With a leap he was on the ground. Seizing a huge stone he hurled it through the window. Then, laughing and screaming, he fled towards the Great Reef, along whose sides the ebb-tide gurgled and sobbed, with glistering white foam. He ceased screaming or laughing as he heard the Dàn-nan-Ròn behind him, faint, but following; sure, following. Bending low, he raced towards the rock-ledges from which ran the reef. When at last he reached the extreme ledge, he stopped abruptly. Out on the reef he saw from ten to twenty seals, some swimming to and fro, others clinging to the reef, one or two making a curious barking sound, with round heads lifted against the moon. In one place there was a surge and lashing of water. Two bulls were fighting to the death. With swift stealthy movements Mànus unclothed himself. The damp had clotted the leathern thongs of his boots, and he snarled with curled lip as he tore at them. He shone white in the moonshine, but was sheltered from the sea by the ledge behind which he crouched. “What did Gloom Achanna mean by that,” he muttered savagely, as he heard the nearing air change into the “Dance of the Dead.” For a moment Mànus was a man again. He was nigh upon turning to face his foe, corpse or wraith or living body, to spring at this thing which followed him, and tear it with hands and teeth. Then, once more, the hated Song of the Seal stole mockingly through the night. With a shiver he slipped into the dark water. Then, with quick, powerful strokes, he was in the moon-flood, and swimming hard against it out by the leeside of the reef. So intent were the seals upon the fight of the two great bulls that they did not see the swimmer, or, if they did, took him for one of their own people. A savage snarling and barking and half-human crying came from them. Mànus was almost within reach of the nearest, when one of the combatants sank dead, with torn throat. The victor clambered on to the reef, and leaned high, swaying its great head and shoulders to and fro. In the moonlight its white fangs were like red coral. Its blinded eyes ran with gore. There was a rush, a rapid leaping and swirling, as Mànus surged in among the seals, which were swimming round the place where the slain bull had sunk. The laughter of this long white seal terrified them. When his knee struck against a rock, MacCodrum groped with his arms and hauled himself out of the water. From rock to rock and ledge to ledge he went, with a fantastic dancing motion, his body gleaming foam-white in the moonshine. As he pranced and trampled along the weedy ledges, he sang snatches of an old rune--the lost rune of the MacCodrums of Uist. The seals on the rocks crouched spell-bound: those slow-swimming in the water stared with brown unwinking eyes, with their small ears strained against the sound:--