Page:The Aran Islands, parts I and II (Synge).djvu/68

 from the sun, which was making jewels of the bubbling left by the oars.

The men had had their share of porter and were unusually voluble, pointing out things to me that I had already seen, and stopping now and then to make me notice the oily smell of mackerel that was rising from the waves.

They told me that an evicting party is coming to the island to-morrow morning, and gave me a long account of what they make and spend in the year, and of their trouble with the rent.

'The rent is hard enough for a poor man,' said one of them; 'but this time we didn't pay, and they're after serving processes on every one of us. A man will have to pay his rent now, and a power of money with it for the process, and I'm thinking the agent will have money enough out of them processes to pay for his servant girl and his man all the year.'

I asked afterwards who the island belonged to.

'Bedad,' they said, 'we've always heard it belonged to Miss, and she is dead.'

When the sun passed like a lozenge of gold flame into the sea, the cold became intense. Then the men began to talk among themselves; and, losing the thread, I lay half in a dream looking at the pale oily sea about us, and the low cliffs of the island sloping up past the village,