Kilgorman | Page 8

the tempest, we lacked spirit to fight in earnest. Only
when Tim called me "Frenchman" it was not in me to stand meekly by.
I know that when it was over, and we parted sulky and bruised each his
own way, I flung myself on my face at the edge of the cliff and wished
I had never been born.
How long I lay I know not.
When I looked up the day was dark with tempest. The whistle of the
wind about my ears mingled with the hoarse thunder of the surf as it
broke on the beach, four hundred feet below me, and swept round the
point into the lough. The taste of brine was on my lips, and now and
again flakes of foam whirled past me far inland. From Dunaff to Malin
the coast was one long waste of white water. And already the great
Atlantic rollers, which for a day past had brought their solemn warning
in from the open, were breaking miles out at sea, and racing in on the
shore like things pursued.
As for me, my spirits rose as I looked out and saw it all. For I loved the
sea in its angry moods. And this promise of tempest seemed somehow
to accord with the storm that was raging in my own breast. It made me
forget Tim and the sheep, and even mother.
I tried to get up on my feet, but the wind buffeted me back before I
reached my knees, and I was fain to lie prone, with my nose to the
storm, blinking through half-closed eyes out to sea.
For a long time I lay thus. Then I seemed to descry at the point of the
bay windward a sail. It was a minute or more before I could be certain I
saw aright. Yes, it was a sail.
What craft could be mad enough in such weather to trust itself to the
mercies of the bay? Even my father, the most daring of helmsmen,
would give Fanad Head a wide berth before he put such a wind as this
at his back. This stranger must be either disabled or ignorant of the

coast, or she would never drive in thus towards a lee-shore like ours.
Boy as I was, I knew better seamanship than that.
Yet as I watched her, she seemed to me neither cripple nor fool. She
was a cutter-rigged craft, long and low in the water, under close canvas,
and to my thinking wonderfully light and handy in the heavy sea. She
did not belong to these parts--even I could tell that--and her colours, if
she had any, had gone with the wind.
The question was, would she on her present tack weather Fanad Head
(on which I lay) and win the lough? And if not, how could she escape
the rocks on which every moment she was closing?
At first it seemed that nothing could save her, for she broke off short of
the point, and drove in within half-a-mile of the rocks. Then, while I
waited to see the end of her, she suddenly wore round, and after
staggering a moment while the sea broke over her, hauled up to the
wind, and careening over, with her mainsail sweeping the water, started
gaily on the contrary tack.
It was so unlike anything any of our clumsy trawler boats were capable
of, that I was lost in admiration at the suddenness and daring of the
manoeuvre. But Fanad was still to be weathered, and close as she sailed
to the wind, it seemed hardly possible to gain sea-room to clear it.
Yet she cleared it, even though the black rocks frowned at her not a
cable's length from her lee-quarter, and the wind laid her over so that
her mast-head seemed almost to touch them as it passed. Then, once
clear, up went her helm as she turned again into the wind, and slipped,
with the point on her weather-quarter, into the safe waters of the lough.
I was so delighted watching this adventure from my lonely perch that I
did not notice the October afternoon was nearly spent, and that the light
was beginning to fade. The storm gathered force every moment, so that
when at last I turned to go home I had to crawl a yard or two to shelter
before I could stand on my feet.
As for the sheep, unless Tim had driven them in, which was not likely,

they would have to shift for themselves for this night. It was too late to
see them, and Con, who limped at my heels, had not a yap left in him.
As I staggered home, leaning my back against the wind, I could not
help wondering what this strange boat