Chapter XII: A Strange Terror Creeps Over Sandie’s Heart

Young Sandie M‘Crae was a powerful swimmer, and as he reaches the surface of the water he stares wildly round him; but he finds that alone by his side floats John himself, and instinctively he seizes the little man. He is very light, and Sandie can swim almost as well with him as without him.

He is being carried outward some distance to sea, however, and it takes him a terrible struggle to once more regain the mouth of the harbour.

But he succeeds at last, and ere he reaches the steps a rope is thrown to him, which with feeble hands he catches, and is towed onwards. He stands on the pier at last. Safe! But strange lights scintillate now across his eyes, there comes a roaring in his ears, then all is darkness, oblivion, and he sinks to the ground insensible.

When he recovers himself he is warm and in bed.

For a time he can remember nothing, but soon it all comes back, the storm, the squall, the wreck.

And just at that moment sounds of wailing and of woe fall upon his ear from the other room. Some one is weeping and moaning in sadness and sorrow. A strange terror creeps over Sandie’s heart, a kind of nameless fear. He sits up and listens intently. Some one is talking too. It is Eppie. But her voice is strangely altered.

“My ain wee man! my ain wee man!” she is crying. “O dool (grief) on the day I e’er let you leave me! O John, John, John, you’ll never speak to your Eppie again! O my heart will break, my heart will break!”

Then once more she broke off into a fit of sobbing and crying.

A cold hand seemed to clutch at Sandie’s heart. He knew only too well what it all meant. John Menzies, the blithesome and merry little fisherman, was gone. It was but the lifeless body he had succeeded in bringing on shore--the soul had fled.

Sandie rose now, although he felt a little giddy. He slowly dressed himself in dry clothes, that had thoughtfully been placed handy for him.

“Poor Eppie!” Sandie said half aloud, “even in her own great grief she did not forget me.” The very kindness of the woman’s act brought the tears to his eyes.

He opened his door at last and went softly into the kitchen.

Eppie was swaying back and fore beside the corpse, which lay on the bed; swaying backwards and forwards, her wet apron to her face and in an agony of grief.

She did not perceive Sandie, nor hear his footstep, until he touched her lightly on the shoulder.

Then she looked up, startled.

“Can I be of any use or comfort to you, dear Mrs. Menzies?”

“Oh! na, na, na,” she wailed. “There is naething on earth can comfort me mair, now my ain wee man is ta’en (taken) awa’. Like unto Rachael am I, this day, like Rachael weeping for her children, and will not be comforted, because they are not.”

“What use is it,” thought Sandie, “to air my platitudes before such grief as this?”

And yet he tried.

“Dear Mrs. Menzies,” he said, “we have all to die.”

“Ay, ay, my bonnie bairn, an’ my day will no be lang. I dinna want to live. I dinna want to live.”

“All may be for the best, Mrs. Menzies. Better perhaps that poor John should have died as he did, quickly and speedily, and, I am sure, painlessly, than if he had lingered in suffering for weeks or months in bed.”

Eppie, it was evident, was not listening.

“And the poor wee body,” she said, speaking more to herself than Sandie, “must come toddlin’ back last nicht after the boat was afloat. ‘O Eppie!’ he said, ‘I maun say good-nicht again.’ Eh, sirs, sirs! little did I think that would be the last time I should haud (hold) him in my arms alive. Oh, wurra! wurra! wurra!”

Sandie’s attempt at giving mental comfort having failed, he addressed himself to the purely physical.

He went and made up the fire, and got the kettle to boil. He even fried some fish and boiled eggs. Then he made strong tea, and laid the breakfast.

“Come, Mrs. Menzies, and eat a little, and drink a cup of tea; it will do you good.”

“Na, na, my bairn; every mouthfu’ would choke me, when he is no here to share it.”

“Mrs. Menzies, you must sit down here and take something, for two reasons--the first is, that you have a deal to do, a deal before you, duties that you will not be able to perform without some bodily strength. Secondly, because I am weak and not over-well, and I can neither eat nor drink unless you do.”

It showed the kindness of this poor woman’s nature, that the last argument was quite convincing, and without a word, she got up and seated herself at the table, and tried to eat and drink, though all the time her tears were silently coursing down her cheeks.

She did not speak much, and Sandie, respecting her grief, made no attempt to force her to do so.

Sandie felt pleased when the door opened, and “a neighbouring woman” came quietly in, to keep Eppie company.

He himself, knowing now that the widow would be well looked after--for those poor fisher-folks are marvellously kind to each other--left the house, and went on down towards the pier. Oh, the sadness of that scene. Oh, the grief and the misery of it. The people, male and female, young and old, formed one dense crowd. The men were silent and sad, the women were weeping and wailing, but the poor children, many of them were simply frantic with grief, and leapt and jumped and danced upon the stones, not knowing what they were doing.

And it went to Sandie’s inmost heart to hear them wail, “O my daddie! O my daddie! I’ll never never see my daddie mair.”

A kindly, old white-haired man met Sandie and shook him by the hand.

“Ye did your duty nobly, lad,” he said, “and the Lord will reward you.”

“But oh,” he continued, “it was an awfu’ nicht. Black Tuesday, Black Tuesday, and by that name it will go down to posterity.”

“I hardly like to ask,” said Sandie, “how many boats have been lost.”

“The loss is appallin’, young sir. Boat after boat was seen to founder, some o’ them within sicht o’ land, some o’ them near the harbour mouth. Fifty-and-five bonnie boats in all set sail the’streen (last night), three-and-twenty have gone down wi’ every soul on board. A black Tuesday--a terrible Tuesday! And,” he added, with a pathos that was touching, “I hae lost a bonnie son!”

His eyes were turned for just a moment meekly heavenwards.

“Heaven help me,” he said; “Thy will be done, but oh! it is hard, hard. It is our duty to submit to His will. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be His name.”

Every now and then all that day swollen corpses came floating in, and were speedily dragged on shore, and identified amid such wild manifestations of grief as Sandie had never seen or heard before, and prayed Heaven he never might see or hear again.

* * * * *

Two days passed by--two woesome weary days.

Then the dead were buried. All save John. It seemed that Eppie could not bear to part with the mortal remains of the little man she had loved so well in life.

But the wee bit coffin was screwed down at last, and next day it would be consigned to its long home in the mould.

Willie had come down, and both he and Sandie were living at the cosy little inn, whose landlady, though kind and good-natured, was such a gossip.

That night Sandie had just paid his last visit to poor John’s cottage, and said good-night to Eppie. Willie and he had gone for a walk along the shore.

It was about eleven o’clock, and a most beautiful night. A gentle breeze was blowing from the west. The gladsome moon made a great triangular silvery wake upon the waters, and the wavelets laughed and lisped as they broke upon the soft golden sands.

“Look! look!” cried Willie, clutching Sandie’s arm and pointing almost fearfully seawards.

It was certainly something to marvel at. First one broad-sailed boat, then another, and then a third glided slowly into the silvery wake of the moon, looking as black as death against the shimmer of the moonlit sea.

“Sandie!” gasped Willie, “do our eyes deceive us? Or are they phantom boats?”

“No, no,” cried Sandie, recovering his self-possession, “they are part of the fleet that, being driven out to sea, have succeeded in weathering the gale. Come, let us bring the joyful tidings to those honest fisher-folks.”

In less than fifteen minutes almost every soul in the village was down at the pier-head, on each side of which a roaring fire had been lit, that the skippers of the boats might make no mistake in steering in.

On and on, nearer and nearer, slowly came the great black boats.

The anxiety in the crowd was painful to witness. There were many there over whose drowned relatives the grave had that day closed. Neither hope nor anxiety could trouble them. But there were many others who had yet received no certain account of the fate of their friends. In their hearts burned the anxiety, the hope, the doubt. This boat coming slowly in might contain a missing husband or father for them.

Well, those boats landed at last, and joyful recognition was the result, while grief once more took the place of hope in those who had now suffered disappointment.

* * * * *

It was but a short walk to the graveyard that surrounded the wee steepleless church of Blackhive. Had it been miles, Eppie would have trudged it all the same, behind the little coffin--it was but a size larger than a boy’s--of her wee man.

Meanwhile the chiming of the bell sounded mournful in the extreme. Everybody noticed how altered Eppie was, and how strange she looked.

Her hair, which was grey before, appeared to have turned white under the influence of her terrible affliction. She was sadly bent, too, and needed the support of a stick to aid her in tottering along.

Around the grave, spades in hand, and with heads bare, stood the friends and chief mourners, for in Scotland it is their duty to fill in the clods, to add the earth to earth, the dust to dust.

The coffin is lowered, the ropes are pulled up. The mourners, among whom are Sandie M‘Crae, wait for a moment, each silently breathing a prayer.

Then they look towards Eppie.

She has to throw in the first handful of earth, and she knows it.

But there is a mist before her eyes that is not caused by tears, and a cold feeling at her heart that grief alone cannot account for; she stoops--she lifts a handful of earth. Now she staggers forward to the open grave and drops it in. She turns as if to go. But in turn reels for a moment, then sinks upon the long green sward.

The mourners hurry forward to raise her. Among them is the young village doctor.

Poor Eppie is laid on her back on the grass, a half-sunken baby’s grave forming a kind of pillow. Then the doctor bends over her and takes her wrist. He lifts an eyelid and speedily recloses it. Then he slowly rises.

“Dead?” says an old white-haired man. His name is Grant, and he is the same who advanced and spoke to Sandie on the pier.

“Dead?”

“Ay, dead, Mr. Grant. Her sorrows are all over, and it is perhaps as well.”

There were a few moments of silence. It is a terrible thing to stand thus in the presence of Death.

Then old Grant cleared his throat to speak.

“My friends,” he said sadly and solemnly, “it is but meet that this worthy couple should sleep together in one grave. ’Twere better, I think, they should be buried on the same day. Let us raise once more the little coffin, and convey it to the watch-house yonder. Peradventure, there are those among you who will watch by it day and night, till the poor corpse now lying yonder can bear it company. They loved each other in life, in death let them not be divided.”

So this was done.

Sandie and Willie constituted themselves two of the principal watchers. The grave was enlarged, and upon a Monday morning, only a week since both Eppie and John had been alive and happy together, their remains were lowered in solemn silence into the same grave.

This time it was Sandie who threw in the first handful of holy earth.

And then back from the little green graveyard, feeling somewhat lonesome and sad, went Willie and Sandie.

END OF BOOK II.