Wat lay motionless on his ledge. He had lifted the moorings from the stern of the boat in the rock basin behind him, and he could hear that she had swung round and that her timbers were rasping gently against the stone pier. Wat prayed that the swimmers might not hear the noise. The uneasy water pavement of the cavern swayed beneath him with measured undulations, glimmering with that pale phosphorescence which is the deceiving ghost of true illumination. Yet it was light enough for Wat to observe the heads of the men who swam, as they emerged into its glow out of the perfect darkness of the inner cave. There was one who led, swimming a good half-dozen strokes in advance of the others. "We cannot be far from the north gate now, surely," said a voice, which Wat instantly recognized as that of Barra, "if the _cailleach_ hath told the truth and her man did really find his way to the island of Fiara by this passage." The man who swam in the middle of the three who followed Barra only grunted in reply. Wat could see the shapeless round of his head but dimly; nevertheless, he knew that it was the featureless, scarred visage of Haxo the Bull which glared like a death's-head above the water in the wake of his arch-enemy. And he had no doubt that on either side of him swam the Calf and the Killer, the other members of that noble trinity. The heads on the water grew smaller and blacker as they passed him, and the men swam on towards the outer entrance of the cave. Presently they came underneath the great span of the arch. Wat could see Barra drag himself out of the water and clamber on a rocky point which jutted out into the Sound. The three followers lifted themselves after him, and sank on the rocks in attitudes of fatigue. But Barra stood erect, his slim figure so black against the dim moonlight without that he might have been wearing his court suit of sable velvet, although actually he was naked to the waist. So there on the pinnacle he stood, gazing silently on the sleeping isle of Fiara, even as Satan might have gazed (so Wat Gordon thought) on the garden--close to that first delicious Paradise in which all unconscious Adam wandered with his Eve. Long he stood thus, fixed in contemplation, revolving evilest thoughts and intents, his three attendant fiends crouched behind him in a shapeless mass upon the dark rocks, none of them daring to interrupt his musings. Then quite abruptly Barra descended and plunged once more into the water. Lochinvar in his turn stood erect and made ready to follow him, for he feared that his enemies were about to cross the Sound and attack on the instant the little company waiting his own return under the cliffs of the northern shore. But he heard Barra say, "It is enough for to-night. Let us return to the harbor. The _cailleach_ spoke the truth."