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I liked its vast, shadowy images, its visionary incompleteness, just because we have not yet invented the precise words to describe the indescribable." So they talked, until the frugal Orcadian supper of oatmeal and milk, and bread and cheese, appeared. Then the night closed and sealed what the day had done, and there was no more speculation about Ian's future.
Crua Breck was at least a mile from any other house unless, indeed, the ruined and tenantless cottage of Inganess merited the name. Carver Kinlay had lived there as long as I could remember; but the fact that the fisher folks often spoke of him as a "ferry jumper" implied that he was still regarded as a foreigner on Orcadian soil.
She spoke of having heard about many an Orcadian who, in attempting to reach the innermost recesses of such caverns, had been taken possession of by the evil spirits that were commonly believed to inhabit these places; and the strangely-echoing sounds we heard were exaggerated in her imagination, and became to her as the weird voices of kelpies and water nymphs.
As pilot he was able to board any vessel that entered the Orcadian waters, and in the case of ships which came over from the Continent or from the north of Scotland with contraband goods, a transfer of cargo could be boldly effected without exciting suspicion. And here in the cave I saw before me a part of the smuggler's store.
Hailes and Pinkerton, Robertson and Laing there is nothing else for it and Pinkerton is poor work. Laing, besides his party spirit, has a turn for generalising, which renders him rather dull, which was not the nature of the acute Orcadian. July 25. Thomson left us this morning early.
It was of a pattern and rig peculiar to the Orkneys, much after the fashion of a whaling boat, and called a "sixter," from having a crew of six men. It was propelled by either sail or oars, as either was most convenient, but the Orcadian boatmen never employed the oars when the sail could be used. The boat's crew was a picked one, and seldom could six finer men be seen together.
Approaching the Orkneys from Thurso the first things that struck us were certain great structures crowning the mounded hills. These, we discovered afterward were so many great farmsteadings, protected from the wind by cinctures of high walls, many of the Orcadian holdings being at once rich and extensive, and commanding very high rentals.
And then, when my sport was over, I hung up my gun in its place in the warm byre, believing that I was now a man. So passed the time pleasantly and profitably until, much to my satisfaction, the good ship Falcon arrived in the bay and dropped anchor off the jetty. It was on a gray, wintry Saturday morning that we set sail on my first Orcadian voyage.
But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian ranks it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a grimy art, there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not so forlorn as he was, he would have turned to many things, honourable, of course, in preference.
"Happy is he," the legend continued "Happy is he who may discover this great wealth." But, of course, no person had ever found trace of it, and Mr. Drever supposed that it must have been swept away by the furious storms that, in wintertime, dash continually against the rocky ribs of the Orcadian coasts. We got down by a pathway to the sloping beach, which the tide had left bare.
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