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We touched at the island of Rousay, and here we learnt that some smugglers in a strange brig had, two days earlier, made a daring raid upon one of the small villages, robbing the inhabitants of their most precious possessions. We heard a similar story at Papa Westray. But it was not until our return to Stromness that we associated these piratical raids with Tom Kinlay and his companions.
After the affray they crossed over to Orkney, where they fortified the small but massive castle or tower of Kolbein Hruga or Cobbie Row, in the Island of Vigr or Wyre, now called Veira, near Rousay in Orkney, and provisioned it for a siege, which lasted the whole winter, and was raised only after both sides had come to an agreement that all questions arising out of the earl's death at Thurso, should be referred, not to the Scottish courts, but to the Norse king, Hakon, in Bergen.
Then follow the stories, well worth reading in the Saga itself, of the raising and lowering of the sails on Ragnvald's ships and of the mutiny of Paul's followers, and of the dowsing of the beacons on the Fair Isle by Uni, Ragnvald's ally, of Ragnvald's landing in Westray, of his suppression of all opposition to him, of the spies at Paul's Thing, of Sweyn's junction of forces with Ragnvald, of Sweyn's visit to Margret at Athole, and his dramatic kidnapping of Jarl Paul while hunting otters near Westness in the Isle of Rousay, in Orkney, and of the jarl's deportation by Sweyn first to Dufeyra and thence via Ekkjals-bakki to Athole to his sister Margret, who receives him with the utmost show of cordiality, and finally of Paul's abdication in favour of Margret's second son, Harold Maddadson, then a boy of five years of age, with the instructions to Sweyn to tell the Orkneymen that Paul himself was blinded, or, worse still, maimed, so that his friends should not seek him out, and restore him to his jarldom.
Good cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of school and college friends. Love to all, from your affectionate "P.S. On Monday I hired a boat, or small ship, and went a-hunting after antiquities. Passing Wire and Rousay, I recalled some association in the names, and I think it was with poor nurse Barbara.
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