"
So, about the next island of Iona, sang Columba himself twelve
hundred years before. And so might I have sung of Earraid.
And all the while I was aware that this life of sea-bathing and
sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year cannon were
roaring for days together on French battlefields; and I would sit
in my isle (I call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon
the war, and the loudness of these far-away battles, and the pain
of the men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching. And I
would think too of that other war which is as old as mankind, and
is indeed the life of man: the unsparing war, the grinding slavery
of competition; the toil of seventy years, dear-bought bread,
precarious honour, the perils and pitfalls, and the poor rewards.
It was a long look forward; the future summoned me as with trumpet
calls, it warned me back as with a voice of weeping and beseeching;
and I thrilled and trembled on the brink of life, like a childish
bather on the beach.
There was another young man on Earraid in these days, and we were
much together, bathing, clambering on the boulders, trying to sail
a boat and spinning round instead in the oily whirlpools of the
roost. But the most part of the time we spoke of the great
uncharted desert of our futures; wondering together what should
there befall us; hearing with surprise the sound of our own voices
in the empty vestibule of youth.
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