vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I
found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a
tune upon a jigging instrument.

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in
one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness
of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown
back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and
recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.

"Has he been drinking?" shouted I to Rorie.

"He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws," returned Rorie in the same
high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.

"Then--was he so--in February?" I inquired.

Rorie's "Ay" was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung
in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be
condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you
will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene
for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had
chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful
pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the
roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the
man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of
death, his ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it
were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest
superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter
and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with
an unholy glimmer.

"Eh, Charlie man, it's grand!" he cried. "See to them!" he continued,
dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening
clamour and those clouds of spray; "see to them dancin', man! Is that no
wicked?"

He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the
scene.

"They're yowlin' for thon schooner," he went on, his thin, insane voice
clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, "an' she's comin' aye
nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't,
the folk kens it, they ken weel it's by wi' them. Charlie lad, they're
a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were a' drunk in
the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There's nane could dr