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He felt as if he would like to wander away in it down to Port Mooar, and round by the caves, and under the cliffs, where the sea-birds scream. The night had fallen, and he was sitting in his room, when there was a clamour of loud voices in the hall. Some one was calling for the Deemster. It was Nancy Joe. She was newly returned from Sulby.
We can talk there without interruption. Be brave, my dear. There are serious matters to discuss and arrange." The message was curt, and even cold, but it brought her no disquiet. Marriage! That was the only vision it conjured up. The death of the Deemster had hastened things that was the meaning of the urgency. Port Mooar was near to Ballure that was why she had to go so far.
He could not help thinking of Port Mooar, of the Carasdhoo men, of the day when he and Philip were brought home in the early, morning. Putting his tools down, he returned to the room. He was holding his breath and walking softly, as if in the presence of an invisible thing. The room was perfectly quiet he could hear the breath in his nostrils.
Philip left his plate half full, and rose from the table to go down to Port Mooar. "But, boy veen, you've destroyed nothing,", cried the landlady. And then coaxingly, as if he had been a child, "You'll be ateing bits for me, now, come, come! No more at all? Aw, it's failing you are, Mr. Philip! Going for a walk is it? Take your topcoat then, for the clover is closing."
The air was quiet, and the sea was calm, but across the Channel a leaden sky seemed to hover over the English mountains, though they were still light and apparently in sunshine. As Philip reached Port Mooar, a cart was coming out of it with a load of sea-wrack for the land, and a lobster-fisher on the beach was shipping his gear for sea. "Quiet day," said Philip in passing.
Just then the newsboys went shouting down the street beyond the churchyard: "Special edition Death of the Deemster." Then everything came back. He had written to Kate, asking her to meet him at Port Mooar at two o'clock that day. It was then, and in that lonesome place, that he had decided to break the news to her. He must tell all; he had determined upon his course.
Oh, for what might have been! Useless regrets! Pull, pull, and forget. But the home of his childhood! Ballure Auntie Nan his father's death brightened by one hope the last, but ah! how vain! Port Mooar Pete, "The sea's calling me." Pull, pull! The sea was calling him indeed. Calling him to the deep womb that is death, not birth. He was far out.
Early that night the two lads were down at the most desolate part of Port Mooar, in a cave under the scraggy black rocks of Gobny-Garvain, kindling a fire of gorse and turf inside the remains of a broken barrel. "See that tremendous sharp rock below low water?" said Philip. "Don't I, though?" said Pete. There was never a rock the size of a currycomb between them and the line of the sky.
"Neaw, this black Minorca, as aw sed, were a owdish bird, an' maybe knew mooar than aw thowt. Happen it hed laid on a nest wi' a fause bottom afooar, an' were up to th' trick, but whether or not, aw never see a hen luk mooar disgusted i' mi life when it lukked i' th' nest an' see as it hed hed all that trouble fer nowt. "It woked reawnd th' nest as if it couldn't believe its own eyes.
Hence, at the time of casting peats, every one laid aside a large one, saying, 'Faaid mooar moayney son oie'l fingan'; that is, 'a large turf for Fingan Eve." At Burghead, an ancient village on the southern shore of the Moray Firth, about nine miles from the town of Elgin, a festival of fire called "the Burning of the Clavie" has been celebrated from time immemorial on Hogmanay, the last day of December.
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