Literature -- Collections; Mystery fiction; Short stories
requited by a single glance of those eyes which retained so many
capricious hearts in subjection.
The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at
our feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock
pines, and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on
which sloops and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every
turn their extent of white sail against the beam of the moon. I
looked on old Mark the Mariner, who, seated motionless on his gray
stone, kept his eye fixed on the increasing waters with a look of
seriousness and sorrow in which I saw little of the calculating
spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide,
his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed
hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the quicksand, still
addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation. The
tide wheeled and foamed around them; and creeping inch by inch
up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a
long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element
received.
The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped
his hands together, and said, "Blessed be the tide that will break
over and bury ye forever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids
and mothers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and
bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued.
Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral
processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the
wood grew that made ye! Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the
mountains, the hands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first
swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here! Seven times have ye put
my life in peril, three fair sons have you swept from my side,
and two bonnie grand-bairns; and now, even now, your waters foam
and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm limbs in
quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that
foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye
yearn for another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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