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Updated: September 11, 2025
"Off to the sealing when he might have a fine sail in the Curlew. I wish I could get such a chance." "All right, lad!" interrupted my father. "Away with you to the sealing. You'll get many another chance of a sail. Who's going with you?" "Robbie Rosson and Willie Hercus and " I added with some hesitation, "Tom Kinlay," for I knew my father did not entirely approve of Tom as a companion.
Tom and Thora Kinlay lived at Crua Breck farm, distant from Stromness four miles; and little Hilda Paterson, the youngest girl in the school, lived at her father's croft away beyond Stenness, and walked the five miles barefooted twice a day. When I got home the brose for dinner was cooling on the windowsill, and my mother was frying the fish I had caught in the morning.
I asked, when he came to my side. "Well, I want nossing more, mine young friend," he replied. "I haf make a very bad bargain already. But what have you? Any more of dose pretty tings?" and he indicated the gem that he had bought from Kinlay. I thought at once of my magic stone that was suspended at my neck under my guernsey.
"Ay," said Colin, "weel do I mind it, and weel, I reckon, does Carver Kinlay mind it." The conversation regarding the incident was disjointed. Let me, therefore, tell the story in my own words. My father had with his gallant crew gone out to sea one stormy night in the pilot boat. A stiff westerly wind was blowing, and the headland of Hoy was hidden in mist and spray.
"So ye see, Ericson, if the auld swindler could count upon gettin', let us say, two hundred pounds English for the stone over in Amsterdam, ye can hardly say that young Kinlay got a big price for't, can ye?" I was astounded at this information. Such unfairness appeared to my boyish mind as criminal in the extreme.
"'Deed I canna say what way that could be there. I'm thinking we must e'en refer it to the dominie. He kens all about these things," said Hercus; and then he turned to Kinlay, who hitherto had expressed no conjecture. "But what think you of it all, Tom?" "What do I think!" said Kinlay in a tone of indifference. "I care not what way the silver came there. What does it matter?
"Then you do not accuse Carver Kinlay himself of smuggling?" "I should certainly have done that, Mr. Duke; but Carver Kinlay, unfortunately, is dead." "Carver Kinlay dead!" exclaimed the bailie. "Yes; he lost his life just now in the Gaulton Cave, where we discovered him and his crew in the act of carrying off contraband spirits.
Paterson stepped up to the table, twirling his sou'wester round and round by the brim between his two big hands. "Weel, ye see, Mr. Duke," began Jack falteringly, "I was lying in my bed on Friday night when young Halcro Ericson knocked at the door and telt me that Thora Kinlay was out in the storm and couldna be found. So I cam' along to Stromness "
I reasoned with myself upon what I saw, and I considered that the person who had gone down the cliff could be none other than Thora, for I believed that none but she knew of that way down to the cave. Only she and Tom Kinlay knew that I kept my climbing ropes in the byre; but Tom had, as Ann told me, gone out in the St. Magnus. Only Thora could have taken them, then.
Among the passengers on the Surprise was Captain Gordon, who had left his ship, the Lydia, at Greenock, and was now on his way to Leith. He had gone out in the ship's boat to the wreck. One of the crew was saved, an Orkney man; but the rest were all lost, including, as we afterwards heard, young Tom Kinlay, whose career of crime was thus brought to an early termination. Mrs.
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