They sang with joy the noon when they
rounded Cape Wrath and came under the
shadow of the hills. The dawn that followed
was red not only in the sky but on the sheen
of the sword-blades. It was the Song of the
Sword that day, and there is no song like that
for the flaming of the blood. The dark men
of Torridon were caught unawares. For
seven days thereafter the corbies and ravens
glutted themselves drinking at red pools be-
side the stripped bodies which lay stark and
stiff upon the heather. The firing of a score
of homesteads smouldered till the rains came,
a day and two nights after the old women who
had been driven to the moors stole back wail-
ing. The maids and wives were carried off in
the galleys : and for nine days, at a haven in
the lone coast opposite the Summer Isles, their
tears, their laughter, their sullen anger, their
wild gaiety, their passionate despair gave joy
372



Seanachas

to the yellow-haired men. On the ninth day
they were carried southward on the summer-
sailing. At a place called Craig-Feeach,
Raven's Crag, in the north of Skye, where a
Norse Erl had a great dun that he had taken
from the son of a king from Eireann whose
sea-nest it had been, Olaus the White rested
awhile. The women were left there as a free
spoil ; save three who were so fair that Olaus
kept one, and Haco and Sweno, his chief cap-
tains, took the others.
