Whinnyfold
Bram Stoker wrote a second book based in the Cruden Bay area. The Mystery of the Sea was published in 1902 and in my opinion is his best book after Dracula. It is a mystery story involving a search for Spanish treasure, an adventure story involving a gang of kidnappers and an American heiress, a love story and above all it expounds the author's mystical view of the universe - all tied up with Cruden Bay.
The following is a very long excerpt from Chapter Five. It's a ghost story with a setting in and around Whinnyfold. The places mentioned in the story are real and I've illustrated them with photos. Enjoy!
The Kilmarnock Arms hotel, Cruden Bay.
"It was eleven o’clock by my
watch when I left the Kilmarnock Arms and took my way across the sandhills,
heading for the Hawklaw which stood out boldly in the brilliant moonlight. I followed the devious sheep
track amongst the dunes covered with wet bent-grass, every now and again
stumbling amongst the rabbit burrows which in those days honeycombed the
sandhills of Cruden Bay. At last I came to the Hawklaw, and, climbing the steep
terraced edge near the sea, sat on the top to breathe myself after the climb.
The scene was one of exquisite
beauty. Its natural loveliness was enhanced by the softness of the full yellow moonlight
which seemed to flood the heavens and the earth alike. To the southeast the
bleak promontory of Whinnyfold stood out stark and black as velvet and the
rocks of the Skares were like black dots in the quivering sea of gold. I arose
and went on my way. The tide was far out and as I stumbled along the rude path
above the waste of boulders I had a feeling that I should be late. I hurried
on, crossed the little rill which usually only trickled down beside the fishers’
zigzag path at the back of Whinnyfold but which was now a rushing stream—again
the noise of falling water, the voice of the Lammas floods—and took the cart
track which ran hard by the cliff down to the point which looked direct upon
the Skares.
The Skares
When I reached the very edge
of the cliff, where the long sea-grass and the deep clover felt underfoot like a luxurious
carpet, I was not surprised to see Gormala seated, looking out seawards. The
broad track of the moon lay right across the outmost rock of the Skares and
falling across some of the jagged rocks, which seemed like fangs rising from
the deep water as the heave of the waveless sea fell back and the white water
streamed down, came up to where we stood and seemed to bathe both the
Seer-woman and myself in light. There was no current anywhere, but only the
silent rise and fall of the water in the everlasting movement of the sea. When
she heard me behind her Gormala turned round, and the patient calmness of her
face disappeared. She rose quickly, and as she did so pointed to a small boat
which sailing up from the south was now drawing opposite to us and appeared to
be making a course as close to shore as possible, just clearing the outer
bulwark of the Skares.
“Look!” she said, “Lauchlane
Macleod comes by his lanes. The rocks are around him, and his
doom is at hand!”
There did not appear any
danger in such a course; the wind was gentle, the tide was at the still moment between ebb and flow,
and the smoothness of the water beyond the rock seemed to mark its great depth.
All at once the boat seemed to stand still,—we were too far off to hear a sound
even on such a still night. The mast bent forward and broke short off, the
sails hung limp in the water with the peak of the lug sail sticking up in a
great triangle, like the fin of a mammoth shark. A few seconds after, a dark
speck moved on the water which became agitated around it; it was evident that a
swimmer was making for the land. I would have gone to help him had it been of
use; but it was not, the outer rock was half a mile away. Indeed, though I knew
it was no use, I was yet about to swim to meet him when Gormala’s voice behind
me arrested me:
“Do ye no see that gin ye meet
him amid yon rocks, ye can, when the tide begins to race, be no help to any. If
he can win through, ye may help him if ye bide here.”
The advice was good and I stayed
my feet. The swimmer evidently knew the danger, for he hurried frantically to
win some point of safety before the tide should turn. But the rocks of the
Skares are deadly steep; they rise from the water sheer everywhere, and to
climb them from the sea is a hopeless task. Once and again the swimmer tried to
find a chink or cranny where he could climb; but each time he tried to raise
himself he fell back into the water. Moreover I could see that he was wounded,
for his left hand hung idle. He seemed to realise the hopelessness of the task,
and turning, made desperately for the part where we stood. He was now within
the most dangerous spot in the whole region of the Skares. The water is of
great depth everywhere and the needlepoints of rocks rise almost to the very
surface. It is only when the waves are rough at low water that they can be seen
at all, when the dip of the waves leaves them bare; but from the surface in
calm weather they cannot be seen as the swirl of the tide around them is
invisible. Here, too, the tide, rounding the point and having the current
broken by the masses of the great rock, rolls with inconceivable rapidity. I
had too often watched from the headland where my home was to be the set of the
tide not to know the danger. I shouted as loudly as I could, but for some
reason he did not hear me.
A sailing ship passing the Skares
The moments ere the tide
should turn seemed like ages; and yet it was with a sudden shock that I heard
the gurgle of moving water followed by the lap, lap, lap, getting quicker each
second. Somewhere inland a clock struck twelve. The tide had turned and was
beginning to flow. In a few seconds the swimmer felt its effects, though he did
not seem to notice them. Then he was swept towards the north. All at once there
was a muffled cry which seemed to reach slowly to where we stood, and the
swimmer rolled over for an instant. It was only too apparent what had happened;
he had struck his arm against one of the sunken rocks and injured it. Then he commenced
a mad struggle for life, swimming without either arm in that deadly current
which grew faster and faster every moment. He was breathless, and now and again
his head dipped; but he kept on valiantly. At last in one of these dips, borne
by the momentum of his own strength and the force of the current, he struck his
head against another of the sunken rocks. For an instant he raised it, and I
could see it run red in the glare of the moonlight.
Then he sank; from the height
where I stood I could see the body roll over and over in the fierce current which made for
the outmost point to the north-east of the promontory. I ran over as fast as I
could, Gormala following. When I came to the rock, which here shelved, I
plunged in and after a few strokes met by chance the body as it rolled upward.
With a desperate effort I brought it to land.
The struggle to lift the body
from the water and to bear it up the rock exhausted me, so that when I reached the top of the
cliff I had to pause for a few seconds to breathe hard. Since the poor fellow’s struggle for
life had begun I had never for an instant given the prophecy a thought. But
now, all at once, as I looked past the figure, lying limp before me with the
poor arms twisted unnaturally and the head turned—away past the moonlit sea and
the great, golden orb whose track was wrinkled over the racing tide, the full
force of it burst upon me, and I felt a sort of spiritual transformation. The
air seemed full of fluttering wings; sea and land alike teemed with life that I
had not hitherto dreamed of. I fell in a sort of spiritual trance. But the open
eyes were upon me; I feared the man was dead, but Briton-like I would not
accept the conviction without effort. So I raised the body to my shoulders,
determined to make with what speed I could for Whinnyfold where fire and
willing hands could aid in restoration. As I laid the limp body across my
shoulders, holding the two hands in my right hand to steady the burden whilst
with the left I drew some of the clothing tight, I caught Gormala’s eye. She
had not helped me in any possible way, though more than once in distress I had
called to her. So now I said angrily:
“Get away woman! You should be
ashamed of yourself never to help at such a time,” and I took my way unaided. I did not
heed at the time her answer, spoken with a certain measure of deprecation, though it
afterwards came back to me:
“Am I to wark against the
Fates when They have spoken! The Dead are dead indeed when the
Voice has whispered in their
ears!”
Now, as I passed along with
the hands of the dead man in mine—the true shell of a man whose spirit could be but
little space away whilst the still blood in the veins was yet warm—a strange thing began to happen.
The spirits of earth and sea and air seemed to take shape to me, and all the
myriad sounds of the night to have a sentient cause of utterance. As I panted
and struggled on, my physical effort warring equally with the new spiritual
experience so that nothing remained except sentience and memory, I could see
Gormala walking abreast me with even steps.
Her eyes glared balefully with
a fierce disappointment; never once did she remit the vigilant, keen look which seemed to
pierce into my very soul. For a short space of time there was something of
antagonism to her; but this died away imperceptibly, and I neither cared nor
thought about her, except when my attention would be called to her. I was
becoming wrapped in the realisation of the mightier forces around me.
The zigzag path up the cliff to Whinnyfold
Just where the laneway from the
cliff joins Whinnyfold there is a steep zigzag path running down to the stony beach far
below where the fishers keep their boats and which is protected from almost the
wildest seas by the great black rock—the Caudman,—which fills the middle of the
little bay, leaving deep channels on either hand. When I was come to this spot,
suddenly all the sounds of the night seemed to cease. The very air grew still
so that the grasses did not move or rustle, and the waters of the swirling tide
ceased to run in grim silence on their course. Even to that inner sense, which
was so new to me that the change in everything to which it was susceptible
became at once noticeable, all things stood still. It was as though the spirits
of earth and air and water were holding their breath for some rare portent.
Indeed I noticed as my eye ranged the surface of the sea, that the moon track
was for the time no longer rippled, but lay in a broad glistening band.
The only living thing in all
the wide world was, it seemed to me, the figure of Gormala as, with lowering eyes and
suspended breath, she stood watching me with uncompromising, persistent sternness. Then my
own heart seemed to stand still, to be a part of the grim silence of the
waiting forces of the world. I was not frightened; I was not even amazed. All
seemed so thoroughly in keeping with the prevailing influence of the time that
I did not feel even a moment of surprise.
Up the steep path came a
silent procession of ghostly figures, so misty of outline that through the grey green of their
phantom being the rocks and moonlit sea were apparent, and even the velvet blackness of the
shadows of the rocks did not lose their gloom. And yet each figure was defined
so accurately that every feature, every particle of dress or accoutrement could
be discerned. Even the sparkle of
their eyes in that grim waste of ghostly grey was like the lambent flashes of
phosphoric light in the foam of moving water cleft by a swift prow. There was
no need for me to judge by the historical sequence of their attire, or by any
inference of hearing; I knew in my heart that these were the ghosts of the dead
who had been drowned in the waters of the Cruden Skares.
Indeed the moments of their
passing—and they were many for the line was of sickening length —became to me a
lesson of the long flight of time. At the first were skin-clad savages with
long, wild hair matted; then others with rude, primitive clothing. And so on in
historic order men, aye, and here and there a woman, too, of many lands, whose
garments were of varied cut and substance. Red-haired Vikings and black-haired
Celts and Phoenicians, fair-haired Saxons and swarthy Moors in flowing robes.
At first the figures, chiefly of the barbarians, were not many; but as the sad
procession passed along I could see how each later year had brought its ever-growing
tale of loss and disaster, and added more and faster to the grim harvest of the
sea. A vast number of the phantoms had passed when there came along a great group
which at once attracted my attention. They were all swarthy, and bore
themselves proudly under their cuirasses and coats of mail, or their garb as
fighting men of the sea. Spaniards they were, I knew from their dress, and of
three centuries back. For an instant my heart leapt; these were men of the
great Armada, come up from the wreck of some lost galleon or patache to visit
once again the glimpses of the Moon. They were of lordly mien, with large
aquiline features and haughty eyes.
s they passed, one of them
turned and looked at me. As his eyes lit on me, I saw spring into them, as though he were quick,
dread, and hate, and fear. Hitherto I had been impressed, awed, by the
indifference of the passing ghosts. They had looked nowhere, but with steady,
silent, even tread had passed on their way. But when this one looked at me it
was a glance from the spirit world which chilled me to the very soul. But he
too passed on. I stood at the head of the winding path, having the dead man
still on my shoulders and looking with sinking heart at the sad array of the
victims of the Cruden Skares. I noticed that most who came now were seamen,
with here and there a group of shoresmen and a few women amongst them. The
fishermen were many, and without exception wore great sea boots. And so with
what patience I could I waited for the end.
View from the path towards Cruden Bay. The Hawklaw is the hillock on the far left of the photo.
At length it came in the shape
of a dim figure of great stature, and both of whose arms hung limp. The blood from a gash on
his forehead had streamed on to his golden beard, and the golden eyes looked
far away. With a shudder I saw that this was the ghost of the man whose body,
now less warm, lay upon my shoulders; and so I knew that Lauchlane Macleod was
dead. I was relieved when I saw that he did not even look at me; though as I
moved on, following the procession, he walked beside me with equal steps,
stopping and moving as I stopped and moved. The silence of death was upon the
little hamlet of Whinnyfold. There was not a sign of life; not a dog barked as
the grim procession had moved up the steep path or now filed across the running
stream and moved along the footpath toward Cruden. Gormala with eager eyes kept
watching me; and as the minutes wore on I began to resume my double action of
thought, for I could see in her face that she was trying to reason out from my
own expression something of what I was looking at. As we moved along she now
began to make suggestions to me in a fierce whisper, evidently hoping that she
might learn something from my acquiescence in, or negation of, her thought.
Through that ghostly silence her living voice cut with the harshness of a corncrake.
“Shearing the silence of the
night with ragged edge.”
Perhaps it was for the best;
looking back now on that awful experience, I know that no man can say what his
mind may suffer in the aftertime who walks alone with the Dead. That I was
strung to some amazing pitch was manifested by the fact that I did not seem to
feel the great weight which lay upon my shoulders. I have naturally vast
strength and the athletic training of my youth had developed it highly. But the
weight of an ordinary man is much to hold or carry for even a short time, and
the body which I bore was almost that of a giant.
The path across the neck of
land which makes the Skares a promontory is flat, with here and there a deep cleft like a
miniature ravine where the water from the upland rushes in flood time down to
the sea. All these rills were now running strong, but I could hear no sound of
murmuring water, no splash as the streams leapt over the edge of the cliff on
the rocks below in whitening spray. The ghostly procession did not pause at any
of these streams, but moved on impassively to the farther side where the path
trends down to the sands of Cruden Bay. Gormala stood a moment watching my eyes
as they swept the long line passing the angle so that I could see them all at
once. That she guessed something was evident from her speech:
“They are many; his eyes range
wide!” I started, and she knew that she had guessed alright.
This one guess seemed to
supply her with illimitable data; she evidently knew something of the spirit
world, though she could not see into its mysteries. Her next words brought
enlightenment to me:
“They are human spirits; they
follow the path that the feet o’ men hae made!”
It was so. The procession did
not float over the surface of field or sand, but took its painful way down the zigzag of the
cliff and over the rocky path through the great boulders of the foreshore. When the head of it
reached the sand, it passed along the summit of the ridge, just as every Sunday
night the fishermen of Whinnyfold and Collieston did in returning to their
herring boats at Peterhead.
The sands of Cruden Bay beach.
The tramp across the sands was
long and dreary. Often as I had taken that walk in rain or storm, with the wind almost
sweeping me off my feet whilst the sand drift from the bent-covered hills
almost cut my cheeks and ears, I had never felt the way to be so long or so
hard to travel. Though I did not realise it at the time, the dead man’s weight
was beginning to tell sorely upon me. Across the Bay I could see the few lights
in the village of Port Erroll that were to be seen at such a time of night; and
far over the water came the cold grey light which is the sign of the waning of
the night rather than of the coming of the morning. When we came to the
Hawklaw, the head of the procession turned inward through the sandhills.
Gormala, watching my eyes, saw it and an extraordinary change came over her.
For an instant she was as if stricken, and stood stock still. Then she raised
her hands in wonder, and said in an awed whisper:
“The Holy Well! They gang to
St. Olaf’s well! The Lammas floods will aye serve them weel.”
With an instinct of curiosity
strong upon me I hurried on so as to head the procession. As I moved along the rough path
amongst the sandhills I felt the weight of the burden on my shoulders grow heavier and
heavier, so that my feet dragged as do the feet of one in a nightmare. As I
moved on, I looked round instinctively and saw that the shade of Lauchlane
Macleod no longer kept pace with me, but retained its place in the procession.
Gormala’s evil eye was once more upon me, but with her diabolical cunning she
guessed the secret of my looking round. She moved along, not with me
but at the rate she had been going as though she liked or expected to remain in
juxtaposition to the shade of the dead man; some purpose of her own was to be fulfilled.
St Olaf's well.
As I pressed on, the shades
around me seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer still; till at the last I could see
little more than a film or haze. When I came to St. Olaf’s well—then merely a
rough pool at the base of the high land that stretches back from the
Hawklaw—the ghostly mist was beginning to fade into the water. I stood hard by,
and the weight upon my shoulders became dreadful. I could hardly stand; I
determined, however, to hold on as long as I could and see what would happen.
The dead man, too, was becoming colder! I did not know whether the dimming of the
shadows was from this cause, or because the spirit of the man was farther away.
It was possibly both, for as the silent, sad procession came on I could see
more distinctly. When the wraith of the Spaniard turned and looked at me, he
seemed once more to look with living eyes from a living soul. Then there was a
dreary wait whilst the rest came along and passed in awesome stillness down
into the well and disappeared. The weight upon my shoulders now became
momentarily more intolerable. At last I could bear it no longer, and half
bending I allowed the body to slip to the ground, I only holding the hands to
steady the descent. Gormala was now opposite to me, and seeing what I had done
leaped towards me with a loud cry. For one dim moment the wraith of the dead
man stood above its earthly shell; and then I saw the ghostly vision no more.
At that instant, just as
Gormala was about to touch the dead body, there was a loud hiss and murmur of waters. The whole
pool burst up in a great fountain, scattering sand and water around for a wide
space. I rushed back; Gormala did the same. Then the waters receded again,
and when I looked, the corpse of Lauchlane Macleod was gone.
It was swallowed up in the
Holy Well.
Overcome with physical
weariness and strange horror of the scene I sank down on the wet sand. The scene whirled round
me.... I remember no more."
Bram Stoker The Mystery of the Sea 1902.
A pdf download of the book has been made available by the Bram Stoker Family Estate. It can be download here:
http://www.bramstoker.org/novels/07sea.html
