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© 2002. Philip Gale: all rights reserved.

 

The Red Sail of
the Nighean Donn.

Sept '85




Text below
from
Page 276. "The
Divine Adventure".

From "The White Heron".
The girl stopped, straining seaward, the illimitable, pale, uplifted wave; the hinted
dusk of quiet under-waters; the unfathomable violet gulfs overhead; - these silent
comrades were not alien to her. Their kin, she was but a moving shadow on an isle;
to her they were the veils of wonder beyond which the soul knows no depth,
but looks upon the face of Beauty, and upon the eyes of Love, and upon the heart
of Peace. Amid these silent spaces two dark objects caught the girl's gaze. Flying
eastward, a solander trailed a dusky wing across the sky. So high its flight that the
first glance saw it as though motionless; yet, even while Mary looked, the skyfarer
waned suddenly, and that which had been was not. The other object had wings too
but was not a bird. A fishing smack lay idly becalmed, her red brown sail now a
patch of warm dusk.