CHAPTER V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.


Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but
my uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it
a part of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and
quiet, but tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the
eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed
far down upon the rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating
breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure
in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him,
with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of
the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in
a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to support him, my hand
clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his pitiful
discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
accompanying a child of seven would have had no different
experience.

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the
night before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those
of a strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the
moment, was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living
flames, he could not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and
once, when his foot slipped and he plunged to the midleg into a
pool of water, the shriek that came up out of his soul was like the
cry of death. He sat still for a while, panting like a dog, after