"That's what they mean," said my uncle, with something like joy; and
just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put
the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale
on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that threatened,
in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of
tide, their course was certain death.

"Good God!" said I, "they are all lost."

"Ay," returned my uncle, "a'--a' lost. They hadna a chance but to rin
for Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldna win through
an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man," he continued,
touching me on the sleeve, "it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae
twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!"

I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in
his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
prospect of this fresh disaster.

"If it were not too late," I cried with indignation, "I would take the
coble and go out to warn them."

"Na, na," he protested, "ye maunna interfere; ye maunna meddle wi' the
like o' that. It's His"--doffing his bonnet--"His wull. And, eh, man!
but it's a braw nicht for't!"

Something like fear began to creep into my soul; and, reminding him that
I had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;
nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.

"I maun see the hail thing, man Charlie," he explained; and then as the
schooner went about a second time, "Eh, but they han'le her bonny!" he
cried. "The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this."

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some
part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen
how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as
they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to
boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker
would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown
reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you,
they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle man aboard that
ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any
human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated