“Don’t be afeared, sah,” said Jim; “it’s only de cockatoo, sah!”
“Have you any money, Jim?” asked McBain.
“Only de cockatoo, sah,” replied Jim; “but la!” he added, “I’se a puffuk gemlam (gentleman), sah – I’se got a heart as high as de steeple, sah!”
“Well, Jim,” said McBain, laughing, “would you like to sail in a big ship with me, and – and – black my boots?”
“Golly! yes, sah; dat would suit Jim all to nuffin.”
“But suppose, Jim, we went far away – as far as the North Pole?”
“Don’t care, sah,” said Jim, emphatically; “der never was a pole yet as Jim couldn’t climb.”
“Have you a surname, Jim?”
“No, sah,” replied poor Jim; “I’se got no belongings but de cockatoo.”
“I mean, Jim, have you a second name?”
“La! no, sir,” said Jim; “one name plenty good enough for a nigga boy. Only – yes now I ’members, in de ship dat bring me from Sierra Leone last summer de cap’n never call me nuffin else but Freezin’ Powders.”
McBain did not take long to make up his mind about anything; he determined to take this strange boy with him, so he took him to a shop and bought him a cage for the cockatoo, and then the two marched on board together, talking away as if they had known each other for years.
Freezing Powders was sent below to be washed and dressed and made decent. The ship was passing Inellan when he came on deck again. Jim was thunderstruck; he had never seen snow before.
“La! sah,” he cried, pointing with outstretched arm towards the hills; “look, sah, look; dey never like dat before. De Great Massa has been and painted dem all white.”
Chapter Five.
Danger on the Deep – A Forest of Waterspouts – The “Arrandoon” is Swamped – The Warning
“La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O” So went the song on deck – a song without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled cheerily on tack and sheet.
Such a thing would not be allowed for a single moment on board a British man-o’-war, as the watch singing while they obeyed the orders of the bo’sun’s pipe, taking in sail, squaring yards, or doing any other duty required of them. And yet, with all due respect for my own flag, methinks there are times when, as practised in merchant or passenger ships, that strange, weird, wordless song is not at all an unpleasant sound to listen to. By night, for instance, after you have turned in to your little narrow bed – the cradle of the deep, in which you are nightly rocked – to hear it rising and falling, and ending in long-drawn cadence, gives one an indescribable feeling of peace and security. Your bark is all alone – so your thoughts may run – on a wild world of waters. There may not be another ship within hundreds of miles; the wind may be rising or the wind may be falling – what do you care? What need you care? There are watchful eyes on deck, there are good men and true overhead, and they seem to sing your cradle hymn, “La la lee ah,” and before it is done you are wrapt in that sweetest, that dreamless slumber that landsmen seldom know.
There was one man at least in every watch on board the Arrandoon, who usually led the song that accompanied the hauling on a rope, with a sweet, clear tenor voice; you could not have been angry with these men had you been twenty times a man-o’-war’s man.
It was about an hour after breakfast, and our boys were lazing below. For some time previous to the working song, there had been perfect silence on board – a silence broken only now and then by a short word of command, a footstep on deck, or the ominous flapping of the canvas aloft, as it shivered for a moment, then filled and swelled out again.
Had you been down below, one sign alone would have told you that something was going to happen – that some change was about to take place. It was this: when everything is going on all right, you hear the almost constant tramp, tramp of the officer of the watch up and down the quarter-deck, but this was absent now, and you would have known without seeing him that he was standing, probably, by the binnacle, his eyes now bent aloft, and now sweeping the horizon, and now and then glancing at the compass.
Then came a word or two of command, given in a quiet, ordinary tone of voice – there was no occasion to howl on this particular morning. And after this a rush of feet, and next the song, and the bo’sun’s pipe. Thus: —
Song. – “La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”
Spoken. – “Hoy!”
Boatswain’s Pipe. – “Whee-e, weet weet weet, wee-e.”
Song. – “La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”
Spoken. – “Belay!”
Boatswain’s Pipe. – “Wee wee weet weet weet weet, wee-e.”
Spoken. – “Now lads.”
Song. – “Lo ah o ee.”
Pipe. – “Weet weet!”
Then a hurry-scurrying away forward, a trampling of feet enough to awaken Rip van Winkle, then the bo’sun’s pipe encore.
Allan straightens his back in his easy-chair – he has been bending over the table, reading the “Noctes Ambrosianae” – straightens his back, stretches his arms, and says “Heigho!” Rory is busy arranging some beautiful transparent specimens of animalculae, not bigger than midges, on a piece of black cardboard; he had caught them overnight in a gauze net dragged astern. He doesn’t look up. Ralph is lying “tandem” on a sofa, reading “Ivanhoe.” He won’t take his eyes off the book, nor move as much as one drowsy eyelid, but he manages to say, —
“What are they about on deck, Rory?”
“Don’t know even a tiny bit,” says Rory.
“Rory,” continues Ralph, in a slightly louder key; “you’re a young man; run up and see.”
“Rory won’t then,” says Rory, intent on his work; “fag for yourself, my lazy boy.”
“Oh!” says Ralph, “won’t you have your ears pulled when I do get up!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Rory, “you’ll have forgotten all about it long before then.”
“Freezing Powders!” roared Ralph.
The bright-faced though bullet-headed nigger boy introduced in last chapter appeared instantly. He was dressed in white flannel, braided with blue. Had he been a sprite, or a djin, he couldn’t have popped up with more startling rapidity. Truth is, the young rascal had been asleep under the table.
“Off on deck with you, Freezing Powders, and see what’s up.”
Freezing Powders was down again in a moment.
“Take in all sail, sah! and square de yard; no wind, sah! nebber a puff.”
It was just as Freezing Powders said, but there was noise enough presently, and puffing too, for steam was got up, and the great screw was churning the waters of the dark northern ocean into creamish foam, as the vessel went steadily ahead at about ten knots an hour. There was no occasion to hurry. When Rory and Allan went on deck, they found the captain in consultation with the mates, Mitchell and Stevenson.
“I must admit,” McBain was remarking, “that I can’t make it out at all.”
“No more can we,” said Stevenson with a puzzled smile. “The wind has failed us all at once, and the sea gone down, and the glass seems to have taken leave of its senses entirely. It is up one moment high enough for anything, and down the next to 28 degrees. There, just look at that sea and look at that sky.”
There was certainly something most appalling in the appearance of both. The ocean was calm and unruffled as glass, with only a long low heave on it; not a ripple on it big enough to swamp a fly; but over it all a strange, glassy lustre that – so you would have thought – could have been skimmed off. The sky was one mass of dark purple-black clouds in masses. It seemed no distance overhead, and the horizon looked hardly a mile away on either side. Only in the north it was one unbroken bluish black, as dark seemingly as night, from the midst of which every now and then, and every here and there, would come quickly a little puff of cloud of a lightish grey colour, as if a gun had been fired. Only there was no sound.
There was something awe-inspiring in the strange, ominous look of sea and sky, and in the silence broken only by the grind and gride of screw and engine.
“No,” said McBain, “I don’t know what we are going to have. Perhaps a tornado. Anyhow, Mr Stevenson, let us be ready. Get down topgallant masts, it will be a bit of exercise for the men; let us have all the steam we can command, and – ”
“Batten down, sir?”
“Yes, Mr Stevenson, batten down, and lash the boats inboard.”
The good ship Arrandoon was at the time of which I write about fifty miles south of the Faroes, and a long way to the east. The weather had been dark and somewhat gloomy, from the very time they lost sight of the snow-clad hills around Oban, but it now seemed to culminate in a darkness that could be felt.
The men were well drilled on board this steam yacht. McBain delighted to have them smart, and it was with surprising celerity that the topgallant masts were lowered, the hatches battened down, and the good ship prepared for any emergency. None too soon; the darkness grew more intense, especially did the clouds look threatening ahead of them. And now here and there all round them the sea began to get ruffled with small whirlwinds, that sent the water wheeling round and round like miniature maelstroms, and raised it up into cones in the centre.
“How is the glass now, Mr Stevenson?” asked McBain.
“Stands very low, sir,” was the reply, “but keeps steadily down.”
“All right,” said McBain; “now get two guns loaded with ball cartridge; have no more hands on deck than we want. No idlers, d’ye hear?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Send Magnus Bolt here.”
“Now, Magnus, old man,” continued McBain, “d’ye mind the time, some years ago in the Snowbird, when you rid us of that troublesome pirate?”
“Ay, that I do right well, sir,” said this little old weasened specimen of humanity, rubbing his hands with delight. “It were a fine shot that. He! he! he! Mercy on us, to see his masts and sails come toppling down, sir, – he! he! he!”
“Well, I want you again, Magnus; I’d rather trust to your old eye in an emergency than to any in the ship.”
“But where is the foe, sir?”
“Look ahead, Magnus.”
Magnus did as he was told; it was a strange, and to one who understood it, a dreadful sight. Apparently a thousand balloons were afloat in the blue, murky air, each one trailing its car in the sea, balloons of terrible size, flat as to their tops, which seemed to join or merge into one another, forming a black and ominous cloud. The cars that trailed on the sea were snowy white.
“Heaven help us?” said Magnus, clasping his hands for just a moment, while his cheeks assumed an ashen hue. “Heaven help us, sir; this is worse than the pirate.”
“They are all coming this way,” said McBain; “fire only at those that threaten us, and fire while they are still some distance ahead.”
Meanwhile Ralph had come on deck, and joined his companions. I do not think that through all the long terrible hour that followed, either of them spoke one word; although there was no sea on, and for the most part no motion, they clutched with one hand rigging or shroud, and gazed terror-struck at the awful scene ahead and around them.
They were soon in the very centre of what appeared an interminable forest of waterspouts. Few indeed have ever seen such a sight or encountered so pressing a danger and lived to tell it.
The balloon-shaped heads of these waterspouts looked dark as midnight; their shafts, I can call them nothing else, were immense pillars rising out of gigantic feet of seething foam. So close did they pass to some of these that the yardarms seemed almost to touch them. Our heroes noticed then, and they marvelled at it afterwards, the strange monotonous roaring sound they emitted, – a sound that drowned even the noise of the troubled waters around their shafts.
(Such a phenomenon as this has rarely been witnessed in the Northern Ocean. It is somewhat strange that on the self-same year this happened, an earthquake was felt in Ireland, and shocks even near Perth, in Scotland.)
Old Magnus made good use of his guns on those that threatened the good ship with destruction; one shot broke always one, and sometimes more, probably with the vibration; but the thundering sound of the falling waters, and the turmoil of the sea that followed, what pen can describe?
But, good shot as he is, Magnus is not infallible, else McBain would not now have to grasp his speaking-trumpet and shout, —
“Stand by, men, stand by.”
A waterspout had wholly, or partially at least, broken on board of them. It was as though the splendid ship had suddenly been blown to atoms by a terrible explosion, and every timber of her engulfed in the ocean!
For long moments thus, then her crew, half drowned, half dead, could once more look around. The Arrandoon was afloat, but her decks were swept. Hundreds of tons of water still filled her decks, and poured out into the sea in cataracts through her broken bulwarks; ay, and it poured below too, at the fore and main hatchways, which had been smashed open with the violence and force of the deluge. The main-yard had come down, and one whaler was smashed into matchwood. I wish I could say this was all, but two poor fellows lost for ever the number of their mess. One was seen floating about dead and unwounded on the deck ere the water got clear; the other, with sadly splintered brow, was still clutching in a death-grasp a rope that had bound a tarpaulin over a grating.
But away ahead appeared a long yellowish streak of clear sky, close to the horizon. The danger had passed.
All hands were now called to clear away the wreck and make good repairs. The pumps, too, had to be set to work, and as soon as the wind came down on them from the clear of the horizon, sail was set, for the fires had been drowned out.
The wind increased to a gale, and there was nothing for it but to lay to. And so they did all that night and all next day; then the weather moderated, and the wind coming more easterly they were able to show more canvas, and to resume their course with something akin to comfort.
The bodies of the two poor fellows who had met with so sad a fate were committed to the deep – the sailor’s grave.
“Earth to earth and dust to dust.”
There was more than one moist eye while those words were uttered, for the men had both been great favourites with their messmates.
Rory was sitting that evening with his elbows resting on the saloon table, his chin on his hands, and a book in front of him that he was not looking at, when McBain came below.
“You’re quieter than usual,” said McBain, placing a kindly hand on his shoulder.
Rory smiled, forced a laugh even, as one does who wants to shake off an incubus.
“I was thinking,” he said, “of that awful black forest of waterspouts. I’ll never get it out of my head.”
“Oh! yes you will, boy Rory,” said McBain; “it was a new sensation, that’s all.”
“New sensation!” said Allan, laughing in earnest; “well, captain, I must say that is a mild way of putting it. I don’t want any more such sensations. Steward, bring some nice hot coffee.”
“Ay!” cried Ralph, “that’s the style, Allan. Some coffee, steward – and, steward, bring the cold pork and fowls, and make some toast, and bring the butter and the Chili vinegar.”
Poor Irish Rory! Like every one with a poetic temperament, he was easily cast down, and just as easily raised again. Ralph’s wondrous appetite always amused him.
“Oh, you true Saxon!” said Rory – “you hungry Englishman!” But, ten minutes afterwards, he felt himself constrained to join the party at the supper table.
You see, reader mine, a sailor’s life is like an April day – sunshine now and showers anon.
“How now, Stevenson?” said McBain, as the mate entered with a kind of a puzzled look on his face.
“Well, sir, we are, as you said, off the Faroes. The night is precious dark, but I can see the lights of a village in here, and the lights of a vessel of some size, evidently lying at anchor.”
“Then, mate,” said the captain, “as we don’t know exactly where we are, I don’t think we can do wrong to steam in and drop anchor alongside this craft. We can then board her and find out. How is the weather?”
“A bit thick, sir, and seems inclined to blow a little from the east-south-east.”
“Let it, Stevenson – let it. If the other vessel can ride it out I don’t think the Arrandoon is likely to lose her anchors. Hullo! Mitchell,” he continued, as the second mate next entered hat in hand, “what’s in the wind now, man?”
“Why, sir,” said Mitchell, “I’m all ashore like, you see; I can’t make it out. But here is a boat just been a-hailing of us, and the passenger – there is only one, a comely lass enough – has just come on board, and wants to see you at once. Seems a bit cranky. Here she be, sir;” and Mitchell retired.
A young girl. She was probably not over seventeen, fair-faced, and with wild blue eyes, and yellow hair, dripping with dew, floating over her shoulders.
“Stop the ship!” she cried, seizing McBain by the arm. “Go no farther, or her ribs will be scattered over the waves, and your bones will bleach on the cliffs of the rocks.”
“Poor thing!” muttered McBain. “Oh, you heed me not!” continued the girl, wringing her hands in despair. “It will be too late – it will be too late! I tell you here is no harbour, here is no ship. The lights you see are placed there to lure your vessel on shore. They are wreckers, I tell you; they will – ”
“By the deep three!” sung the man in the chains.
Then there was a shout from the man at the foretop.
“Breakers ahead!”
Then, “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.”
Chapter Six.
A Life on the Ocean Wave – On the Rocks – Mystery – A Home on the Rolling Deep
Has the reader ever been to sea? The first feeling that a landsman objects to at sea is that of the heaving motion of the ship; to your true sailor the cessation of that motion, or its absence under circumstances, is disagreeable in the extreme. To me there is always a certain air of romance about the old ocean, and about a ship at sea; but what can be less romantic than lying in a harbour or dull wet dock, with no more life nor motion in your craft than there is in the slopshop round the corner? To lie thus and probably have to listen to the grating voices and pointless jokes of semi-inebriated stevedores, as they load or unload, soiling, as they do, your beautiful decks with their dreadful boots, is very far from pleasant. In a case like this how one wishes to be away out on the blue water once more, and to feel life in the good ship once again – to feel, as it were, her very heart throb beneath one’s feet!
But disagreeable as the sensation is of lying lifeless in harbour or dock, still more so is it to feel your vessel, that one moment before was sailing peacefully over the sea, suddenly rasp on a rock beneath you, then stop dead. Nothing in the world will wake a sailor sooner, even should he be in the deepest of slumber, than this sudden cessation of motion. I remember on one particular occasion being awakened thus. No crew ever went to sleep with a greater feeling of security than we had done, for the night was fine and the ship went well. But all at once, about four bells in the middle watch, —
Kurr-r-r-r! that was the noise we heard proceeding from our keel, then all was steady, all was still. And every man sprang from his hammock, every officer from his cot.
We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or rather the Mozambique Channel, with no land in sight, and we were hard and fast on the dreaded Lyra reef. A beautiful night it was, just enough wind to make a ripple on the water for the broad moon’s beams to dance in, a cloudless sky, and countless stars. We took all this in at the first glance. Safe enough we were – for the time; but if the wind rose there was the certainty of our being broken up, even as the war-ship Lyra was, that gave its name to the reef.
At the first shout from the man on the outlook in the Arrandoon, McBain rushed on deck. “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.” But these orders are, alas! too late. Kurr-r-r-r! The stately Arrandoon is hard and fast on the rocky bottom.
The ship was under easy sail, for although there was hardly any wind, what little there was gave evident signs of shifting. It might come on to blow, and blow pretty hard, too, from the south-east or east-south-east, and Mr Stevenson was hardly the man to be caught in a trap, to find himself on a lee shore or a rock-bound coast, with a crowd of canvas. Well for our people it was that there was but little sail on her and little wind, or, speedily as everything was let go, the masts – some of them at least – would have gone by the board.
Half an hour after she struck, the Arrandoon was under bare poles and steam was up.
The order had been given to get up steam with all speed. Both the engineer and his two assistants were brawny Scots.
“Man!” said the former, “it’ll take ye a whole hour to get up steam if you bother wi’ coals and cinders alone. But do your best wi’ what ye hae till I come back.”
He wasn’t gone long ere he came staggering down the ladder again, carrying a sack.
“It’s American hams,” he said; “they’re hardly fit for anything else but fuel, so here goes.”
And he popped a couple into the fire.
“That’s the style,” he said, as they began to frizzle and blaze. “Look, lads, the kettle’ll be boilin’ in twa seconds.”
“Thank you, Stuart,” said McBain, when the engineer went on the bridge to report everything ready; “you are a valuable servant; now stand by to receive orders.”
All hands had been called, and there was certainly plenty for them to do.
It wanted several hours to high-water, and McBain determined to make the best of his time.
“By the blessing of Providence on our own exertions, Stevenson,” the captain said, “we’ll get her off all right. Had it been high-water, though, when we ran on shore, eh!”
Stevenson laughed a grim laugh. “We’d leave her bones here,” he said, “that would be all.”
The men were now getting their big guns over the side into the boats. This would lighten her a little. But as the tide was flowing, anchors were sent out astern, to prevent the ship from being carried still farther on to the reef.
“Go astern at full speed.”
The screws revolved and kept on revolving, the ship still stuck fast. The night was very dark, so that everything had to be done by the weird light of lanterns. Never mind, the work went cheerily on, and the men sang as they laboured.
“High-water about half-past two, isn’t it, Stevenson?” asked Captain McBain.
“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, “that’s about the time, sir.”
“Ah! well,” the captain said, “she is sure to float then, and there are no signs of your storm coming.”
“There is hardly a breath of wind now, sir, but you never know in these latitudes where it may come on to blow from next.”
The cheerful way in which McBain talked reassured our heroes, and towards eleven o’clock English Ralph spoke as follows, —
“Look here, boys – ”
“There isn’t a bit of good looking in the dark, is there?” said Allan.
“Well,” continued Ralph, “figuratively speaking, look here; I don’t see the good of sticking up on deck in the cold. We’re not doing an atom of good; let us go below and finish our supper.”
“Right,” said Allan; “and mind you, that poor girl is below there all this time. She may want some refreshment.”
When they entered the saloon they found it empty, deserted as far as human beings were concerned. Polly the cockatoo was there, no one else.
“Well?” said the bird, inquiringly, as she helped herself to an enormous mouthful of hemp-seed. “Well?”
“What have you done with the young lady?” asked Allan.
“The proof o’ the pudding – ”
Polly was too busy eating to say more. Peter the steward entered just then, overhearing the question as he came.
“That strange girl, sir,” he replied, “went over the side and away in her boat as soon as the ship struck.”
“Well, I call that a pity,” said Allan; “the poor girl comes here to warn us of danger and never stops for thanks. It is wonderful.”
“From this date,” remarked Ralph, “I cease to wonder at anything. Steward, you know we were only half done with supper, and we’re all as hungry as hunters, and – ”
But Peter was off, and in a few minutes our boys were supping as quietly and contentedly as if they had been in the Coffee-room of the Queen’s Hotel, Glasgow, instead of being on a lee shore, with the certainty that if it came on to blow not a timber of the good ship Arrandoon that would not be smashed into matchwood.
But hark! the noise on deck recommences, the men are heaving on the winch, the engines are once more at work, and the great screw is revolving. Then there is a shout from the men forward.
“She moves!”
“Hurrah! then, boys, hurrah!” cried McBain; “heave, and she goes.”
(The word “hurrah” in the parlance of North Sea sailors means “do your utmost” or “make all speed.”)
The men burst into song – tune a wild, uncouth sailor’s melody, words extempore, one man singing one line, another metreing it with a second, with a chorus between each line, in which all joined, with all their strength of voice to the tune, with all the power of their brawny muscles to the winch. Mere doggerel, but it did the turn better, perhaps, than more refined music would have done.
In San Domingo I was born,
Chorus– Hurrah! lads, hurrah!
And reared among the yellow corn.
Heave, boys, and away we go.
Our bold McBain is a captain nice,
Chorus– Hurrah! lads, hurrah!
The main-brace he is sure to splice.
Heave, boys, and away we go.
The Faroe Isles are not our goal,
Oh! no, lads, no!
We’ll reach the North, and we’ll bag the Pole,
Heave, boys, and away we go,
Hurrah!
“We’re off,” cried Stevenson, excitedly. “Hurrah! men. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
The men needed but little encouragement now, though. Round went the winch right merrily, and in a quarter of an hour the bows were abreast of the anchors.
“Now, steward,” said the captain, “splice the main-brace.”
The ration was brought and served, Ted Wilson, who was a moving spirit in the ’tween decks, giving a toast, which every man re-echoed ere he raised the basin to his head, —
“Success to the saucy Arrandoon, and our bold skipper, Captain McBain.”
The vessel’s head was now turned seawards, and presently the anchors that had been taken in were let go again, and fires banked. The long night wore away, and the dismal dawn came. McBain had lain down for a short time, with orders to be roused on the first appearance of daylight. Rory, anxious to see how the land looked, was on deck nearly as soon as the captain.
A grey mist was lifting up from off the sea, and from off the shore, revealing black, beetling crags, hundreds of feet high at the water’s edge, a sheer beetling cliff around which thousands of strange sea-birds were wheeling and screaming, their white wings relieved against the black of the rocks, on which rows on rows of solemn-looking guillemots sat, and lines of those strange old-fashion-faced birds, the puffins.
The cliffs were snow-clad, the hills above were terraced with rocks almost to their summits. Between the ship and this inhospitable shore lay a long, dangerous-looking reef of rocks.
“Ah! Rory,” said McBain, “there was a merciful Providence watching over us last night. Yonder is where we lay; had it come on to blow, not one of us would be alive this morning to see the sun rise.”
Rory could hardly help, shuddering as he thought of the narrow escape they had had from so terrible a fate.
When steam was got up they went round the island – it was one of the most southerly of the Faroes; but except around one little bay, where boats might land with difficulty, it seemed impossible that human beings could exist in such a place. What, then, was the mystery of the previous evening, of the fair-haired girl, of the lights inside the reef that simulated those of a broad-beamed ship, of the lights like those of a village that twinkled on shore? The whole affair seemed strange, inexplicable. Now that it was broad daylight the events of the preceding night, with its dangers and its darkness, had more the similitude of some dreadful dream than a stern reality.
This same evening the anchor was let go in the Bay of Thorshaven, the capital – city, shall I say? – of the Faroe Islands. I am writing a tale of adventure, not a narrative of travel, else would I willingly devote a whole chapter to a description of this quaint and primitive wee, wee town. Our heroes saw it at its very worst, its very bleakest, for winter still held it in thrall; the turf-clad roofs of its cottages, that in summer are green with grass and redolent of wild thyme, were now clad with snow; its streets, difficult to climb even in July, were now stairs of glass; its fort looked frozen out; and its little chapel, where Sunday after Sunday the hardy and brave inhabitants, who never move abroad without their lives in their hands, worship God in all humility – this little chapel stood up black and bold against its background of snow.
Although the streamlets were all frozen, although ice was afloat in the bay, and a grey and leaden sky overhead, our boys were not sorry to land and have a look around. To say that they were hospitably received would be hardly doing the Faroese justice, for hospitality really seems a part and parcel of the people’s religion. The viands they placed before them were well cooked, but curious, to say the least of it. Steak of young whale, stew of young seal’s liver, roast guillemot and baked auk; these may sound queer as dinner dishes, but as they were cooked by the ancient Faroese gentleman who entertained our heroes at his house, each and all of them were brave eating.
Couldn’t they stop a month? this gentleman, who looked like a true descendant of some ancient viking, asked McBain. Well then, a fortnight? well, surely one short week?
But, “Nay, nay, nay,” the captain answered, kindly and smilingly, to all his entreaties; they must hurry on to the far north ere spring and summer came.
The Faroese could give them no clue to the mystery that shrouded the previous night. They had never heard of either wreckers or pirates in these peaceful islands.
“But,” said the old viking, “we are willing to turn out to a man; we are one thousand inhabitants in all – including the women; but even they will go; and we have ten brave, real soldiers in the fort, they too will go, and we will make search, and if we find them we will hang them on – on – ” the old man hesitated.