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As for Fraser, he looked before him on the table. "He is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which I think it very needful you should hear," said I, and turned to Duncansby. "I have only to say this," said the lieutenant, "that I stood up this day with Palfour in the Hunter's Pog, which I am now fery sorry for, and he behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it.
They were also probably descended more remotely from Moldan, Maormor of Duncansby, a kinsman of Malcolm II, but had all been driven back from the coast, save Earl Ottir, who lived at Thurso, and probably owned its valley up to its source in the Halkirk and Latheron hills. The death of Harald the Glib by poison left Paul de facto sole jarl of Orkney.
The wind continuing favourable after leaving Yarmouth, about nine this morning we passed the rugged and bold projecting rock, termed Johnny Groat's house, and soon afterwards Duncansby Head, and then entered the Pentland Firth.
Duncansby, who spied some flaw in my manoeuvres, paused, looked upon me sharply, and came off and on, and menaced me with his blade in the air. As I had seen no such proceedings from Alan, and was besides a good deal affected with the proximity of death, I grew quite bewildered, stood helpless, and could have longed to run away. "Fat deil ails her?" cries the lieutenant.
And you standing there like a straw bogle and rinning to fetch your ain sword like a doggie with a pocket-napkin! David, this man Duncansby must be something altogether by-ordinar! He maun be extraordinar skilly. If I had the time, I would gang straight back and try a turn at him mysel'. The man must be a provost." "You silly fellow," said I, "you forget it was just me."
In point of fact, he gets to Duncansby Head in fifty-two pages, and not without some considerable slips of information. Ireland interests him more, and he finally closes with a sheet of learned gossip about the outlying islands. The scope of Camden's work did not give Philémon Holland much opportunity for spreading the wings of his style.
As for Fraser, he looked before him on the table. "He is here to bear a little testimony in my favour, my lord, which I think it very needful you should hear," said I, and turned to Duncansby. "I have only to say this," said the lieutenant, "that I stood up this day with Palfour in the Hunter's Pog, which I am now fery sorry for, and he behaved himself as pretty as a shentlemans could ask it.
Meantime Olvir Rosta, Frakark's grandson, who had been stunned and nearly drowned in the sea fight at Tankerness, in which Sweyn's and Gunni's father, Olaf Hrolf's son, had aided Jarl Paul, burned Olaf alive in his home at Duncansby, Asleif, Olaf's wife, escaping only because she was absent at the time.
Although the history of the time of Thorfinn Sigurdson, the first Scottish Earl of Caithness and Sutherland, would have been of great interest to inhabitants of those counties, the Orkneyinga Saga contains but little information about his doings in them, because he bent all his efforts towards extending his dominion over the islands which formed his father Sigurd's jarldom, his policy, in his youth at least, being directed to this object by his grandfather, Malcolm II. Indeed during the life of that king, Thorfinn appears to have established himself at Duncansby in Caithness, on the shore of the Pentland Firth, and to have occupied himself in endeavouring to induce his three surviving half-brothers, Somarled, Brusi, and Einar, to part with as large a share as possible of Orkney and Shetland, and cede it to himself.
They were in good spirits, although they had begun to think that they should never get round Duncansby Head, which is close to John o' Groat's House, until the wind drawing once more from the westward, they had reached Wick, the great resort of fishing vessels. After this they had a dead beat until they sighted Tarbet-ness Lighthouse, on the northern side of the Moray Firth.
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