Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/93

 in that time one vivid impression had fixed itself on Stephen's preoccupied mind. The end of the old sandstone pier had been battered down by a recent storm; the box that once held the light had gone down with it, a pole had been thrust out at an angle from the overthrown stones, and from the end of this pole the light swung by a rope. No idea connected itself with this impression, which lay low down behind other thoughts.

The fog had lifted, but the night was still very dark. Not a star was shining and no moon appeared. Yet Stephen's eye—the eye of a sailor accustomed to the darkness of the sea at night—could descry something that lay to the north. The Irish brig had disappeared. Yes, her sails were now gone. But out at sea—far out, half a league away—what black thing was there? Oh, it must be a cloud, that was all; and no doubt a storm was brewing. Yet no; it was looming larger and larger, and coming nearer and nearer. It was a sail. Stephen could see it plainly enough now against the leaden sky. It was a schooner; he could make out its two masts, with fore and aft sails. It was an Irish schooner; he could recognise its heavy hull and hollowed cutwater. It was tacking against wind and tide from the north-east; it was a Dublin schooner, and was homeward bound from Iceland, having called at Whitehaven, and now putting in at Ramsey.

Stephen Orry had been in the act of putting about when this object caught his eye, but now a strange thing occurred. All at once his late troubles lay back in his mind, and by a sort of unconscious mechanical habit of intellect he began to put familiar ideas together. This schooner that was coming from Iceland would be heavy laden; it would have whalebone, and eider-down, and tallow. If it ran ashore and was wrecked some of this cargo might be taken by some one and sold for something to a French smuggler that lay outside the Chicken Rocks. That flare on the Point of Ayre was the only sea-light on this north coast of the island, and it hung by a rope from a pole. The land lay low about it, there was not a house on that sandy headland for miles on miles, and the night was very dark. All this came up to Stephen Orry's mind by no effort of will; he looked out of his dull eyes on the dull stretch of sea and sky, and the thoughts were there of themselves.

What power outside himself was at work with him? Did anything tell him that this was the great moment of his life—