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.

'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel. 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 can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one by
one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely
master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin
iteration, 'Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, p