When Christine entered the cottage, the atmosphere of the sea was around and about her. The salt air was in her clothing, the fresh wind in her loosened hair, and she had a touch of its impetuosity in the hurry of her feet, the toss of her manner, the ring of her voice.
"O Mither!" she cried, then seeing the Domine, she made a little curtsey, and spoke to him first. "I was noticing you, Sir, among the men on the pier. I thought you were going with them this night."
"They have hard work this night, Christine, and my heart tells me they will be wanting to say little words they would not like me to hear."
"I am not caring to correct them, tonight. Words often help work, and tired fishers, casting their heavy nets overboard, don't do that work without a few words that help them. The words are not sinful, but they might not say them if I was present."
"I know, Sir," answered Margot. "I hae a few o' such words always handy. When I'm hurried and flurried, I canna help them gettin' outside my lips--but there's nae ill in them--they just keep me going. I wad gie up, wanting them."
"When soldiers, Margot, are sent on a forlorn hope of capturing a strong fort, they go up to it cheering. When our men launch the big life-boat, how do they do it, Christine?"
"To be sure, and when weary men cast the big, heavy nets, they find words to help them. I know a lad who always gets his nets overboard with shouting the name of the girl he loves. He has a name for her that nobody but himself can know, or he just shouts 'Dearie,' and with one great heave, the nets are overboard." And as he said these words he glanced at Christine, and her heart throbbed, and her eyes beamed, for she knew that the lad was Cluny.
"I was seeing our life-boat, as I came home," she said, "and I was feeling as if the boat could feel, and if she hadna been sae big, I would hae put my arms round about her. I hope that wasna any kind o' idolatry, Sir?"
"No, no, Christine. It is a feeling of our humanity, that is wide as the world. Whatever appears to struggle and suffer, appears to have life. See how a boat bares her breast to the storm, and in spite of winds and waves, wins her way home, not losing a life that has been committed to her. And nothing on earth can look more broken-hearted than a stranded boat, that has lost all her men. Once I spent a few weeks among the Hovellers--that is, among the sailors who man the life-boats stationed along Godwin Sands; and they used to call their boats 'darlings' and 'beauties' and praise them for behaving well."