in these reef-sown waters and contending against so vio-Long before we had reached the top, I had no other thought lent a stream of tide, their course was certain death.
for him but pity. If the crime had been monstrous the pun-
‘Good God!’ said I, ‘they are all lost.’
ishment was in proportion.
‘Ay,’ returned my uncle, ‘a’ – a’ lost. They hadnae a At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and chance but to rin for Kyle Dona. The gate they’re gaun the could see around us. All was black and stormy to the eye; noo, they couldnae win through an the muckle deil were 30
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there to pilot them. Eh, man,’ he continued, touching me Already the men on board the schooner must have be-on the sleeve, ‘it’s a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae gun to realise some part, but not yet the twentieth, of the twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men’ll dance bonny!’
dangers that environed their doomed ship. At every lull of I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him the capricious wind they must have seen how fast the cur-no longer in his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if rent swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they for sympathy, a timid joy in his eyes. All that had passed saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell between us was already forgotten in the prospect of this began to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and fresh disaster.
ever and again a breaker would fall in sounding ruin under
‘If it were not too late,’ I cried with indignation, ‘I would the very bows of her, and the brown reef and streaming take the coble and go out to warn them.’
tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you, they
‘Na, na,’ he protested, ‘ye maunnae interfere; ye maunnae had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle men aboard meddle wi’ the like o’ that. It’s His’ – doffing his bonnet –
that ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene
‘His wull. And, eh, man! but it’s a braw nicht for’t!’
so horrible to any human-hearted man that my misguided Something like fear began to creep into my soul and, uncle now pored and gloated like a connoisseur. As I turned reminding him that I had not yet dined, I proposed we to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly on the sum-should return to the house. But no; nothing would tear him mit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the from his place of outlook.
heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.
‘I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie,’ he explained –
When I got back to the house already dismally affected, and then as the schooner went about a second time, ‘Eh, I was still more sadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She but they han’le her bonny!’ he cried. ‘The Christ-Anna was had her sleeves rolled up over her strong arms, and was naething to this.’
quietly making bread. I got a bannock from the dresser 31
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and sat down to eat it in silence.
from this accursed island.’
‘Are ye wearied, lad?’ she asked after a while.
She had stopped her work by this time.
‘I am not so much wearied, Mary,’ I replied, getting on
‘And do you think, now,’ said she, ‘do you think, now, I my feet, ‘as I am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too.
have neither eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havenae broken You know me well enough to judge me fairly, say what I my heart to have these braws (as he calls them, God for-like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this: you had better be give him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I have lived anywhere but here.’
with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an
‘I’ll be sure of one thing,’ she returned: ‘I’ll be where my hour or two? No,’ she said, ‘I know there’s wrong in it; duty is.’
what wrong, I neither know nor want to know. There was
‘You forget, you have a duty to yourself,’ I said.
never an ill thing made better by meddling, that I could
‘Ay, man?’ she replied, pounding at the dough; ‘will you hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to leave my have found that in the Bible, now?’
father. While the breath is in his body, I’ll be with him. And
‘Mary,’ I said solemnly, ‘you must not laugh at me just he’s not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie –
now. God knows I am in no heart for laughing. If we could he’s not long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better get your father with us, it would be best; but with him or so – maybe better so.’
without him, I want you far away from here, my girl; for I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father’s too, I roused my head at last to speak, she got before me.
I want you far – far away from here. I came with other
‘Charlie,’ she said, ‘what’s right for me, neednae be right thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all for you. There’s sin upon this house and trouble; you are a changed, and I have no desire nor hope but to flee – for stranger; take your things upon your back and go your that’s the word – flee, like a bird out of the fowler’s snare, ways to better places and to better folk, and if you were 32
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ever minded to come back, though it were twenty years tenth, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast ashore at syne, you would find me aye waiting.’
Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his ex-
‘Mary Ellen,’ I said, ‘I asked you to be my wife, and you citement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in said as good as yes. That’s done for good. Wherever you kind from dark to darker. He neglected his work, and kept are, I am; as I shall answer to my God.’
Rorie idle. They two would speak together by the hour at As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, the gable end, in guarded tones and with an air of secrecy and then seemed to stand still and shudder round the house and almost of guilt; and if she questioned either, as at first of Aros. It was the first squall, or prologue, of the coming she sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with con-tempest, and as we started and looked about us, we found fusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had settled round about the ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the house.
the mainland of the Ross. That once – it was in the height
‘God pity all poor folks at sea!’ she said. ‘We’ll see no of the springs – he had passed dryshod while the tide was more of my father till the morrow’s morning.’
out; but, having lingered overlong on the far side, found And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hear-himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It was kened to the rising gusts, of how this change had fallen with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, upon my uncle. All last winter he had been dark and fitful and he had reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or, as Mary fear of the sea, a constant haunting thought of the sea, said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in his looks out for hours together on the Head, if it were at night, or when he was silent.
on the top of Aros by day, watching the tumult of the sea, Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle and sweeping the horizon for a sail. After February the appeared, took a bottle under his arm, put some bread in 33
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his pocket, and set forth again to his outlook, followed a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the chimney, this time by Rorie. I heard that the schooner was losing wailing with flutelike softness round the house.
ground, but the crew were still fighting every inch with It was perhaps eight o’clock when Rorie came in and hopeless ingenuity and course; and the news filled my pulled me mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, mind with blackness.
had frightened even his constant comrade; and Rorie, un-A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, easy at his extravagance, prayed me to come out and share such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the more readily how swiftly it had come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of silence, the house quaking overhead, the tempest howling the night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our told Mary to be under no alarm, for I should be a safe-thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the schoo-guard on her father; and wrapping myself warmly in a plaid, ner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promI followed Rorie into the open air.
ontory; and yet ever and again we were startled back to The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was ourselves, when the wind would rise and strike the gable as dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight alter-like a solid body, or suddenly fall and draw away, so that nated with spells of utter blackness; and it was impossible the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our to trace the reason of these changes in the flying horror of sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and shake the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man’s nostrils; the four corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger.
all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; Anon, in a lull, cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could in the room, lifting the hair upon our heads and passing be-hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all tween us as we sat. And again the wind would break forth in the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as 34
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fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows the uproar Bruised, drenched, beaten, and breathless, it must have that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of taken us near half an hour to get from the house down to mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thun-my uncle’s favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, der, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one where the cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, place, now lower in another, like the combinations of or-like a parapet, makes a place of shelter from the common chestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly var-winds, where a man may sit in quiet and see the tide and ied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might look could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the inter-down from the window of a house upon some street dis-mittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed turbance, so, from this post, he looks down upon the tum-into my mind the reason of the name that they were called.
bling of the Merry Men. On such a night, of course, he For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-peers upon a world of blackness, where the waters wheel topped the other noises of the night; or if not mirthful, yet and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed even an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twin-human. As when savage men have drunk away their rea-kling of an eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men son, and, discarding speech, bawl together in their mad-thus violent. The fury, height, and transiency of their ness by the hour; so, to my ears, these deadly breakers spoutings was a thing to be seen and not recounted. High shouted by Aros in the night.
over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in the Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were won every yard of ground with conscious effort. We slipped gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and on the wet sod, we fell together sprawling on the rocks.
vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would 35
Robert Louis Stevenson
fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was doned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you will, rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force.
but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar – a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunken-madness; and I found myself at times following the dance of ness a wild and almost fearful pleasure, rather demoniacal the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument.
than human; but drunkenness, out here in the roaring black-I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still ness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of twi-man’s head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on light that chequered the pitch darkness of the night. He the edge of death, his ear watching for the signs of ship-was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown wreck, surely that, if it were credible in any one, was mor-back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he ally impossible in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set saw and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest super-above his head.
stitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of
‘Has he been drinking?’ shouted I to Rorie.
shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man’s eyes shin-
‘He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,’ returned ing in the night with an unholy glimmer.
Rorie in the same high key, and it was all that I could do to
‘Eh, Charlie, man, it’s grand!’ he cried. ‘See to them!’ he hear him.
continued, dragging me to the edge of the abyss from
‘Then – was he so – in February?’ I inquired.
whence arose that deafening clamour and those clouds of Rorie’s ‘Ay’ was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, spray; ‘see to them dancin’, man! Is that no wicked?’
had not sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was an He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it act of madness no more to be condemned than to be par-suited with the scene.
36
Merry Men
‘They’re yowlin’ for thon schooner,’ he went on, his thin, Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two insane voice clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, ‘an’
hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment when the wind she’s comin’ aye nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an’ nearer was silent, the clear note of a human voice. Instantly the an’ nearer; an’ they ken’t, the folk kens it, they ken wool wind swept howling down upon the Head, and the Roost it’s by wi’ them. Charlie, lad, they’re a’ drunk in yon schoo-bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But ner, a’ dozened wi’ drink. They were a’ drunk in the Christ-we had heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that Anna, at the hinder end. There’s nane could droon at sea this was the doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what wantin’ the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?’ with a we had heard was the voice of her master issuing his last sudden blast of anger. ‘I tell ye, it cannae be; they droon command. Crouching together on the edge, we waited, withoot it. Ha’e,’ holding out the bottle, ‘tak’ a sowp.’
straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long, I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warn-however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner ing; and indeed I had already thought better of the move-suddenly appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a ment. I took the bottle, therefore, and not only drank freely tower of glimmering foam. I still see her reefed mainsail myself, but contrived to spill even more as I was doing so.
flapping loose, as the boom fell heavily across the deck; I It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to swallow. My still see the black outline of the hull, and still think I can kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller.
back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than light-with a loud laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry ning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for Men, who seemed to leap up, shouting to receive it.
ever; the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death
‘Ha’e, bairns!’ he cried, ‘there’s your han’sel. Ye’ll get rose and was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men.
bonnier nor that, or morning.’
And with that the tragedy was at an end. The strong ship, 37
Robert Louis Stevenson
with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in the all this time was rapidly abating. In half an hour the wind cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or dear, at least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then moment, gone down into the surging waters. They were have fallen asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, gone like a dream. And the wind still ran and shouted, and stiff, and unrefreshed, day had already broken, grey, wet, the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled discomfortable day; the wind blew in faint and shifting capas before.
fuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its lowest, and only How long we lay there together, we three, speechless the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros re-and motionless, is more than I can tell, but it must have mained to witness of the furies of the night.
been for long. At length, one by one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin iteration, ‘Sic a fecht as they had – sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!’
and anon he would bewail that ‘a’ the gear was as gude’s tint,’ because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name – the Christ-Anna – would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with shuddering awe. The storm 38
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CHAPTER V: A MAN OUT OF THE SEA sea, although conquered for the moment, was still undimin-ished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he could not RORIE SET OUT for the house in search of warmth and break-have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when fast; but my uncle was bent upon examining the shores of his foot slipped and he plunged to the midleg into a pool of Aros, and I felt it a part of duty to accompany him through-water, the shriek that came up out of his soul was like the out. He was now docile and quiet, but tremulous and weak cry of death. He sat still for a while, panting like a dog, after in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that; but his desire for the spoils of shipwreck triumphed that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon once more over his fears; once more he tottered among the the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating break-curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks among ers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a trea-the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to sure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see be set on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to upon the fire. Pleased as he was with what he found, he still the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy incessantly grumbled at his ill-fortune.
rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
‘Aros,’ he said, ‘is no a place for wrecks ava’ – no ava’.
support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped A’ the years I’ve dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and him to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the the best o’ the gear clean tint!’
returning wave; a nurse accompanying a child of seven
‘Uncle,’ said I, for we were now on a stretch of open would have had no different experience.
sand, where there was nothing to divert his mind, ‘I saw you Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his mad-last night, as I never thought to see you – you were drunk.’
ness of the night before, the passions that smouldered in
‘Na, na,’ he said, ‘no as bad as that. I had been drinking, his nature were those of a strong man. His terror of the though. And to tell ye the God’s truth, it’s a thing I cannae 39
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mend. There’s nae soberer man than me in my ordnar; but ers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to when I hear the wind blaw in my lug, it’s my belief that I the assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the gang gyte.’
flat sands that, with all their number and their fury, they
‘You are a religious man,’ I replied, ‘and this is sin’.
might never pass.
‘Ou,’ he returned, ‘if it wasnae sin, I dinnae ken that I
‘Thus far shalt thou go,’ said I, ‘and no farther.’ And would care for’t. Ye see, man, it’s defiance. There’s a sair then I quoted as solemnly as I was able a verse that I had spang o’ the auld sin o’ the warld in you sea; it’s an un-often before fitted to the chorus of the breakers:–
christian business at the best o’t; an’ whiles when it gets up, an’ the wind skreights – the wind an’ her are a kind of But yet the Lord that is on high,
sib, I’m thinkin’ – an’ thae Merry Men, the daft callants, Is more of might by far,
blawin’ and lauchin’, and puir souls in the deid thraws Than noise of many waters is,
warstlin’ the leelang nicht wi’ their bit ships – weel, it comes As great sea billows are.
ower me like a glamour. I’m a deil, I ken’t. But I think naething o’ the puir sailor lads; I’m wi’ the sea, I’m just
‘Ay,’ said my kinsinan, ‘at the hinder end, the Lord will like ane o’ her ain Merry Men.’
triumph; I dinnae misdoobt that. But here on earth, even I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I silly men-folk daur Him to His face. It is nae wise; I am nae turned me towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave sayin’ that it’s wise; but it’s the pride of the eye, and it’s the after wave, with their manes blowing behind them, riding lust o’ life, an’ it’s the wale o’ pleesures.’
one after another up the beach, towering, curving, falling I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of one upon another on the trampled sand. Without, the salt land that lay between us and Sandag; and I withheld my air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the sea-charg-last appeal to the man’s better reason till we should stand 40
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upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor did he pursue He started visibly at the last words; but there came no the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.
answer, and his face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.
The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimu-
‘You were my father’s brother,’ I continued; ‘You, have lant, and I could see that he had forgotten his search for taught me to count your house as if it were my father’s worthless jetsam, in a profound, gloomy, and yet stirring house; and we are both sinful men walking before the Lord train of thought. In three or four minutes we had topped among the sins and dangers of this life. It is by our evil that the brae and begun to go down upon Sandag. The wreck God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by His temp-had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been tation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the spun round and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has the stern had been forced a little higher, for the two parts warned you by this crime; He warns you still by the bloody now lay entirely separate on the beach. When we came to grave between our feet; and if there shall follow no repen-the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain, tance, no improvement, no return to Him, what can we and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.
look for but the following of some memorable judgment?’
‘A man,’ said I, ‘was in God’s providence suffered to Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered escape from mortal dangers; he was poor, he was naked, from my face. A change fell upon his looks that cannot be he was wet, he was weary, he was a stranger; he had every described; his features seemed to dwindle in size, the colour claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may be that faded from his cheeks, one hand rose waveringly and pointed he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may over my shoulder into the distance, and the oft-repeated name be he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was fell once more from his lips: ‘The Christ-Anna!’
the beginning of torment. I ask you in the sight of heaven: I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as Gordon Darnaway, where is the man for whom Christ died?’
I return thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was 41
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still startled by the sight that met my eyes. The form of a uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I adman stood upright on the cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; vanced another step, encouraging him as I did so with my his back was towards us; he appeared to be scanning the head and hand. It was plain the castaway had heard indif-offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to its ferent accounts of our island hospitality; and indeed, about full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea this time, the people farther north had a sorry reputation.
and sky. I have said a thousand times that I am not super-
‘Why,’ I said, ‘the man is black!’
stitious; but at that moment, with my mind running upon And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce death and sin, the unexplained appearance of a stranger on have recognised, my kinsman began swearing and praying that sea-girt, solitary island filled me with a surprise that in a mingled stream. I looked at him; he had fallen on his bordered close on terror. It seemed scarce possible that knees, his face was agonised; at each step of the castaway’s any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility of his utterance as had rated last night along the coasts of Aros; and the only and the fervour of his language redoubled. I call it prayer, vessel within miles had gone down before our eyes among for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting the Merry Men. I was assailed with doubts that made sus-incongruities were ever before addressed to the Creator pense unbearable, and, to put the matter to the touch at once, by a creature: surely if prayer can be a sin, this mad ha-stepped forward and hailed the figure like a ship.
rangue was sinful. I ran to my kinsman, I seized him by the He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us.
shoulders, I dragged him to his feet.
At this my courage instantly revived, and I called and signed
‘Silence, man,’ said I, ‘respect your God in words, if not to him to draw near, and he, on his part, dropped immedi-in action. Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, ately to the sands, and began slowly to approach, with many He sends you an occasion of atonement. Forward and em-stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark of the man’s brace it; welcome like a father yon creature who comes 42
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trembling to your mercy.’
must rely upon the tongue of looks and gestures. There-With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he upon I signed to him to follow me, which he did readily felled me to the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the and with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all the while shoulder of his jacket, and fled up the hillside towards the there had come no shade of alteration in his face, neither of top of Aros like a deer. I staggered to my feet again, bruised anxiety while he was still waiting, no