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The fishing, and a previous knowledge of the Orkney channels, had given him some experience of local navigation; and it was upon the strength of this experience that, having built his pilot boat, he intended to start in opposition to my father. The greater part of what Mansie and Colin said, as they sat in the comfortable kitchen of Lyndardy, was entirely new to me.
His father had possessed about a dozen good books, among others such familiar Scottish household favorites as "Wilson's Tales of the Borders," "Mansie Waugh," by "Delta," "Scots Worthies," Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," Scott's "Rob Roy" and "Old Mortality," and the well-thumbed and dog-eared copy of Robert Burns' Poems.
"Hang me if I do!" answered I. "Not for all the ministers and elders that were ever cleckit. I was born a free man, I live in a free country, I am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I'll be shot before I submit to such rank diabolical papistry." "Hooly and fairly, Mansie," quoth Thomas. "They'll maybe no be sae hard as they threaten.
How often in these hours, or in long solitary walks and rides among the hills, have I had visions, clear as that of Mansie Wauch, of how I should grow old in my country parish! Do not think that I wish or intend to be egotistical, my friendly reader. I describe these feelings and fancies because I think this is the likeliest way in which to reach and describe your own.
Listen to this," and he would begin to read the passage, where Mansie, simple soul that he was, was described as going into the byre in the morning to learn if the cow had calved during the night, and finding, on opening the door, the donkey of a traveling tinker, he turned and ran into the house, crying: "Mither! Mither! The coo has calved, an' it's a cuddy!"
Mansie dismissed this notion incredulously; for though Kinlay knew the coast very well, yet the idea of his starting with his limited experience as an Orkney pilot was droll to one who, like my uncle, had been all his life at the work, and knew every fathom of the waters.
"With all the trimmings," said Bud Mansie, "with all Morgantown joinin' the mournin' voluntarily under cover of our six-guns." "Wait," said Boone. "What's the second request?" "That can wait." "It's a bigger job than this one?" "Lots bigger." "And in the mean time?" "I'm your man." They shook hands.
I saw there was hell brewing somewhere, so I went out and nabbed her." "Jack!" called Jim Boone. "What were you started for?" Bud Mansie released her arms and she stood with them stiffening at her sides and her fists clenched. "Hal he died, and there was nothing but talk about him nothing done. You got a live man in Hal's place." She pointed an accusing finger at Pierre.
Vaguely it reminded Pierre of a scene in some old play with himself in the role of the hero signing away his soul to the devil, but an interruption kept him from taking the chair. There was a racket at the door a half-sobbing, half-scolding voice, and the laughter of a man; then Bud Mansie appeared carrying Jack in spite of her struggles.
When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface would be as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one spot some little way from the shore, where a long black line projected out of the water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster. This was the top of the dangerous ridge of rocks known to the fishermen as the "ragged reef o' Mansie."
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