figure on the shore, his
mind tumultuous with wrestling thoughts and dreads, with images of the
rough depths where the girl's hair would sway like weed in a green haze
in an everlasting stillness.

Again the seamen called, and it seemed, as he looked at their
meaningless gesticulations, that the bowsprit of the vessel now pointed
higher than before. The appalling story thus told to him had barely got
home when he saw a change in the conduct of the seamen. They ceased to
cry and wave; they looked no longer at him but in the direction whence
he had come, and turning, he saw the vessel's little boat bobbing in
the sea-troughs. It had an occupant too, a lad not greatly older than
himself, using only a guiding oar, who so was directing the boat in the
drifting waves towards the Ealan Dubh and the counter of the _Jean_.

Then the whole folly of his conduct, the meaning of the seamen's cries,
the obvious and simple thing he should have done came to Gilian--he
discovered himself the dreamer again. A deep contempt for himself came
over him and he felt inclined to run back to the solace of the woods
with a shame more burdensome than before, but the doings of the lad who
had but to wade to pick up the lost boat and was now bearing down on the
doomed vessel prevented him. He watched with a fascination the things
being done that he should have done himself, he made himself, indeed,
the lad who did them. It was as if in a dream, looking upon himself with
a stranger's admiration, he saw the little boat led dexterously beside
the vessel in spite of the tumbling waves, and Black Duncan, out
upon her bowsprit, board her, lift his master's daughter in, and row
laboriously ashore. Then Gilian turned and made a poor, contemptuous
retreat.

CHAPTER XVIII--DISCOVERY

The town was dripping at its eaves and glucking full of waters at
rone-mouths and syvers when he got into it after his disgraceful retreat
He was alone in the street as he walked through it, a wet woebegone
figure with a jacket-collar high up to the ears to meet the nip of the
elements. Donacha Breck, leaning over his counter and moodily looking at
the hens sheltering their wind-blown feathers under his barrow, saw him
pass and threw over his shoulder to his wife behind a comment upon the
eccentricity of the Paymaster's boy.

"He's scarcely all there," said he, "by the look of him. He's wandering
about in the rah as if it was a fine summer day and the sun shining."