ld not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his
foot slipped and he plunged to the mid-leg into a pool of water, the
shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat
still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for
the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more
he tottered among the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks
among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set
on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.
Pleased as he was with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at
his ill-fortune.

"Aros," he said, "is no' a place for wrecks ava'--no' ava'. A' the years
I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear
clean tint!"

"Uncle," said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there
was nothing to divert his mind, "I saw you last night, as I never
thought to see you--you were drunk."

"Na, na," he said, "no' as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And
to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I canna mend. There's nae
soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
lug, it's my belief that I gang gyte."

"You are a religious man," I replied, "and this is sin."

"Ou," he returned, "if it wasna sin, I dinna ken that I would care
for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin
o' the world in yon sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreighs--the wind an' her are
a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants,
blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid-thraws warstlin' the
leelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a
glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor
lads; I'm wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men."

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me
towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with their
manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,
towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.
Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the
sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the
assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands, that,
with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.