No other life was there
but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a
mill-race, and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever and
again, in the calmest weather, roared and spouted on the rock
itself. Times were different upon Dhu-Heartach when it blew, and
the night fell dark, and the neighbour lights of Skerryvore and
Rhu-val were quenched in fog, and the men sat prisoned high up in
their iron drum, that then resounded with the lashing of the
sprays. Fear sat with them in their sea-beleaguered dwelling; and
the colour changed in anxious faces when some greater billow struck
the barrack, and its pillars quivered and sprang under the blow.
It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see
before me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get
his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy amid the music of
the storm. But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu-Heartach;
and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that
the steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea;
the obedient lighters, relieved of their deck cargo, riding in her
wake more quietly; and the steersman upon each, as she rose on the
long swell, standing tall and dark against the shining west.
But it was in Earraid itself that I delighted chiefly.
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