“O Lord,” she prayed, “Thou knowest well I don't often bother Thee.
But save Kate, Lord; oh, save and prasarve my little Kirry! It's twenty
years and better since I asked anything of Thee before and if Thou wilt
only take away this wind, I'll promise not to say another prayer for
twenty years more.”
“Say it in Manx, woman,” moaned Grannie. “I always say my prayers in
Manx as well, and the Lord can listen to the one He knows best.”
“There's prayer as well as praise in singing,” cried Cæsar; and they
began to sing, all down on their knees, their eyes tightly closed, and
their hands clasped before their faces. They sang of heaven and its
peaceful plains, its blue lakes and sunny skies, its golden cities and
emerald gates, its temples and its tabernacles, where “congregations
ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end.” It was some comfort to drown
with the wild discord of their own voices the fearful noises of the
tempest. When they finished the hymn, they began on it again, keeping
it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into
the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing,
they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to
smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second
time, and Cæsar cried--
“Again, brothers,” and away they went with another wild whoop through
the hymn.
It came a third time, and Cæsar cried--
“Once more, beloved,” and they raced madly through the hymn again.
Then the door burst open as before a tremendous kick, and Pete, fierce
and wild-eyed, and green with the drift of the salt foam caked thick on
his face, stepped over the threshold with the unconscious body of Kate
in his arms and the idiot boy peering over his shoulder.
“Thank the Lord for an answer to prayer,” cried Cæsar. “Where did you
find her?”
“In the tholthan up the glen,” said Pete. “Up in the witch's tholthan.”
XI.
On the second morning afterwards the air was quiet and full of the odour
of seaweed; the sky was round as the inside of a shell, and pale pink
like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth and silent; the hills
had lost the memory of the storm, and land and sea lay like a sleeping
child.
In this broad and steady morning Kate came back to consciousness. She
had slid out of delirium into sleep as a boat slides out of the open
sea into harbour, and when she awoke there was a voice in her ears that
seemed to be calling to her from the quay. It was a familiar voice, and
yet it was unfamiliar; it was like the voice of a friend heard for the
first time after a voyage. It seemed to come from a long way off, and
yet to be knocking at the very door of her heart. She kept her eyes
closed for a moment and listened; then she opened them and looked again.
The light was clouded and yet dazzling, as if glazed muslin were
shaking before her eyes. Grannie was sitting by her bedside, knitting in
silence.
“Why are you sitting there, mother?” she asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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