oon at sea
wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?" with a sudden blast of
anger. "I tell ye, it canna be; they daurna droon without it. Hae,"
holding out the bottle, "tak' a sowp."

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed
I had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle,
therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to
swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing
back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud
laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap
up, shouting to receive it.

"Hae, bairns!" he cried, "there's your hansel. Ye'll get bonnier nor
that or morning."

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards
away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of
a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and
the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had
heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship
now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her
master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we
waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long,
however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly
appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering
foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell
heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and
still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the
tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning;
the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled
cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the
roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at an end. The
strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at
least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down
into the surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still
ran and shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and
tumbled as before.

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is
more than I