The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

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. 348