"Ay, father, that I will: if you will breathe the holy word before me and after me. The kelpie ... the Sea-Woman ... won't catch _me_, for I am sure of hand and foot."
Ranald hesitated, looked at the cave-mouth, then at his father.
"It is true. The tide hemmed him in, and a heavy sea foamed at the mouth of the cavern. There was no chance but to gain some ledge high above the Sea-Woman's Pool. He did gain a hold on a ledge, for long afterward we found his knife on it. Then the accursed kelpie rose out of her lair and took him by the legs, and pulled him down, and tore him, and broke the bones of him--my son, my son, my beautiful Seumas!"
As the old man spoke, his voice had grown louder, his tone more intense; and at the last the memory of his loss so wrought upon him that, with a sudden cry, he dashed forward and whirled one of the lanterns into the dark, echoing chasm.
"Let me go, let me go," he cried, as his son tried to withhold him. "If she must have one of us again, let it be me! Let go, boy! You have your wife and child: and I am old, and have lost Seumas and Andras and the mother who bore them!"
Without a word, Ranald desisted. The old man went on his knees, crawled forward, and pulled up the flaming torch. Then, having fastened the rope round his waist and secured a lantern to his belt, he slipped over the edge and began the descent, cautiously feeling his way with his feet as he went.
As he reached further and further into the darkness, he wondered why he heard no more the barking of Ghaoth. A grim thought came into his mind: the dog had been caught by the Sea-Woman, and was even now drifting round and round in her pool, strangled, with glazed, protruding eyes.
At last, both sight and sound told him that he was nearly over the abyss--sight and sound, and his careful counting of the steps in his descent.
The tidal wash, the heavy lapse and then heavier resurge, with the rush and cataract-roar of the seas as they fell far down into the chasm, assailed his ears continuously. Peering down, he could see the foam upon the flood, as it swept ravening round the cave and then fell headlong into the abyss, above which was a misty pulsating whiteness, the send and spray of tons of whirled water.