A long penetrating wail went up. The Culdees, on the further loch, heard it, and ran from their cells. The loud laughter of the sea-rovers was more dreadful to them than the whirling flames and the wild screaming lament of the dying and the doomed. None came forth alive out of that dûn, save three men, and seven women that were young. Two of the men were made to tell all that Olaus the White wanted to know. Then they were blinded, and put in a boat, and set in the tide-eddy that would take them to where the Culdees were. And, for the Culdees, they had a message from Olaus. Of the seven women none was so fair that Morna had any heed. But seven men had them as spoil. Their wild keening had died away into a silence of blank despair long before the dawn. When the light came, they were huddled in a white group near the ashes of their homes. Everywhere the dead sprawled. At sunrise the vikings held an ale-feast. When Olaus the White had drunken and eaten, he left his men and went down to the shore to look upon the fortified place where Maoliosa the Culdee and his white-robes lived. As he fared thither through what had been Bail'-tiorail there was not a male left alive save the one prisoner who had been kept, Aongas the Bow-maker as he was called: none save Aongas, and a strayed child among the salt grasses near the shore, a little boy, naked and with blue eyes and laughing sunny smile. THE FLIGHT OF THE CULDEES On the wane of noon, on the day following the ruin of Bail'-tiorail, sails were descried far east of Skipness. Olaus called his men together. The boats coming before the wind were doubtless his own galleys which he had lost sight of when the south-gale had blown them against Skye: but no man can know when and how the gods may smile grimly, and let the swords that whirl be broken or the spears that are flat become a hedge of death. An hour later, a startled word went from viking to viking. The galleys in the offing were the fleet of Sweno the Hammerer. Why had he come so far southward, and why were oars so swift and with the stained sails distended before the wind? They were soon to know. Sweno himself was the first to land. A man he was, broad and burly, with a sword-slash across his face that brought his brows together in a frown which made a perpetual dusk above his savage blood-shot eyes. In a few words he told how he had met a galley, with only half its crew, and of these many who were wounded. It was the last of the fleet of Haco the Laugher. A fleet of fifteen war-birlinns had set out from the Long Island, and had given battle. Haco had gone into the strife laughing loud as was his wont, and he and all his men had the berserk rage, and fought with joy and foam at the mouth. Never had the Sword sang a sweeter song. "Well," said Olaus the White, grimly, "well: how did the Raven fly?"