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Updated: June 26, 2025
The direct way to Skaill lay along an almost straight road to the northward, by Hamla Voe and the western shores of the loch of Stenness, past the Druid standing stones. On this May afternoon, as I walked along the familiar road, there was little to attract my attention. The gray stretch of water lay still and cold, and the ploughed fields beyond it were brown and barren.
When we agreed to keep the bird for the schoolmaster, he accordingly grew gloomy, and the rest of the journey to Skaill was accomplished without his joining in the merry talk, of which there was no lack, you may be sure. Skaill Vic is a large, sheltered inlet of the sea.
In the street I found Tom Kinlay and two other boys waiting for me, and arranging an excursion across the hills to Skaill Bay to hunt for seals. It was an expedition in which I very readily agreed to join, and it was arranged that we should meet early in the afternoon on the moor between Voy and Crua Breck. My home was close beside the school.
We bore our burdens joyfully as far as the other side of Skaill Bay, just managing to escape the tide that was creeping up to the base of the cliffs. The last rays of the sun were setting across the broad Atlantic when we reached the top of the headland, and in the gray twilight spreading over the sea we watched the fleet of whaling ships sailing to the westward.
Oh, well, you see, captain, I may be making a mistake; but, as it happens, I have seen a runic inscription over at Stenness which expressly states that the Jarl Haffling was buried with his earthly treasures to the northwest of the Maes Howe. Now, the Bay of Skaill, where the lads made the discovery, is exactly northwest of Stenness.
In the middle of the group there was a withered little man, bent with age, with a long ragged beard and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He wore a great black coat that was very shiny and reached almost down to his ankles; and in his skinny fingers he held what I soon recognized as the large red stone that Tom Kinlay had found at Skaill.
The sea could not drown him, sword could not wound him, fortune favoured him, so long as he wore this little stone on his breast." "And yet, sir, the Jarl Haffling came to his grave in the Bay of Skaill," I said incredulously. "Ay, lad, so he did, so he did.
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