dwellers in these parts attributed, if not prescience, at least a quality

of warning, to that strange and dangerous creature of the tides.

I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the

slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large

piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from

all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low

sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep

along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time

each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the

bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow

runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action

of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing

is to be seen out of Sandag Bay, but one small segment of the horizon

and, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep sea reef.

From half-way down the hill, I had perceived the wreck of February last,

a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high and dry

on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards it,

and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were suddenly

arrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by one of

those long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that we see so commonly

in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said to me

of any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my uncle had

all equally held their peace; of her at least, I was certain that she

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