In The Wake Of King James Or Dun-randal On The Sea (1896)

IN THE WAKE OF KING JAMES OR DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA - CONTENTS - CHAP. PAGE I. DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA . I 11. RAPPAREES, GOOD AND BAD . 9 111. THE WATCHER BY THE QUICKSANDS . 22 IV. THE LAME GIANT . V. THE LADY SHEELA VI. THE GREAT DHOUL . VII. ENOCH, ISRAEL, AND IMhlANUEL . IX. THE CHALLENGE . X. THE BATTLE, AND AFTER . XI. THE HONOUR OF THE BARRETTS . XII. DRAWING TO THE CRISIS . XIII. GAYEST OF CONQUERORS AND BRIDEGROOMS . XIV. LOUD LAMENTATION IN DUN-RANDAL . V CONTENTS CHAP. XV. FLIGHT AND PURSUIT XVI. A RED STAR IN THE GLOOM XVII. THE KINGS PARLOUR . XIX. SECOND ASSAULT OF THE KINGS PAR LOUR XX. THROUGH DARKNESS TO THE DARK TOWER . XXI. PUFF, AND ALLS OVER POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR . PAGE i47 DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA CHAPTER I DUN-RANDAL ON THE SEA I STARTED--re in - a nd W stared in silence. Never had I seen peel, tower, or castle weatherstained to such a dismal hue. Blacker than blackest coal, it seemed cut out as with a giants scissors from that gleaming panorama of sea, land, and sky. A sandy plain engirdled the base, a grey bewildered sea the waist the battlements showed clear and stark against wild clouds lurid with sunset. Truly, I was no antiquarian. Picturesque antiquity had no worshippers then. We did not think of castles as romantic, only as uncomfortable dwelling-places occupied by the poorer sort of gentry for no one lived in a castle who could afford to build a house, In the mixed emotions with which I gazed at Dun-Randal, the thought of poverty, perhaps of extreme poverty, played its part. So I stared at the black keep starting solid black and minatory, from the grey shore. Here the Atlantic had thrust inland a great tongue of barren sand. At the base or root of thistongue rose the dismal keep which was the goal of my long journey, the seat of my nearest surviving kinsman, Sir Theodore Barrett, the acknowledged head of a family once powerful and famous, but upon which disaster in many forms had long sorely beaten. I perceived that the grim keep was the last link of a chain of castles which at some remote time, with their conilecting curtains, ran across the base of this delta of sand. Between it and the juncture of grey sand with tawny grass westward lay several sandy mounds, out of which here and there ruinous black masonry struggled to view. Upon that tawny shore, a stones throw from the sand, but in a straight line with those heaps, rose a low, square house, thatched. It resembled the basement and one storey of some great and strong castle transformed to, modern uses. Indeed, I had no doubt that this was the last link towards the west of that chain of which the black tower was the first. There was a courtyard attached, with offices, but the whole seemed deserted or uninhabited. A scrubby wood, blasted by the breath of the Atlantic, and stripped barer by early winter, tried to screen, but could not, the nakedness of that sad group. In fact, everywhere desolation seemed to reign the boom of the Atlantic raging afar against an iron coast sounded in my ears, and the low moan of the long waves rolling over the sand. All life seemed to have been arrested here neither men nor cattle were visible anywhere. The whole scene suggested some wild tale of magic and enchantment. A coward physically I certainly was not. I dont remember having ever shown the white feather where any ordinary or natural demand was made upon me but this night my mind was frettedand disturbed, filled with fears of I know not what monstrous and unnatural forms of evil...