Torcall laughed, and lay back in his place. While out of the wandering wave the death of each man clambered into the hollow of the boat, and breathed its chill upon its man, Torcall the Blind took his harp. He sang this song, with the swirling spray against his face, and the smell of blood in his nostrils, and the feet of him dabbling in the red tide that rose there. Oh, 'tis a good thing the red blood, by Odin his word! And a good thing it is to hear it bubbling deep. And when we hear the laughter of the Sword, Oh, the corbies croak, and the old wail, and the women weep! And busy will she be there where she stands, Washing the red out of the sins of all this slaying horde; And trampling the bones of them into white powdery sands, And laughing low at the thirst of her thirsty sword-- The Washer of the Ford! When he had sung that song there was only one man whose pulse still beat, and he was at the bow. "A bitter black curse upon you, Torcall Dall!" he groaned out of the ooze of blood that was in his mouth. "And who will you be?" said the Blind Harper. "I am Fergus, the son of Art, the son of Fergus of the Dûns." "Well, it is a song for your death I will make, Fergus mac Art mhic Fheargus: and because you are the last." With that Torcall struck a wild sob out of his harp, and he sang-- Oh, death of Fergus, that is lying in the boat here, Betwixt the man of the red hair and him of the black beard, Rise now, and out of thy cold white eyes take out the fear, And let Fergus mac Art mhic Fheargus see his weird! Sure, now, it's a blind man I am, but I'm thinking I see The shadow of you crawling across the dead. Soon you will twine your arm around his shaking knee, And be whispering your silence into his listless head. And that is why, O Fergus-- But here the man hurled his sword into the sea, and with a choking cry fell forward; and upon the white sands he was, beneath the trampling feet of the Washer of the Ford. II It was a fair wind that blew beneath the stars that night. At dawn the mountains of Skye were like turrets of a great Dûn against the east. But Torcall the Blind Harper did not see that thing. Sleep, too, was upon him. He smiled in that sleep, for in his mind he saw the dead men, that were of the alien people, his foes, draw near the stream that was in a far place. The shaking of them, poor, tremulous frostbit leaves they were, thin and sere, made the only breath there was in that desert. At the ford--this is what he saw in his vision--they fell down like stricken deer with the hounds upon them. "What is this stream?" they cried in the thin voice of rain across the moors. "The River of Blood," said a voice. "And who are you that are in the silence?" "I am the Washer of the Ford."