Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/148

144 conversation on the subject. As they stood on the beach, looking at the bursting of the billows, and listening to the howling of the storm, the remains of the ship were shivered to pieces, and a large portion of the deck floated ashore at their feet. The planks seemed stained with blood and with wine; and as the peasants hauled it out to the dry land, one of them asked him if it was wet with the blood of beasts or men. "With the blood of both," was the answer. They left the shore, and sought no further intercourse with him.

Where the vessel was wrecked, there he seemed determined to remain; he built a little hut, fenced it round with a wall of loose stone, and lived in it without molestation from any one. He shunned the fishermen of Allanbay and the seamen of Skinverness, nor seemed pleased when the children of the peasantry carried him little presents of food; he sought and found his subsistence in the water. It was the common remark of the fishermen that no roan dipped a hook or wetted a net, between Skinverness and Saint Bees, with greater skill and success. In this solitude, exposed to every storm that swept the beach from sea or land, amid much seeming wretchedness and privation, he resided during a summer and autumn: winter, a season of great severity on an unsheltered coast, was expected either to destroy or drive him from his dwelling; but he braved every storm, and resisted all offers of food or raiment.

The first winter of his abode was one of prodigious storm and infinite hardship. The snow lay long and deep on the ground, the ice was thick on lake and pool, and the Solway presented one continual scene of commotion and distress. The shore was covered with the wrecks of ships, the eddies choked with drowned men, and the sea itself so rough and boisterous, that the fishermen suspended their customary labours, and sat with their families at the hearth-fire, listening to the sounding of the surge, and relating tales of maritime disaster and shipwreck. But on Miles Colvine the severe and continued storm seemed to have no influence. He ranged the shore, collecting for his fire the wrecks of ships; he committed his nets and hooks to the sea with his usual skill; and having found a drifted boat, which belonged to some unfortunate vessel, he obtained command over the element most congenial to his heart, and wandered about on the bosom of the waters noon and night, more like a troubled spirit than a human being. When the severity