Page:The Aran Islands, parts III and IV (Synge).djvu/65

 man is,' she said, 'but I couldn't go to the door with the air was coming out of it. They say his head isn't on him at all, and indeed it isn't any wonder and he three weeks in the sea. Isn't it great danger and sorrow is over everyone on this island?'

I asked her if the curagh would soon be coming back with the priest.

'It will not be coming soon or at all to-night,' she said. 'The wind has gone up now, and there will come no curagh to this island for maybe two days or three. And wasn't it a cruel thing to see the haste was on them, and they in danger all the time to be drowned themselves?'

Then I asked her how the woman was doing.

'She's nearly lost,' said the old woman; 'she won't be alive at all to-morrow morning. They have no boards to make her a coffin, and they'll want to borrow the boards that a man below has had this two years to bury his mother, and she alive still. I heard them saying there are two more women with the fever, and a child that's not three. The Lord have mercy on us all!'

I went out again to look over the sea, but night had fallen and the hurricane was howling over the dun. I walked down the lane and heard the keening in the house where the young man was. Further on I could see a stir about