calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea

swirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now

and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_ were

talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above all

in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a mile of

it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a place.

You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end there

comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big breakers

dance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have got the

name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they

run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray

runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their

movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they make

about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more than

I can tell.

The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our archipelago

is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs, and weathered

the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south coast of Aros, in

Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our family, as I propose

to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the place I knew so long,

makes me particularly welcome the works now going forward to set lights

upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of our iron-bound,

inhospitable islands.

The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from my

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>