uir
lads, puir lads!' and anon he would bewail that 'a' the gear was as
gude's tint,' because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead
of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the
_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with
shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an
hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallen
asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day
had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in faint
and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its lowest, and
only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros remained to
witness of the furies of the night.

CHAPTER V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.

Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my
uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part of
duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but
tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a
child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the
rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest
broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured
at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps,
expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of
the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his
pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night
before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a strong
man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment, was still
undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he could not have
shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his foot slipped and
he plunged to the midleg 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