"Where are ye, lads?" he cried out. "Where are ye? Can't ye throw a word of welcome to a mate?" He laid his hands heavily on Uniacke's shoulders in the dark, and felt him over with an uncertain touch. "Is it Jack?" he said. "Why, what 'a ye got on, lad? Is it Jack, I say?" "Skipper," Uniacke said, in a low voice, "it's not Jack." As he spoke he struck a match. The tiny light flared up unevenly right in the Skipper's eyes. They were sea-blue and blazing with eagerness and with the pitiful glare of madness. Over the clergyman's shoulder the pale painter with his keen eyes swept the bearded face of the Skipper with a rapid and greedy glance. By the time the match dwindled and the blackness closed in again the face was a possession of his memory. He saw it even though it was actually invisible; the rugged features dignified by madness, the clear, blue eyes full of a saddening fire, and--ere the match faded--of a horror of disappointment, the curling brown beard that flowed down on the blue jersey. But he had no time to dwell on it now, for a dreary noise rose up in that confined space. It was the great seaman whimpering pitifully in the dark. "It isn't Jack," he blubbered, and they could hear his huge limbs shaking. "Ye haven't come back, mates, ye haven't come back. And the great gale comin' up, the great gale comin'." As the words died away, a gust of wind caught the belfry and tore at its rough-hewn and weather-worn stones. "Let us go down," said Sir Graham, turning to feel his way into the church. "Come, Skipper," said Uniacke, "come with us." He laid hold of the seaman's mighty arm and led him down the stairs. He said nothing. On a sudden all the life and hope had died out of him. When they gained the grey churchyard and could see his face again in the pale and stormy light, it looked shrunken, peaked and childish, and the curious elevation of madness was replaced by the uncertainty and weakness of idiocy. He shifted on his feet and would not meet the pitiful glances of the two men. Uniacke touched him on the shoulder. "Come to the Vicarage, Skipper," he said kindly. "Come in and warm yourself by the fire and have some food. It's so cold to-night." But the seaman suddenly broke away and stumbled off among the gravestones, whimpering foolishly like a dog that cannot fight grief with thought. "The sea--ah, the hatefulness of the sea!" said the painter, "will it ever have to answer for its crimes before God?" Uniacke and his guest sat at supper that night, and all the windows of the Vicarage rattled in the storm. The great guns of the wind roared in the sky. The great guns of the surf roared on the island beaches. And the two men were very silent at first. Sir Graham ate little. He had no appetite, for he seemed to hear continually in the noises of the elements the shrill whimpering of a dog. Surely it came from the graves outside, from those stone breasts of the dead.