Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/63

 "The trees swing in the trade," quoth Rua, doubtful of words,

"And the sun stares from the sky, but what should trouble the birds?"

Up from the shade he gazed, where high the parapet shone,

And he was aware of a ledge and of things that moved thereon.

"What manner of things are these? Are they spirits abroad by day?

Or the foes of my clan that are come, bringing death by a perilous way?"

The valley was gouged like a vessel, and round like the vessel's lip,

With a cape of the side of the hill thrust forth like the bows of a ship.

On the top of the face of the cape a volley of sun struck fair,

And the cape overhung like a chin a gulph of sunless air.

"Silence, heart! What is that?—that, that flickered and shone,

Into the sun for an instant, and in an instant gone?

Was it a warrior's plume, a warrior's girdle of hair?

Swung in the loop of a rope, is he making a bridge of the air?"

Once and again Rua saw, in the trenchant edge of the sky,

The giddy conjuring done. And then, in the blink of an eye,

A scream caught in with the breath, a whirling packet of limbs,

A lump that dived in the gulph, more swift than a dolphin swims;

And there was the lump at his feet, and eyes were alive in the lump.

Sick was the soul of Rua, ambushed close in a clump;

Sick of soul he drew near, making his courage stout;

And he looked in the face of the thing, and the life of the thing went out.

And he gazed on the tattooed limbs, and, behold, he knew the man:

Hoka, a chief of the Vais, the truculent foe of his clan: 51