"Now that we are alone, won't you tell me about Gormala and the strange
occurrences?" I tried to speak, but the storm was too great for the
purposes of narrative. So I suggested that we should come behind the
sandhill. We went accordingly, and made a nest in a deep hollow behind
the outer range of hillocks. Here crouched among the tall bent, which
flew like whip lashes when the wilder bursts of the storm came, and amid
a never-ending scourge of fine sand swept from the top of the sandhills,
I told her of all my experiences of Gormala and Second Sight.
She listened with a rapt attention. At times I could not see her face,
for the evening was closing in and the driving clouds overhead, which
kept piling up in great masses along the western horizon, shut out the
remnants of the day. When, however, in the pauses of drifting sand and
flying foam I could see her properly, I found her face positively alight
with eager intelligence. Throughout, she was moved at times, and now and
again crept a little closer to me; as for instance when I told her of
the dead child and of Lauchlane Macleod's terrible struggle for life
in the race of the tide amongst the Skares. Her questions were quite
illuminating to me at moments, for her quick woman's intuition grasped
possibilities at which my mere logical faculties had shied. Beyond all
else, she was interested in the procession of ghosts on Lammas Eve. Only
once during my narrative of this episode she interrupted me; not an
intentional interruption but a passing comment of her own, candidly
expressed. This was where the body of armed men came along; at which she
said with a deep hissing intake of her breath through her teeth:
"Spaniards! I knew it! They were from some lost ship of the Armada!"
When I spoke of the one who turned and looked at me with eyes that
seemed of the quick, she straightened her back and squared her
shoulders, and looking all round her alertly as though for some hidden
enemy, clenched her hands and shut her lips tightly. Her great dark eyes
seemed to blaze; then she grew calm again in a moment.
When I had finished she sat silent for a while, her eyes fixed in front
of her as with one whose mind is occupied with introspection. Suddenly
she said:
"That man had some secret, and he feared you would discover it. I can
see it all! He, coming from his grave, could see with his dead eyes what
you could see with your living ones. Nay, more; he could, perhaps, see
not only that you saw, and what you saw, but where the knowledge would
lead you. That certainly is a grand idea of Gormala's, that of winning
the Secret of the Sea!" After a pause of a few moments she went on,
standing up as she did so and walking restlessly to and fro with
clenched hands and flashing eyes:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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