was quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the
tragedy was at an end. The strong ship, with all her gear, and the
lamp perhaps still burning in the cabin, the lives of so many men,
precious surely to others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves,
had all, in that one moment, gone down into the surging waters.
They were gone like a dream. And the wind still ran and shouted,
and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled as
before.

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and
motionless, is more than I can tell, but it must have been for
long. At length, one by one, and almost mechanically, we crawled
back into the shelter of the bank. As I lay against the parapet,
wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my
kinsman maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy mood.
Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin iteration, 'Sic a fecht
as they had - sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!'
and anon he would bewail that 'a' the gear was as gude's tint,'
because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of
stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name - the CHRIST-ANNA
- would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with shuddering
awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an hour
the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have
fallen asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and
unrefreshed, day had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day;
the wind blew in faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the
Roost was at its lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all
the coasts of Aros remained to witness of the furies of the night.