Prisoners of Conscience Part 7

Throughout this conversation speech had been becoming more and more painful to him. The last words were uttered in gasps of unconquerable agony, and a mortal spasm gave a terrible emphasis to this spiritual conviction. When it had pa.s.sed he whispered faintly, "The pains of h.e.l.l get hold on me--on my body, David; they cannot touch my soul. Lay me down now--at His feet--I can sit in my chair no longer."

So David laid him in his bunk. "Shall I say _the words_ now--the words you marked, father?" he asked.

"Ay; the hour has come."

Then David knelt down and put his young, fresh face very close to the face of the dying man, and said solemnly and clearly in his very ear the chosen words of trust:

"When the waves of death compa.s.sed me;

"When the sorrows of h.e.l.l compa.s.sed me about, and the snares of death prevented me,

"In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my G.o.d: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears."

"The sorrows of death compa.s.sed me, and the pains of h.e.l.l gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.

"Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul....

"Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

"For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling....

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

Here David ceased. It was evident that the mighty words were no longer necessary. A smile, such as is never seen on mortal face until the light of eternity falls upon it, illumined the gaunt, stern features, and the outlooking eyes flashed a moment in its radiance. A solemn calm, a certain pomp of conscious grandeur in his victory over death and the grave, encompa.s.sed the dying man, and gave to the p.r.o.ne figure a majestic significance. As far as this world was concerned, Liot Borson was a dead man. For two days he lingered on life's outermost shoal, but at sunrise the third morning he went silently away. It was full tide; the waves broke softly on the shingle, and the sea-birds on the lonely rocks were crying for their meat from G.o.d. Suddenly the sunshine filled the cabin, and David was aware of something more than the morning breeze coming through the wide-open door. A sense of lofty _presence_ filled the place. "It is the flitting," he said with a great awe; and he stood up with bowed head until a feeling of indescribable loneliness testified that the soul which had hitherto dwelt with him was gone away forever.

He went then to the body. Death had given it dignity and grandeur. It was evident that in Liot's case the great change had meant victory and not defeat. Almost for the first time in his life David kissed his father. Then he went into Uig and told the minister, and said simply to his mates, "My father is dead." And they answered:

"It is a happy change for him, David. Is it to-morrow afternoon you would like us to come?"

And David said: "Yes; at three o'clock the minister will be there."

He declined all companionship; he could wake alone with the dead.

For the most part he sat on the door-step and watched the rising and setting of the constellations, or walked to and fro before the open door, ever awfully aware of that outstretched form, the house of clay in which his father and companion had dwelt so many years at his side. Sometimes he slept a little with his head against the post of the door, and then the sudden waking in the starlight made him tremble.

He had thought this night would be a session of solemnity never to be forgotten; but he found himself dozing and his thoughts drifting, and it was only by an effort that he could compel anything like the att.i.tude he desired. For we cannot kindle when we will the sacred fire of the soul. And David was disappointed in his spiritual experience, and shocked at what he called his coldness and indifference, which, after all, were not coldness and indifference, but the apathy of exhausted feeling and physical weariness.

The next afternoon there was a quiet gathering in the cabin that had been Liot's, and a little prayer and admonition; then, in the beauteous stillness of the summer day, the fishers made a bier of their crossed oars, and David laid his father upon it. There was no coffin; the long, majestic figure of humanity was only folded close in a winding-sheet and his own blue blanket. So, by the sea-sh.o.r.e, as the tide murmured and the sun glinted brightly through swirling banks of gray clouds, they carried him to his long home. No one spoke as he entered it. The minister dropped his kerchief upon the upturned face, and David cast the first earth. Then the dead man's friends, each taking the spade in his turn, filled in the empty place, and laid over it the sod, and went silently away in twos and threes, each to his own home.

When all had disappeared, David followed. He had now an irresistible impulse to escape from his old surroundings. He did not feel as if he cared to see again any one who had been a part of his past. He went back to the cabin, ate some bread and fish, and then with a little reluctance opened his father's chest. There was small wealth in it--only some letters, and Liot's kirk clothes, and a leather purse containing sixteen sovereigns. David saw at a glance that the letters were written by his mother. He wondered a moment if his father had yet found her again, and then he kissed the bits of faded script and laid them upon the glowing peats. The money he put in his pocket, and the chest and clothing he resolved to take to Shetland with him. As for the cabin, he decided to give it to Bella Campbell. "She was sore put to it last winter to shelter her five fatherless bairns; and if my father liked any one more than others, it was Angus Campbell," he thought.

Then he went out and looked at the boat. "It is small," he said, "but it will carry me to Shetland. I can keep in the shadows of the sh.o.r.e. And though it is a far sail round Cape Wrath and Dunnet Head, it is summer weather, and I'll win my way if it so pleases G.o.d."

And thus it happened that on the first day of August this lonely wayfarer on cheerless seas caught sight of the gray cliffs of the Shetlands, lying like dusky spots in the sapphire and crimson splendors of the setting sun.

Book Second

DAVID BORSON

BOOK SECOND

CONTENTS

PAGE

V. A New Life 85

VI. Kindred--the Quick and the Dead 107

VII. So Far and No Farther 127

VIII. The Justification of Death 144

IX. A Sacrifice Accepted 169

X. In the Fourth Watch 192

XI. The Lowest h.e.l.l 210

XII. "At Last it is Peace" 220

V

A NEW LIFE

Between David and the misty Hebrides there was now many a league of the separating, changeful, dangerous, tragic sea, but the journey over this great waterway had been a singularly fortunate one.

David, indeed, had frequently likened himself to the young Tobias on a similar errand; for his father had particularly pointed out this history, and had read aloud to him with an emphasis not to be forgotten the old Hebrew father's parting charge: "Go! and G.o.d, which dwelleth in heaven, prosper your journey, and the angel of G.o.d keep you company."

To David this angelic companionship was no impossible hope and reliance. As the south winds drove him north and the west winds sent him east just at the proper times, he believed that some wise and powerful pilot stood at the wheel unseen; and he went about his boat with the cheerful confidence of a child who is sure his father can take care of him. Sometimes he kept so close to the sh.o.r.e that he rippled the shadows of the great cliffs, and sometimes he ran into little coves and replenished his water-casks, or bought in the seaward clachans a supply of fresh cakes or fish. He met no very bad weather. The unutterable desolation of the misty miles of sullen water did give him times of such weariness as makes the soul sink back upon itself and retire from all hope and affection. But such hours were evanescent; they were usually ended by a brisk wind, bringing peril to the little bark, and then David's first instinct was heavenward. He knew if the winds and waves rose mightily, as it was their wont in that locality, there was no human help, and his trust was instantly in the miraculous. Such hours were, however, rare. As a general thing the days and the nights followed each other with a stillness and beauty full of the presence of G.o.d. And in the sweetness of this presence he threw himself unperplexed upon infinite love and power, and seeking G.o.d with all his heart found him.

Also, he was not forgetful of the human interest of his journey. His father had always felt himself to be a stranger and an exile in Skye, and in his later years the "homing" instinct for the Shetlands had been a pa.s.sionate longing, which had communicated itself to David. He had been glad to leave Uig, for he had not a single happy memory of the little hut in which they two had dwelt and suffered together. As for the bleak kirkyard, over which the great winds blew the sea-foam, it made his heart ache to remember it. He felt an unspeakable pity when he thought of one of its solitary graves, and he promised himself to sail back to Uig some day, and bring home the dust of his father, and lay it among his kindred.

Indeed, it was thoughts of home and kindred which made this long, lonely voyage happy and hopeful to David. He believed himself to be going home. Though his father at the last had not spoken much of his cousin Paul Borson, and though David had not found the letter which was to be his introduction to him, yet he had not a doubt of his welcome. Time might wither friendship and slay love, but his kindred were always his kindred; they were bound to him by the ineffaceable and imperishable ties of blood and race.

David approached Lerwick in that divine twilight which in the Shetland summer links day unto day; and in its glory the ancient homes of gray and white sandstone appeared splendid habitations.

The town was very quiet; even the houses seemed to be asleep. He saw no living thing but a solitary sea-gull skimming the surface of the sea; he heard nothing but a drunken sailor fitfully singing a stave of "The Skaalds of Foula." The clear air, the serene seas, the tranquil grandeur of the caverned rocks which guard the lonely isles, charmed him. And when the sun rose and he saw their mural fronts of porphyry, carved by storms into ten thousand castles in the air, and cloud-like palaces still more fantastic, he felt his heart glow for the land of his birth and the home of his forefathers.