Isla Heron

Swift as a bird? What birds were these, that swept out from some hidden crevice of the rock, black as itself? They balanced on broad wings, hovered about the child’s head, as if greeting her; then, with hoarse cries, drove heavily forward, keeping near her as she ran.

When Joe Brazybone saw the ravens; he stopped dead. A dizziness seized him, and he sank on his knees, and pulled off his ragged cap. “The woman!” he muttered hoarsely. “Let the woman speak to her! Nothin’ but the ravens can foller her where she’s goin’. Let the woman speak, and you and I’ll stop here and pray.”

The trustee hesitated a moment – measured the gulfs before him with his eye; glanced at the bowed figure beside him; then he, too, dropped to his knees, and motioned to the preacher to try her voice, since her feet could go no further.

But the preacher was a brave woman, and was minded to go yet a step forward. One and two steps she took; then came upon a toppling verge, below which was nothing but the empty air and the tumbling sea below. She recoiled, and for the first time a human voice rang through that awful solitude.

“Isla!” cried the preacher. “Isla, come back! come back to us!”

The girl turned, with a cry, a wild gesture; whether of greeting or defiance, they could not tell. Then – a slip, was it, or a spring? Who shall say? A foam crest tossed high in air, then fell, and swept out through the pale beryl-green, out to the blue beyond. Borne with the great wave, tossing, drifting, – is it a tress of weed torn from the rock? Or has the sea taken his child to himself?