s the
wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of
mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle
of Aros, the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the
reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like
the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was
hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could
hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of
the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into my mind the reason of
the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost
mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not
mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed
even human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
discarding speech bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.

*****

I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I
lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very
dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity
of forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending
with ice and boulders; a few lights, scattered unevenly among the
darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation. For
the making of a story here were fine conditions.

*****

On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great
granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the
sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world
like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them
instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their
sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the
base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days
you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following
you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man
that hears that caldron boiling.

*****

It had snowed overnight. The fields were all sheeted up; they were
tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the
pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind
had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what