Now the explanation of Willie's curious discovery, as we afterwards
fully learned, was this: When I took up the dead falcon, Hercus,
intent upon witnessing Selta's skill at ratting, stood beside the
dog as she scraped with her forefeet the shingle from the crevice
through which the rat had escaped. Disappointed at losing her
prize, the terrier dug and dug away at the shingle and moist sand,
scattering it behind her, and burying her nose deep down. Then a
strange, grim object was unearthed. In the midst of the stones,
Hercus, to his horror, saw lying there a ghastly human skull, with
the great cavities where the eyes had been, staring at him.
Hesitating at the sight of this frightful spectacle, he at last
mustered courage to take the thing in his hand. He was in the act
of examining it, when, from one of the hollow eye sockets, out
jumped the fugitive rat. Had the jaws of the skull moved in speech,
Willie could not have been more terrified than he was by seeing the
rat spring from its strange hiding place.
Dropping the horrible thing upon the rock at his feet, where the
rotten bone broke into fragments, he rushed out upon the beach and
called us back. Attracted to the spot again, he watched the dog
burrowing in the shingle. Amongst the stones and sand he saw the
dull sheen of what he at first supposed was a curious seashell, but
which, when he picked up and examined it, he found to be an old
coin. Believing that there might be more of these buried in the
sand, he went down upon his knees once more to search. He had just
discovered the bar of metal when we returned.
"What is it?" he said. "Why, it's silver?"
We each in turn handled the little bar, and expressed our opinion
regarding what Hercus supposed it to be. It was heavy enough,
certainly, to be silver; but the improbability of such a piece of
the precious metal being left there presented itself, and none of
us was quite satisfied until Hercus, taking out his knife, cut and
scraped the surface of the ingot and revealed the shining white
metal underlying the grit and tarnish that had gathered upon it
during the years--perhaps the centuries--it had lain there
undisturbed.
By our united efforts we enlarged the hole that Willie and the dog
had made, digging with the harpoon and removing with our hands the
loosened stones. We found a quantity of antique coins of various
sizes, which, by reason of their lightness, I suppose, were much
scattered about. Then deeper down below these we came upon a number
of large rings, or bracelets, in the form of horseshoes, and
several ingots of silver, similar to the one Hercus had first
found.
We grew excited in our search; and as the quantity of treasure we
unearthed increased, so did we increase our exertions, until there
was quite a heap of silver gathered upon the slab of flagstone
where we placed it.
At a spot near where Hercus had discovered the skull we found a
curious garment, formed of a fine network of rings and chains. It
was much broken and torn--though the shoulder bands were preserved,
as well as the collar--and we could see that the owner, whoever he
might have been, must have had a large and strong body, for the
coat was of great weight. Beside it there were what we took to be
the remains of a helmet, the ornaments upon which were of a yellow
and still untarnished metal, with a large crimson stone set in the
front.
Hercus pronounced the metal to be brass; but I never discovered
truly what it was, as I did not handle the fragments again, for the
reason that (as I happened to notice at the time) Tom Kinlay, who
kept silence regarding them, quietly put them in his pocket,
allowing us afterwards to suppose that we had left them behind us.
I had my suspicions, however, that the ornaments were of pure gold.
In addition to the coat of mail and the helmet, there were three
other objects that engaged our special regard. These were a broken
belt--made of link rings of bronze--the head of a battle axe, and a
long sword. The sword, which was in a scabbard embossed with fine
ornaments, had a richly-figured handle. It was a heavy weapon, and
none of us could draw it from its scabbard, for the rust that
encrusted it.
When all that it seemed possible to find had been collected, and
our digging brought nothing more to light, we opened our two seals'
skins--throwing away the blubber, which seemed of little worth to
us now that we had possessed ourselves of all this wealth--and
lifting the treasure into them we made them into slings, one of
which was carried by Tom Kinlay and Willie Hercus, the other by
Robbie Rosson and myself. 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.