THE EQUINOX
and alighted upon the opposite shore. There he secured his
end of the straw bridge and made ready to receive his fellow
trows as they crossed.
At length a start was made and all the trows were soon
upon the rope, but just as they reached the middle, he who
was in charge at the Stromness end let go his hold, and the
whole company of fairies were thrown into the sea, dragging
Hempie along with them in their descent. And the sea,
being rough at the time, overwhelmed them all, so that every
one was drowned. When he who had caused the calamity saw
what had occurred, he too plunged into the angry water, so
as not to survive his friends, and thus perished with them.
For a few moments a solitary figure appeared upon one
of the rocks. It was the Dwarf of Hey. He gazed at the
scene of the catastrophe, chanted a fairy dirge, and then
vanished for ever.
Such was the end of the land-trows, and, although it put
a stop to the making of further fairy-stories, it opened up a
new hunting-ground for the weaver of romances in the caves
beneath the sea. And even where there is no definite tale or
detailed legend to tell beside the inglenook, there is sure to
be some quaint conceit of metempsychosis which they can
whisper when a seal comes near them. Was not Pharaoh’s
army turned into a school of seals? And that great white
seal, which the fishermen have seen, and whose track is like
the wash of an ocean steamer, is that not Pharaoh himself?
So the stories spread, and the passer-by may take his fill of
them, but I, for one, like best of all the tale of Gioga’s son.
And if just one passer-by on hearing it is held from firing
just one shot, the tale has not been told in vain.
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