The Pirate
no Highlandmen, there may be as bad. I saw sax or seven as ill-looking
chields gang past the Place yesterday, as ever came frae beyont
Clochna-ben; ill-fa'red tools they had in their hands, whaaling knives
they ca'ed them, but they looked as like dirks and whingers as ae bit
airn can look like anither. There is nae honest men carry siccan tools."
Here the knocking and shouts of Mordaunt were very audible betwixt every
swell of the horrible blast which was careering without. The brother and
sister looked at each other in real perplexity and fear. "If they have
heard of the siller," said Baby, her very nose changing with terror from
red to blue, "we are but gane folk!"
"Who speaks now, when they should hold their tongue?" said Triptolemus.
"Go to the shot-window instantly, and see how many there are of them,
while I load the old Spanish-barrelled duck-gun--go as if you were
stepping on new-laid eggs."
Baby crept to the window, and reported that she saw only "one young
chield, clattering and roaring as gin he were daft. How many there might
be out of sight, she could not say."
"Out of sight!--nonsense," said Triptolemus, laying aside the ramrod
with which he was loading the piece, with a trembling hand. "I will
warrant them out of sight and hearing both--this is some poor fellow
catched in the tempest, wants the shelter of our roof, and a little
refreshment. Open the door, Baby, it's a Christian deed."
"But is it a Christian deed of him to come in at the window, then?" said
Baby, setting up a most doleful shriek, as Mordaunt Mertoun, who had
forced open one of the windows, leaped down into the apartment, dripping
with water like a river god. Triptolemus, in great tribulation,
presented the gun which he had not yet loaded, while the intruder
exclaimed, "Hold, hold--what the devil mean you by keeping your doors
bolted in weather like this, and levelling your gun at folk's heads as
you would at a sealgh's?"
"And who are you, friend, and what want you?" said Triptolemus, lowering
the but of his gun to the floor as he spoke, and so recovering his arms.
"What do I want!" said Mordaunt; "I want every thing--I want meat,
drink, and fire, a bed for the night, and a sheltie for to-morrow
morning to carry me to Jarlshof."
"And ye said there were nae caterans or sorners here?" said Baby to the
agriculturist, reproachfully. "Heard ye ever a breekless loon frae
Lochaber tell his mind and his errand mair deftly?--Come, come, friend,"
she added, addressing herself to Mordaunt, "put up your pipes and gang
your gate; this is the house of his lordship's factor, and no place of
reset for thiggers or sorners."
Mordaunt laughed in her face at the simplicity of the request. "Leave
built walls," he said, "and in such a tempest as this? What take you me
for?--a gannet or a scart do you think I am, that your clapping your
hands and skirling at me like a madwoman, should drive me from the
shelter into the storm?"
"And so you propose, young man," said Triptolemus, gravely, "to stay in
my house, _volens nolens_--that is, whether we will or no?"
"Will!" said Mordaunt; "what right have you to will any thing about it?
Do you not hear the thunder? Do you not hear the rain? Do you not see
the lightning? And do you not know this is the only house within I wot
not how many miles? Come, my good master and dame, this may be Scottish
jesting, but it sounds strange in Zetland ears. You have let out the
fire, too, and my teeth are dancing a jig in my head with cold; but I'll
soon put that to rights."
He seized the fire-tongs, raked together the embers upon the hearth,
broke up into life the gathering-peat, which the hostess had calculated
should have preserved the seeds of fire, without giving them forth, for
many hours; then casting his eye round, saw in a corner the stock of
drift-wood, which Mistress Baby had served forth by ounces, and
transferred two or three logs of it at once to the hearth, which,
conscious of such unwonted supply, began to transmit to the chimney
such a smoke as had not issued from the Place of Harfra for many a day.
While their uninvited guest was thus making himself at home, Baby kept
edging and jogging the factor to turn out the intruder. But for this
undertaking, Triptolemus Yellowley felt neither courage nor zeal, nor
did circumstances seem at all to warrant the favourable conclusion of
any fray into which he might enter with the young stranger. The sinewy
limbs and graceful form of Mordaunt Mertoun were seen to great advantage
in his simple sea-dress; and with his dark sparkling eye, finely formed
head, animated features, close curled dark hair, and bold, free looks,
the stranger formed a very strong contrast with the host on whom he had
intruded himself. Triptolemus was a short, clumsy, duck-legged disciple
of Ceres, whose bottle-nose, turned up and handsomely coppered at the
extremity, seemed to intimate something of an occasional treaty with
Bacchus. It was like to be no equal mellay betwixt persons of such
unequal form and strength; and the difference betwixt twenty and fifty
years was nothing in favour of the weaker party. Besides, the factor was
an honest good-natured fellow at bottom, and being soon satisfied that
his guest had no other views than those of obtaining refuge from the
storm, it would, despite his sister's instigations, have been his last
act to deny a boon so reasonable and necessary to a youth whose exterior
was so prepossessing. He stood, therefore, considering how he could most
gracefully glide into the character of the hospitable landlord, out of
that of the churlish defender of his domestic castle, against an
unauthorized intrusion, when Baby, who had stood appalled at the extreme
familiarity of the stranger's address and demeanour, now spoke up for
herself.
"My troth, lad," said she to Mordaunt, "ye are no blate, to light on at
that rate, and the best of wood, too--nane of your sharney peats, but
good aik timber, nae less maun serve ye!"
"You come lightly by it, dame," said Mordaunt, carelessly; "and you
should not grudge to the fire what the sea gives you for nothing. These
good ribs of oak did their last duty upon earth and ocean, when they
could hold no longer together under the brave hearts that manned the
bark."
"And that's true, too," said the old woman, softening--"this maun be
awsome weather by sea. Sit down and warm ye, since the sticks are
a-low."
"Ay, ay," said Triptolemus, "it is a pleasure to see siccan a bonny
bleeze. I havena seen the like o't since I left Cauldacres."
"And shallna see the like o't again in a hurry," said Baby, "unless the
house take fire, or there suld be a coal-heugh found out."
"And wherefore should not there be a coal-heugh found out?" said the
factor, triumphantly--"I say, wherefore should not a coal-heugh be found
out in Zetland as well as in Fife, now that the Chamberlain has a
far-sighted and discreet man upon the spot to make the necessary
perquisitions? They are baith fishing-stations, I trow?"
"I tell you what it is, Tolemus Yellowley," answered his sister, who had
practical reasons to fear her brother's opening upon any false scent,
"if you promise my Lord sae mony of these bonnie-wallies, we'll no be
weel hafted here before we are found out and set a-trotting again. If
ane was to speak to ye about a gold mine, I ken weel wha would promise
he suld have Portugal pieces clinking in his pouch before the year gaed
by."
"And why suld I not?" said Triptolemus--"maybe your head does not know
there is a land in Orkney called Ophir, or something very like it; and
wherefore might not Solomon, the wise King of the Jews, have sent
thither his ships and his servants for four hundred and fifty talents? I
trow he knew best where to go or send, and I hope you believe in your
Bible, Baby?"
Baby was silenced by an appeal to Scripture, however _mal à propos_, and
only answered by an inarticulate _humph_ of incredulity or scorn, while
her brother went on addressing Mordaunt.--"Yes, you shall all of you see
what a change shall coin introduce, even into such an unpropitious
country as yours. Ye have not heard of copper, I warrant, nor of
iron-stone, in these islands, neither?" Mordaunt said he had heard there
was copper near the Cliffs of Konigsburgh. "Ay, and a copper scum is
found on the Loch of Swana, too, young man. But the youngest of you,
doubtless, thinks himself a match for such as I am!"
Baby, who during all this while had been closely and accurately
reconnoitring the youth's person, now interposed in a manner by her
brother totally unexpected. "Ye had mair need, Mr. Yellowley, to give
the young man some dry clothes, and to see about getting something for
him to eat, than to sit there bleezing away with your lang tales, as if
the weather were not windy enow without your help; and maybe the lad
would drink some _bland_, or sic-like, if ye had the grace to ask him."
While Triptolemus looked astonished at such a proposal, considering the
quarter it came from, Mordaunt answered, he "should be very glad to
have dry clothes, but begged to be excused from drinking until he had
eaten somewhat."
Triptolemus accordingly conducted him into another apartment, and
accommodating him with a change of dress, left him to his arrangements,
while he himself returned to the kitchen, much puzzled to account for
his sister's unusual fit of hospitality. "She must be _fey_,"[24] he
said, "and in that case has not long to live, and though I fall heir to
her tocher-good, I am sorry for it; for she has held the house-gear well
together--drawn the girth over tight it may be now and then, but the
saddle sits the better."
When Triptolemus returned to the kitchen, he found his suspicions
confirmed; for his sister was in the desperate act of consigning to the
pot a smoked goose, which, with others of the same tribe, had long hung
in the large chimney, muttering to herself at the same time,--"It maun
be eaten sune or syne, and what for no by the puir callant?"
"What is this of it, sister?" said Triptolemus. "You have on the girdle
and the pot at ance. What day is this wi' you?"
"E'en such a day as the Israelites had beside the flesh-pots of Egypt,
billie Triptolemus; but ye little ken wha ye have in your house this
blessed day."
"Troth, and little do I ken," said Triptolemus, "as little as I would
ken the naig I never saw before. I would take the lad for a jagger,[25]
but he has rather ower good havings, and he has no pack."
"Ye ken as little as ane of your ain bits o' nowt, man," retorted sister
Baby; "if ye ken na him, do ye ken Tronda Dronsdaughter?"
"Tronda Dronsdaughter!" echoed Triptolemus--"how should I but ken her,
when I pay her twal pennies Scots by the day, for working in the house
here? I trow she works as if the things burned her fingers. I had better
give a Scots lass a groat of English siller."
"And that's the maist sensible word ye have said this blessed
morning.--Weel, but Tronda kens this lad weel, and she has often spoke
to me about him. They call his father the Silent Man of Sumburgh, and
they say he's uncanny."
"Hout, hout--nonsense, nonsense--they are aye at sic trash as that,"
said the brother, "when you want a day's wark out of them--they have
stepped ower the tangs, or they have met an uncanny body, or they have
turned about the boat against the sun, and then there's nought to be
done that day."
"Weel, weel, brother, ye are so wise," said Baby, "because ye knapped
Latin at Saint Andrews; and can your lair tell me, then, what the lad
has round his halse?"
"A Barcelona napkin, as wet as a dishclout, and I have just lent him one
of my own overlays," said Triptolemus.
"A Barcelona napkin!" said Baby, elevating her voice, and then suddenly