op I watched to see my boatman," went the sense
of it. "Will you come to-day or will you come to-morrow? And if you
never come--O God! help me!"

And there was a chorus to it that was like a keening for the dead:

_Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Fhir a' bhata na horo eile!
Fhir a' bhata na horo eile! Mo shoraidh slan leat, fhir a' bhata!_

My heart's good-by to you, O man of the boat!

But nearer than Islay was their own Raghery--Rathlin Island the maps had
it--he could see it now to the north. A strange little world of its own,
with great caves where the wind howled like a starving wolf, and the
black divers went into the water like a bullet. It was in the caves of
Raghery that the Bruce took refuge, and it was there he saw the spider
of Scots legend.... Rathlin was queer and queer.... There were many
women with the second sight, it was told, and the men were very big,
very shy, very gentle, except when the drink was in them, and then they
would rage like the sea.

A strange, mystical water, the Moyle, to have two isles in it like Islay
of the pipers and Raghery of the black caves. It was over Moyle that
Columkill went in his little coracle to be a hermit in Iona, the
gentlest saint that Ireland ever knew. And it was over the Moyle that
Patrick came, landing whilst the Druids turned their cursing stones and
could not prevail against him. And it was on the Moyle that the Children
of Lir swam and they turned into three white swans, with their great
white wings like sails and their black feet like sweeps.... And in the
night-time they sang a strange, sad music, and the echoes of it were
still in the nine glens....

And northerly again were the pillars of the Giant's Causeway, blue-black
against the sun. They were made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion
of the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland and he going
deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. So the country folk said, but wee
Shane thought different, knew different. The Druids had made it for
their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible, powerful clan with
their magic batons, and their sinister cursing-stones, and their long,
white, benevolent beards....

And there, green and well kept as a duke's garden, was the Royal Links
of Portrush. And the Irish golfers said that it was harder than St.
Andrew's in Scotland and better kept. There King James had played a game
before he went down to the defeat of the Boyne Water.

"And if he golfe