fury, height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be
seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose
their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like
phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus
aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would
fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather
maddening in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was
beaten down by the confounding uproar - a gleeful vacancy possessed
the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I found myself at
times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a
jigging instrument.

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away
in one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch
darkness of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his
head thrown back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down,
he saw and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above
his head.

'Has he been drinking?' shouted I to Rorie.

'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,' returned Rorie in the
same high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.

'Then - was he so - in February?' I inquired.

Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not
sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no
more to be condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous
madman, if you will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.