The Pirate

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,”[19 - When a person changes his condition suddenly, as when a miser becomes liberal, or a churl good-humoured, he is said, in Scotch, to be fey; that is, predestined to speedy death, of which such mutations of humour are received as a sure indication.] 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,[20 - A pedlar.] 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 lowering it, as from apprehension of being overheard – “I say a gold chain!”

“A gold chain!” said Triptolemus.

“In troth is it, hinny; and how like you that? The folk say here, as Tronda tells me, that the King of the Drows gave it to his father, the Silent Man of Sumburgh.”

“I wish you would speak sense, or be the silent woman,” said Triptolemus. “The upshot of it all is, then, that this lad is the rich stranger’s son, and that you are giving him the goose you were to keep till Michaelmas!”

“Troth, brother, we maun do something for God’s sake, and to make friends; and the lad,” added Baby, (for even she was not altogether above the prejudices of her sex in favour of outward form,) “the lad has a fair face of his ain.”

“Ye would have let mony a fair face,” said Triptolemus, “pass the door pining, if it had not been for the gold chain.”

“Nae doubt, nae doubt,” replied Barbara; “ye wadna have me waste our substance on every thigger or sorner that has the luck to come by the door in a wet day? But this lad has a fair and a wide name in the country, and Tronda says he is to be married to a daughter of the rich Udaller, Magnus Troil, and the marriage-day is to be fixed whenever he makes choice (set him up) between the twa lasses; and so it wad be as much as our good name is worth, and our quiet forby, to let him sit unserved, although he does come unsent for.”

“The best reason in life,” said Triptolemus, “for letting a man into a house is, that you dare not bid him go by. However, since there is a man of quality amongst them, I will let him know whom he has to do with, in my person.” Then advancing to the door, he exclaimed, “Heus tibi, Dave!”

“Adsum,” answered the youth, entering the apartment.

“Hem!” said the erudite Triptolemus, “not altogether deficient in his humanities, I see. I will try him further. – Canst thou aught of husbandry, young gentleman?”

“Troth, sir, not I,” answered Mordaunt; “I have been trained to plough upon the sea, and to reap upon the crag.”

“Plough the sea!” said Triptolemus; “that’s a furrow requires small harrowing; and for your harvest on the crag, I suppose you mean these scowries, or whatever you call them. It is a sort of ingathering which the Ranzelman should stop by the law; nothing more likely to break an honest man’s bones. I profess I cannot see the pleasure men propose by dangling in a rope’s-end betwixt earth and heaven. In my case, I had as lief the other end of the rope were fastened to the gibbet; I should be sure of not falling, at least.”

“Now, I would only advise you to try it,” replied Mordaunt. “Trust me, the world has few grander sensations than when one is perched in midair between a high-browed cliff and a roaring ocean, the rope by which you are sustained seeming scarce stronger than a silken thread, and the stone on which you have one foot steadied, affording such a breadth as the kittywake might rest upon – to feel and know all this, with the full confidence that your own agility of limb, and strength of head, can bring you as safe off as if you had the wing of the gosshawk – this is indeed being almost independent of the earth you tread on!”

Triptolemus stared at this enthusiastic description of an amusement which had so few charms for him; and his sister, looking at the glancing eye and elevated bearing of the young adventurer, answered, by ejaculating, “My certie, lad, but ye are a brave chield!”

“A brave chield?” returned Yellowley, – “I say a brave goose, to be flichtering and fleeing in the wind when he might abide upon terra firma! But come, here’s a goose that is more to the purpose, when once it is well boiled. Get us trenchers and salt, Baby – but in truth it will prove salt enough – a tasty morsel it is; but I think the Zetlanders be the only folk in the world that think of running such risks to catch geese, and then boiling them when they have done.”