a torrent, which lasted nearly an hour. The men turned in; only Danny and the body remained on deck. Still the lad could see the glow of the fire on the cliff, which was now miles away. When the rain ceased, the darkness, which had been all but palpable, lifted away, and the stars came out. Toward three in the morning the moon rose, but it was soon concealed by a dense black turret cloud that reared itself upward from the horizon. All this time the fishing-boat lay motionless, with only the lap of the waters heard about her.

The stars died off, the darkness came again, and then, far on in the night, the first gray streaks stretching along the east foretold the dawn. Over the confines of another night the soft daylight was breaking, but more utterly lonely, more void, more full of dread and foreboding, was the great waste of waters now that the striding light was chasing the curling mists than when the night was dead and darkness covered the sea. On one side of them no other object on the waters was visible until sky and ocean met in that great half-circle far away. On the other side was the land which they called home—from which they had fled, to which they dared not return.

Still not a breath of wind. The boat was drifting south. The men came up from below. The cold white face on the deck looked up at them, and at heaven. "We must put it away," said one, in a low murmur. "Aye," said another. Not a second word was spoken. A man went below and brought up an old sail. Two heavy iron weights, used for holding down the nets, were fetched up from the hold. There was no singing out. They took up what lay there cold and stiff, and wrapped it in the canvas, putting one of the weights at the head and another at the feet. Silently one man sat down with a sail-maker's needle and string, and began to stitch it up.

"Will the string hold?" asked another; "is it strong enough?"

"It will last him this voyage out—it's a short one, poor fellow."

Awe and silence sat on the crew.

Danny, his eyes suffused with an unearthly light, watched their movements from the bow. When he was lifted aboard last night a dull, dense aching at his heart was all the consciousness he had, and then the world was dead to him. Later on a fluttering within him preceded the return of an agonizing sense. Had he not sent his uncle to perdition? That he had taken a warm human life; that Kisseck, who had been alive, lay dead a few feet away from him—this was as nothing to the horrible thought that his uncle, a hard man, a brutal man, a sinful man, had been sent by his hand, hot and unprepared, to an everlasting hell. "Oh, can this have happened?" his bewildered mind asked itself a thousand times, as it awoke as often from the half-dream of a stunned and paralyzed consciousness. Yes, it was true that such a thing had occurred. No, it was not a nightmare. He would never, never awake in the morning sunlight and smile to know that it was not true. No, no—true, true; true it was even until the day of judgment, and he and Kisseck stood once more face to face.

Danny watched the old man when he whispered into the dead ear the words of the mystic charm. He turned his eyes to the sinuous trail of light behind him. All night long he lay on deck with only the dead for company. He saw the other men, but did not speak to them. It was as though he himself were already a being of another world, and could hold no commerce with his kind.

He thought of Mona, and then his heart was near to breaking. With a dumb longing his eyes turned through the darkness toward the land. The boat that was sailing before the wind was carrying him away from her forever. To his spiritualized sense the water that divided them was as the river that would flow for all eternity between the blessed and the damned.

The last ray of hope was flying away. It had once visited him, like a gleam of sunlight, that though he might never clasp her hand on earth, in heaven she would yet be his, to love forever and ever. But now between them the great gulf was fixed.

When the gray dawn came in the east, Danny still lay in the bow, haggard and pale. The unearthly light that now fired his eyes was the first word of a fearful tale. A witch's Sabbath, a devil's revelry, had begun in his distracted brain. In a state of wild hallucination he saw his own spectre. It had gone into the body of Kisseck, and it was no longer his uncle but himself who lay there dead. He was cold; his face was white, and it stared straight up at the sky. He watched with quick eyes the movements of the crew. He saw them bring up the canvas and the weights. He knew what they were going to do; they were going to bury him in the sea.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Silently the men brought from below the bank-board used in shooting the nets. They lifted the body on to it, and then with the scudding-pole they raised one end of the board on to the gunwale.

The boat had drifted many miles. She was now almost due west off Peel. The heavy clouds of night still rolled before the dawn. A gentle breeze was rising in the southwest.

All hands stood round and lifted their caps. Then the old man Quilleash went down on one knee, and laid his right hand on the body. Two other men raised the other end of the board.

"Dy bishee jeeah shin," murmured the old fisherman.

"God prosper you," echoed the others.

Then down into the wide waste of still water slid the body of Kisseck.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Danny saw it done. The image that had possession of him stood up so vividly before him at that instant that he shrieked. He peered into the water as if his eyes would bring back what the immemorial sea had swallowed up forever.

Forever? No! Listen!

Listen to that rumble as the waves circle over the spot where the body has disappeared! It is the noise of the iron weights shifting from their places. They are tearing open the canvas in which the body is wrapped. They have rolled out of it and sunk into the sea.

And now look!

The body, free of the weights, has come up to the surface. It is floating like a boat. The torn canvas is opening out. It is spreading like a sail in the breeze. Away it goes over the sea! It is flying across the waters, straight for the land.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The men stood and stared into each other's faces in speechless dismay. It was as though an avenging angel had torn the murdered man from their grasp and cried aloud in their ears, "Blood will have blood."

They strained their eyes to watch it until it became a speck in the twilight of the dawn, and could be seen no more.

Nor had the marvel ended yet. A great luminous line arose and stretched from their quarter toward the land, white as a moon's water-way, but with no moon to make it. Flashing along the sea's surface for several seconds, it seemed to the men like the finger of God marking the body's path on the waters.

The phenomenon will be understood by those only who have marked closely what has been said of the varying weather of this fearful night, and can interpret aright its many signs. To the crew of the "Ben-my-Chree" it had but one awful explanation.