Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/202

198 keepsake and symbol, finally fixed their attention upon a brooch of pure gold: as she gazed on it, she gave a sigh, and looked seaward, with a glance which showed that her eye was following in the train of her affections. The maiden's brow saddened at once, as she beheld the thick gathering of the clouds; and, depositing her treasure in her bosom, she continued to gaze on the darkening sea, with a look of increasing emotion,

The experienced mariners on the Scottish and Cumbrian coasts appeared busy mooring, and double mooring, their vessels. Some sought a securer haven; and those who allowed their barks to remain prepared them, with all their skill, for the encounter of a storm, which no one reckoned distant. Something now appeared in the space between the sea and the cloud, and, emerging more fully, and keeping the centre of the sea, it was soon known to be a heavily laden ship, apparently making for the haven of Allanbay. When the cry of "A ship! a ship!" arose among the reapers, one of the old men, whose eyes were something faded, after gazing intently, said, with a tone of sympathy, "It is a ship indeed—and woe's me but the path it is in be perilous in a moment like this!"

"She'll never pass the sunken rocks of Saint Bees' Head," said one old man. "Nor weather the headland of Barnhourie and the caverns of Colvend," said another. "And should she pass both," said a third, "the coming tempest, which now heaves up the sea within a cable's length of her stern, will devour her ere she finds shelter in kindly Allanbay!"

"Gude send," said he of the mixed brood of Cumberland and Caledonia—"since she maun be wrecked, that she spills nae her treasure on the thankless shores of Galloway! These northerns be a keen people, with a ready hand, and a clutch like steel: besides, she seems a Cumberland bark, and its meet that we have our ane fish-guts to our ane seamaws."

"Oh, see, see!" said the old man, three of whose children had perished when the Bonnie Babie Allan sank—"see how the waves are beginning to be lifted up! Hearken how deep calls to deep; and hear and see how the winds and the windows of heaven are loosened! Save thy servants—even those seafaring men—should there be but one righteous person on board!" And the old reaper rose, and stretched out his hands in supplication as he spoke.