They hauled the
gig up to the davits, however, and again the yacht lay in dead silence
in this little bay.

The evening grew to dusk; the only change visible in the spectral world
of pale yellow-white mist was the appearance in the sky of a number of
small, detached bulbous-looking clouds of a dusky blue-gray. They had
not drifted hither, for there was no wind. They had only appeared. They
were absolutely motionless. But the heat and the suffocation in this
atmosphere became almost insupportable. The men, with bare heads, and
jerseys unbuttoned at the neck, were continually going to the cask of
fresh water beside the windlass. Nor was there any change when the night
came on. If anything, the night was hotter than the evening had been.
They waited in silence what might come of this ominous calm.

Hamish came aft.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Keith," said he, "but I am thinking we will have
an anchor-watch to-night."

"You will have no anchor-watch to-night," Macleod answered slowly, from
out of the darkness. "I will be all the anchor-watch you will need,
Hamish, until the morning."

"You, sir!" Hamish cried. "I have been waiting to take you ashore; and
surely it is ashore that you are going!"

Just as he had spoken, there was a sound that all the world seemed to
stand still to hear. It was a low, murmuring sound of thunder; but it
was so remote as almost to be inaudible. The next moment an awful thing
occurred. The two men standing face to face in the dark suddenly found
themselves in a blaze of blinding steel-blue light, and at the very same
instant the thunder-roar crackled and shook all around them like the
firing of a thousand cannon. How the wild echoes went booming over
the sea!

Then they were in the black night again. There was a period of awed
silence.

"Hamish," Macleod said, quickly, "do as I tell you now! Lower the gig;
take the men with you, and Christina, and go ashore and remain in the
sheiling till the morning."

"I will not!" Hamish cried. "O Sir Keith, would you have me do that?"

Macleod had anticipated his refusal. Instantly he went forward and
called up Christina. He ordered Duncan Cameron and John Cameron to lower
away the gig. He got them all in but Hamish.

"Hamish," said he, "you are a smaller man than I. Is it on such a night
that you would have me quarrel with you? Must I throw you into
the boat?"

The old man clasped his trembling hands together as if in prayer; and he
said, with