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Updated: July 19, 2025
Now and then a big ferry-boat puffs into sight, churning the tranquil waters into foam with her huge paddles; a dozen sailing craft are in view, from Lord Mavourneen's smart yawl to the outlandishly rigged Turkish schooner, her masts raking forward like the antlers of a stag at bay, and spreading a motley collection of lateen-sails, stay-sails, square top-sails, and vast spinnakers rigged out with booms and sprits, which it would puzzle a northern sailor to name.
We also got out, and sent them the masts and regular sails of the boat, which was fitted to carry two sprits. By this time the stranger ship was within two leagues of us, and it became necessary to act. I sent Marble aloft to examine the horizon, and he came down to report nothing else was in sight. This boded well.
"The wean has the look o' John o' Scaurdale." There were many things to be doing in these days peats to be cutting and carted home and built into tidy stacks, just as you can see them to-day, and the sprits and bog hay to be saving, for we were not good at growing hay, and then, when the boys grew up, there was the schooling of them.
The thought flashed into Jake's mind that this was probably filled with the much-vaunted peach-brandy of that section; and as ardent sprits were one of his weaknesses, the temptation to stop and pick up the canteen was very strong, but he conquered it and hurried on after his prey.
I walked the decks, talked with such of the men as knew a word or two of English, and cultivated as much of the captain's acquaintance as my aversion to his wickedness would permit. I learnt the names of masts, sheets, stays, and sprits, and picked up other information of seafaring matters, thinking that it might some day be useful to me.
I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from Bryde's place came up to me.
In her sweet, low, yet penetrating voice, that now had a pathos which melted every heart, she sang the following words, which, like the perfume of crushed violets, have risen in prayer from many bruised and broken sprits: "My God, my father, while I stray Far from my home on life's rough way, Oh teach me from my heart to say, Thy will be done.
Hence the names of infants, who are especially exposed to the assaults of evil sprits, are never spoken; and often in haunted spots, such as the gloomy depths of the forest, the banks of a river, or beside a bubbling spring, men will abstain from calling each other by their names for a like reason.
In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
"Mora, in the grey o' the morning, I would be just among the sprits above the loch-side, when there came an eerie 'swish, swish' at my side, slow and soft. I thought it would be a hare, and I stopped to let her get away, for I would not be crossing her path, but see her I could not, and I turned round to speak to 'Glen, and there was no dog there at all.
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