Yes, his quick ears had caught the inland strain of a voice he knew. Soft and white as the moonshine came Anne’s singing, as she passed along the corrie leading to the haven. In vain his travelling gaze sought her: she was still in the shadow, and, besides, a slow drifting cloud obscured the moonlight. When he looked back again, a stifled exclamation came from his lips. There was not a sign of Gloom Achanna. He had slipped noiselessly from the boat, and was now either behind it, or had dived beneath it, or was swimming under water this way or that. If only the cloud would sail by, muttered Mànus, as he held himself in readiness for an attack from beneath or behind. As the dusk lightened, he swam slowly towards the boat, and then swiftly round it. There was no one there. He climbed on to the keel, and stood, leaning forward as a salmon-leisterer by torchlight, with his spear-pointed boat-hook raised. Neither below nor beyond could he discern any shape. A whispered call to Aulay MacNeill showed that he, too, saw nothing. Gloom must have swooned, and sank deep as he slipped through the water. Perhaps the dogfish were already darting about him. Going behind the boat, Mànus guided it back to the smack. It was not long before, with MacNeill’s help, he righted the punt. One oar had drifted out of sight, but as there was a sculling hole in the stern, that did not matter. “What shall we do with it?” he muttered, as he stood at last by the corpse of Marcus. “This is a bad night for us, Aulay!” “Bad it is; but let us be seeing it is not worse. I’m thinking we should have left the boat.” “And for why that?” “We could say that Marcus Achanna and Gloom Achanna left us again, and that we saw no more of them nor of our boat.” MacCodrum pondered a while. The sound of voices, borne faintly across the water, decided him. Probably Anne and the lad Donull were talking. He slipped into the boat, and with a sail-knife soon ripped it here and there. It filled, and then, heavy with the weight of a great ballast-stone which Aulay had first handed to his companion, and surging with a foot-thrust from the latter, it sank. “We’ll hide the … the man there … behind the windlass, below the spare sail, till we’re out at sea, Aulay. Quick, give me a hand!” It did not take the two men long to lift the corpse and do as Mànus had suggested. They had scarce accomplished this when Anne’s voice came hailing silver-sweet across the water. With death-white face and shaking limbs MacCodrum stood holding the mast, while with a loud voice so firm and strong that Aulay MacNeill smiled below his fear, he asked if the Achannas were back yet, and, if so, for Donull to row out at once, and she with him if she would come.