Because Shane had hated to see the fine boat drawn up, he had put _Righ nam Bradan_, the _Salmon King_, Alan Donn's great thirty-footer, into commission, and raced her at Ballycastle and Kingstown, losing both times. He had ascribed it to sailing luck, the dying of a breeze, the setting of a tide, a lucky tack of an opposing boat. But at Cowes he should have won. Everything was with him. He came in fifth. "I can't understand," he told one of Alan's old crew. "Man," the Antrim sailor told him bluntly, "ye have na' the gift." "But, Feardoracha, I'm a sailor." "Aye, Shane Campbell, you're that. For five times seven years you've sailed the seven seas. But for racing ye have na' the gift. Alan Donn had it. And 'twas Alan Donn had the gift for the golf, and the gift for the horses. Just the gift. You must not blame yourself, _Shane na fairrge_, there's few Alan Donns." And thinking to himself in the lamp-lit room, Shane found what the old man meant. Beneath the bronzed face, the roaring manner of Alan Donn, there was a secret of alchemy. Rhythm, and concentration like white fire. To the most acute tick of the stars he could get a boat over the line with the gun. Something told him where breezes were. By will-power he forced out the knowledge of a better tack. As to horses, where was his equal at putting one over a jump? At the exact hair's-breadth of time, he had changed from human being to spirit. It was no longer Alan Donn and his horse when he dropped his hands on the neck. There was fusion. A centaur sprang.... On the links he remembered him, the smiling mask, the stance, the waggle, the white ball. The face set, the eyes gleamed.... The terrific explosion.... Not a man and a stick and a piece of gutta-percha, but the mind and will performing a miracle with matter.... And Alan Donn was dead six years ... and yet he lived.... He lived because he had been of great use. He was a standard, a great ideal. Children who had seen him would remember him forever, and seek to emulate the fire and strength of him, having him to measure by as the mariner has the star.... In foreign countries they would tell tales of him: There was once a great sportsman in the North of Ireland, Alan Donn Campbell by name.... His father, too, who had been dead so long--mortality had not conquered him. Once in Ballycastle Shane had seen a shawled girl look out to sea with great staring eyes and a wry mouth, and, half whispered, staccato, not quite sung, her fingers twisting her shawl, came a song from her white mouth: _Tiocfaidh an samhradh agas fasfaidh an fear; Agas tiocfaidh an duilleabhar glas do bharr nan gcraobh. Tiocfaidh mo chead gradhle banaghadh an lae, Agas bvailfidh se port ciuin le cumhaidh 'mo dhiaidh._ The summer will come, and the little grass will grow; And there will come a green thickness to the tops of the trees. And my hundred loves will arise with the dawning of the day, And he will strike a soft tune out of loneliness after me.