“By God,” said Duncan Cameron, solemnly, “I will do that!  I have no wife; I do not care.  I will go into the gig with you, Hamish; but we will never reach the yacht—­this night or any night that is to come.”

Then the old woman Christina shrieked aloud, and caught her husband by the arm.

“Hamish!  Hamish!  Are you going to drown yourself before my eyes?”

He shook her hand away from him.

“My young master ordered me ashore:  I have come ashore.  But I myself, I order myself back again.  Duncan Cameron, they will never say that we stood by and saw Macleod of Dare go down to his grave!”

They emerged from the shelter of this great rock; the hurricane was so fierce that they had to cling to one bowlder after another to save themselves from being whirled into the sea.  But were these two men by themselves?  Not likely!  It was a party of five men that now clambered along the slippery rocks to the shingle up which they had hauled the gig, and one wild lightning-flash saw them with their hands on the gunwale, ready to drag her down to the water.  There was a surf raging there that would have swamped twenty gigs:  these five men were going of their own free will and choice to certain death—­so much had they loved the young master.

But a piercing cry from Christina arrested them.  They looked out to sea.  What was this sudden and awful thing?  Instead of the starboard green light, behold! the port red light—­and that moving!  Oh, see! how it recedes, wavering, flickering through the whirling vapor of the storm!  And there again is the green light!  Is it a witch’s dance, or are they strange death-fires hovering over the dark ocean-grave?  But Hamish knows too well what it means; and with a wild cry of horror and despair, the old man sinks on his knees and clasps his hands, and stretches them out to the terrible sea.

“O, Macleod, Macleod! are you going away from me forever? and we will go up the hills together and on the lochs together no more—­no more—­no more!  Oh, the brave lad that he was! and the good master!  And who was not proud of him—­my handsome lad—­and he the last of the Macleods of Dare?”

Arise, Hamish, and have the gig hauled up into shelter; for will you not want it when the gale abates, and the seas are smooth, and you have to go away, to Dare, you and your comrades, with silent tongues and sombre eyes?  Why this wild lamentation in the darkness of the night?  The stricken heart that you loved so well has found peace at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk:  there is an end!  And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other’s terrified faces when the wan gleam of the lightning blazes through the sky, perhaps it is well that you should weep and wail for the young master; but that is soon over, and the day will break.  And this is what I am thinking of now:  when the light comes and the seas are smooth, then which of you—­oh, which of you all will tell this tale to the two women at Castle Dare?