Gilian The Dreamer

r at the full they lift and fall heavily like a sigh for the ocean's expanse as they feel themselves prisoners to the rings and pawls. Their chains jerk and ease upon the granite edges of the wall or

at night or in the heat of the day discontent with this period of no roaming and remembering the tumbling waters and the far-off harbours that must ever be more alluring than the harbours where we be. From the ivy of the church the little birds come chaffering and twittering among the shrouds, and the pigeon will perch upon a spar, so that the sea-gull, the far-searcher, must wonder as he passes on a slant of silent leathers at its daring thus to utilis

plainly be seen through great depths. The gunnies of the ships o'ertopped by many feet the quay-wall and their chains rose slanting, tight from the rings. The fishermen and their boats were far down on Cowal after signs of herring; the bay was given up to barque and gabbart alone. For once a slumber seemed to lie upon the place for ordinary so throng and cheerful; the quay was Gilian's alone as he stepped wonderingly upon it and turned an eye to the square ports open for an airing to the dens. In all the company of the ships thus swaying at the quay-side there was no sign of life beyond the smoke that rose from

's notice. He was a little, stout, well-built man, with a face tanned by sunshine and salt air to the semblance of Spanish mahogany, with wide and searching eyes and long curled hair of the deepest black. His dress was singularly perjink, cut trim and tight from a blue cloth, the col

acle of fancy, sailing upon magic seas, and thus to break upon his rev

the seaman, beckoning, settin

tion. Black Duncan that day was in a good humour, for his owners had released him at last from his weeks of tethering to the quay and this dull town and he was to depart to-morrow with his c

n a sea-chest, Gilian felt the floor lift and fall below him, a steady motion wholly new, yet confirming every guess he had made in dreams of life upon the wave. A ceaseless sound o

and a Skyeman's memory is long and his is the isle where fancy riots. He made his simple ventures round the coast voyages terrible and unending. The bays,

nt to a town where the king of Erin bides, and he found it fu

n reeling with music; some people without the ears would miss it, you and Black Duncan would be jigging to the sound of it. The world, 'ille (and here's the sailorman who has sailed the seven seas and knows its worst and best), is a very grand place to such as understand and allow. I was born with

r," said Gilian, looking hard a

d might come roaring and

er at my ear as I lay on it in the summer was the roar of the wild beast a long way off; it was uncanny and I co

d made the boy and the man and the timbers and bunks dance and shake in the world b

nd found the square of blue sky broken at the hatch by a girl's head. A roguish face in a toss of brown hair, seen thus

oway astonished. "Did I not tell you

language foreign to him. "I cried 'O Duncan' twice and you never heard, so I knew you were asleep in your dingy old den." She sw

her; "if I was sleeping would there be a boy with me here listening to the stories of the tim

taken a little aback. "I di

more the equal of his master's daughter. "I told him of Erin O and the music in its str

half light, with eyes burning in sepulchral pits, repeating the flash of the embers. She was about his own age-

h care for them. You would be telling him som

the world are like th

f a bunk and swung a

mist before a morning wind. So healthy, so ruddy, so abrupt, she was so much in

nd I heard you were sailing away to-morrow,

ily in her Gaelic

ce her, "am not I pleased that you should have Black Duncan in

the beads next time

g; "but you must sing me a son

oked doubtfully at Gilian, who was stil

ing himself to enjoy the music at his ease; "i

stening band. And the boy saw her again as it were quite differently from before, still the robust woman-child, but rich, ripe, blooded at the plump inviting lip, warm at the throbbing neck. About her hung a searching odour that overcame the common and vulgar odours of the ship, its bilge, its tar, its oak-bark tan, its herring scale, an odo

ise of the future splendour, yet to Gilian, the hearer, it brought a new and potent joy. With 'The Rover' he lived in the woods, and set foot upon foreign wharves; 'The Man with the Coat of Green' had his company upon the morning a

n a rapture she had seen and delighted in for all the apparent surrender of her emotion; she saw now the depth to which she had touched him, and was greatly pleased with this conquest of her art. Clearly he was no common Glen Aray boy, so she sang one or two more songs to show

seaman, amused, astonished, proud.

did," sai

e comes down here every time I am at the quay and she will b

very much,"

be very curious indeed if you did not like her? I have heard women sing in many places-bold ones in Amsterdam

s he sat among. "The birds sing that way and the winds and the tide, because they have the feeling o

range one anyway, and they say General Turner, who's her father and the man this ship belongs to, is not knowing very well what to make of

ering if that would be the family t

is so you'll hear little of Miss Nan's songs, I'm thinking, and that is the folly of