Resting after the work of carrying our burden up the cliffs, we
stood for a space upon the heights above Row Head to watch the
sails of the fleet growing smaller as they approached the distant
line of the horizon. The leaden sea danced in the fresh breeze, and
the sky gradually lost its golden tints and assumed the clear, cold
hue of the northern twilight. To the southward, across the moor,
rose the dark mountains of Hoy Island, with the moon gleaming pale
above them. From the shore came the fresh smell of the seaweed and
the plaintive crying of the gulls.
The evening was growing late, and there were still half a dozen
miles of rough moorland between Ramna and Stromness. Over the braes
of Borwick we travelled at a steady pace. We were light of heart,
for we had had a successful expedition, as was proved not only by
our dead falcon and the two seals' skins, but, more than all, by
the great wealth that those seals' skins carried.
Many were our conjectures as to the meaning of that great horde of
silver we had discovered hidden in the sands of Skaill Bay.
"I wonder how it all came there!" mused Robbie, and then he added,
"D'ye ken what I think, lads?"
"What think you, then, Robbie?" I asked.
"Well," said he, "I just think it must have been cast there by some
shipwreck in the olden time. D'ye mind, Hal, of the story of the
wreck of yon Spanish ship on the Carrig-na-Spana?"
"What! the San Miguel?"
"Ay, maybe that was her name, I dinna ken. Well, if you mind, she
struck on the reef there, and the skipper dropped all his treasure
chests overboard, in mortal fear that the Orkney wreckers would rob
him of them. I suppose he took his bearings, but for many a day the
wreckers searched the waters, and never a thing did they find.
Well, years and years after that the old skipper's son came to
Orkney, and went straight to the spot where the treasure had been
sunk and carried it all off to Spain."
"But that explains nothing, Robbie," I argued. "However, we ken
well enough that those Spanish ships were aye loaded with gold and
precious stones. And then, d'ye not mind of hearing about the
Spanish Armada ships that were wrecked on the Orkneys? Now, I
wouldn't be surprised though the gear we have gotten was nothing
else than the wreckage of an Armada ship. Even the skull that
Willie found, maybe belonged to one of the soldier chaps that came
to fight the English. But what is your opinion, Willie? You should
know, for it was you who found the treasure."
"Well, Ericson," said he wisely, "I just think it was most
extraordinary to see the heaps of siller come out of the very sands
of the seashore, and in such a desolate place; and beyond that, it
was a most providential thing that the dog ran after yon wee rat.
What most gets over me, though, is to think of the rat making its
nest in the dead man's skull. Man! what a fright I had when the
beast jumped out! As for how the siller came there, I canna just
say; but, you mind, the dominie told us in the school that, lang
syne, some of those viking lads used to cruise hereabout. Now, I'm
thinking that it's just possible one of them had maybe left the
siller for safety in the Kierfiold Cave where I--where we found it,
and clean forgotten to go back for it; just as old Betsy Matthew
forgot the guineas she hid under the floor in the heel of a
stocking."
"Ay, I dinna doubt it may be so, Willie," observed Rosson. "But
then, what about the dead man's head?"
"'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? I'm only
thinking what I'll do with my own share of it."
Now I confess that I had not before thought anything at all about
what we should do with the silver. I was so much interested in the
circumstance of our curious discovery of the hidden treasure that
the thought of its market value, or of our means of disposing of
it, had never entered my head; and I believe Hercus and Rosson were
totally ignorant of the fact that our find was really worth more
than the mere interest we naturally attached to the articles as
curious antiquities. Had I been asked as to the disposal of them, I
believe I would have proposed that the whole treasure should be
handed over to the care of our schoolmaster, who would doubtless
see that we did not lose by any sale he might effect.
Tom Kinlay was the first to suggest the sharing of the silver
pieces. We could offer no reasonable objection to a plan which
seemed so fair to all of us, and we agreed that before we parted an
equal division should be made.
Walking along a stretch of bleak moorland bordering the sea, taking
always the nearest cuts across the jutting points of rocky
headland, we at length approached the quaint graveyard of Bigging.
The night was clear, and light almost as day; but Robbie and Willie
would, I believe, rather have gone many miles out of our direct way
than go near that awesome place.
The ruined chapel and the long, flat tombstones surrounding it,
seemed to have an eerie influence upon our imagination, and we
could but whistle some merry tune to keep up our hearts. Willie
Hercus, though naturally daring, was now especially timid, the
remembrance of that skull he had handled having taken such hold of
his mind that the simple mention of it by one of us was enough to
make his voice sink to a trembling whisper, as though he feared the
dead man might come to life again and appear in our midst to accuse
us of having disturbed his bones.
I think Tom Kinlay was the only one of us who did not look with
superstitious awe into the dark shadows that hung about those
ruined walls and silent tombstones; but he was so tall and strong
that nothing seemed to daunt him, and soon he made a proposal that
went far towards assuring me that he was absolutely fearless.
"Now, lads," said he, when we were passing the low wall of the
burying ground, "let us get in here and spread out our things on
one of those flat stones, and then we can share them out. Come
along; nobody can disturb us in that quiet burying ground."
"What!" exclaimed Robbie, betraying his terror at the proposal.
"Over there among the graves! Not I. I'm not going into such a
place after the sun has gone down. Why, we canna be sure that the
ghosts of the dead will not spring out upon us!"
"No, I'm not going in there either," chimed in Hercus. "We can
divide the siller here on the moor just as well as in that fearsome
place. Come back, Hal, dinna you gang either."
"Well, well, what a pack of frightened bairns ye are!" said Kinlay,
preparing to enter by the open gate. "Come along. What on earth can
ye be feared at?"
Thus taunted for want of courage, Willie and Robbie overcame their
superstitious scruples, and we all four made our way in among the
graves.
We spread our treasures upon the top of a flat tombstone that was
somewhat higher than its neighbours and formed a convenient table
for our purpose. The stone was overgrown with lichens and moss, and
skirted by a growth of nettles and thistles. As we stood around it
in the twilight, surrounded by a wild solitude, we might have been
mistaken for a company of pirates dividing their ill-gotten gains.
Whilst Kinlay and Hercus were opening out the two seals' skins my
eyes idly wandered over the surface of the tombstone, and were
arrested by the inscription carved thereon. There was an epitaph in
some foreign language, old and worn, but under this was a name that
seemed to be newly cut. It was the name "Thora Quendale."
Now the name Thora is not a common one in Orkney, and seeing it on
that strange old tombstone naturally made me think of the Thora
whom I knew--Tom Kinlay's sister.
"Tom, did you ever notice the name on this grave? It's some woman
buried here named Thora."
He turned and read the inscription.
"Ay, I've seen it before. It's some woman that was found drowned at
the foot of the Black Craigs, years ago. I dinna ken who she was. I
think she was in a shipwreck."
"Oh! Then it was no relation of yours?"
"No. That is, I dinna think it. But I have heard that Thora was
named after her."
I asked him to tell me about the wreck; but just then Willie Hercus
interrupted, saying:
"Come along, Ericson; you had better be the one to divide the
treasure for us. We all ken you'll divide it fairly."
The treasure was heaped upon the tombstone, and as I regarded it I
foresaw the difficulty of the task before me; for the pieces were
obviously of very varied values, and I did not see how I could
easily distribute them into four equal shares. But I made the
attempt according to the manner that I had seen adopted by the
fishermen at Stromness in dividing their fish.
To begin with, there was the sword--apparently the most valuable of
all the treasures. Who was to have this? I naturally thought it
should go to Hercus, to whom we owed our possession of the wealth,
and I remembered that Kinlay already had an equivalent share in the
pieces of broken helmet he had appropriated. I handed the sword
over to Hercus, therefore. Tom offered no opposition at the time,
but he afterwards bartered with Hercus for it, giving him in
exchange two of the ingots of silver and the coat of mail which
subsequently fell to his share.
The sword and the coat of mail being apportioned to Hercus and
Kinlay, I then gave the bronze belt to Rosson, and took for myself
some pieces of armour and a fragment of a shield. Then there were
twenty-two ingots, or bars of silver, each of about six ounces in
weight. Five of these were apportioned to each of us, two being
left to be dealt with afterwards.
Next, there were thirteen brooches, such as the Scandinavians--as I
learned later on--were accustomed to use for binding their mantles.
They were all of similar pattern, and would weigh, perhaps, three
ounces each. Of them we had three apiece. There were three massive
torques, or rings, something in the form of horseshoes, the opening
being left to admit of their being fastened upon the neck, where
the ornaments were worn, I believe, by the ancients as symbols of
rank or command. These articles were composed of a series of rings
interlaced, some of them being embossed with rude but curious
designs.
I saw that we could not each of us have one of these, and here I
was again in a difficulty; but since the ingots of silver were of
about an equal weight, I took one of them myself and gave an
ornament to each of my companions. Hercus, however, would not agree
to this, and he showed, truly enough, that the ingots were worth no
more than their weight in metal; whereas the rings were of much
greater value, on account of being curious specimens of ancient
art. He therefore asked me to take a few of the coins in order to
make a fair division. The remaining coins, of which there was a
considerable quantity, were then counted and equally shared amongst
us.
We had now left one ingot of silver, one brooch, some odd fragments
of silver, and a small black stone which had a metal ring round it;
and the sharing of these cost more trouble than all the other
articles together. They were all, so far as we could judge, of
unequal values. The stone was considered worthless, except for the
little band of metal with which it was clasped. The brooch was only
about half the weight of the ingot, and it was not counted
precious, because already each of us had three like it, while the
small pile of silver fragments was not worth half the ingot
{i}. I thought I was acting very fairly when I suggested that
Hercus should have what remained, because, I said, if it had not
been for him we would have had nothing at all.
"'Deed you'll do nothing of the kind," objected Kinlay. "What for
should Hercus take all?"
"Well, well," I said, somewhat ruffled, I admit, at Tom's greed,
"you needn't be so sulky. Take you and divide the things. You'll
not do it any fairer."
But Tom saw a way of sharing the things which suited himself, if it
did not quite agree with my own views of fairness. To Willie he
gave the brooch, to Robbie he passed the pile of fragments; and now
he held the two remaining pieces, the ingot of silver and the
little black stone. We awaited with much interest his final
decision. With an unpleasant flash of his dark eyes he cast the
stone to my end of the rude table, and quietly thrust the bar of
silver with his other possessions into his capacious pockets.
I tried hard to check the words that rose to my lips. Throughout
the afternoon I had noticed Tom's pointed objections to many things
I had done or had proposed to do. He had objected to Thora
accompanying us on the sealing expedition. He had disagreed with
the disposal of the dead hen harrier; other little incidents, most
of which had testified to his deep-rooted selfishness, I had not
failed to notice. More than all, I remembered how he had pocketed
the jewelled fragments of the helmet, and kept the knowledge of
their value from us all. As for the opinions of the other two lads
regarding him, it was Willie Hercus who had called him a "sneak" in
school that morning, and Robbie Rosson, I knew, had certainly no
love for Tom, who had persistently bullied him.
"Well, are you not satisfied?" said Kinlay, seeing my undisguised
indignation.
"Yes, with my own share," I replied. "But if you'd taken the
smaller piece of siller for yourself, and given Willie Hercus yon
piece you've taken, I'd have thought you more honourable."
And then I roundly accused him of having stolen the fragments of
the helmet.
"You have stolen the things," I said. "You saw that they were of
more worth than the rest, and you were afraid that we would want a
share of them."
"You're a liar!" he exclaimed angrily.
"And you're a thief!" I retorted; and I walked round to him,
determined, if necessary, to defend my accusation in a more
practical way than by empty words.
Now, I am confident that Kinlay was almost eager for such a chance
as this to pay back many debts which his own jealousy had from time
to time conjured up against me. For, apart from the fact that I
happened to be a little more brilliant than he in our class at
school, there were not wanting indications that he was in other
ways losing ground in our common race, and circumstances seemed to
require that we should each make a final effort now for the upper
hand.
Seeing my determined attitude, he regarded it as a challenge, and
at once took off his jacket and held it out for Robbie Rosson to
take charge of. Robbie promptly showed the tenor of his feelings by
allowing the jacket to fall upon one of the gravestones, and by
coming to my side. Hercus merely busied himself in pacifying my
dog, which had become restless on hearing our high words.
Kinlay and I now stood face to face, and I almost trembled to think
of the thrashing that was probably in store for me. He gave the
first blow, which struck me soundly on the side of the head and
knocked my cap off. I buttoned my jacket tight and closed with my
adversary, yet with small success. The fight was for a few moments
unequal. Tom was much the taller, and his big feet, with their hide
sandals, seemed to grip the elastic turf. His fists, too, were
large and hard, and his lunging strokes were enough to stagger one
of our native ponies.
Against this superiority I had to depend upon such power of limb
and endurance as I had acquired by long practice at cliff climbing
and in swimming the strong currents of Scapa Flow. For a time a
heavy blow on my chest disabled me, and my right arm was sorely
bruised by the many blows it had suffered in guarding my face.
Still, I was determined not to give in; and, just as one gets a
second wind in swimming, so did I now feel a new and strange
strength come upon me. I continued the conflict with renewed
energy.
Stepping backward upon one of the flat tombstones, I once more
stood ready to receive my opponent. He struck without effect at my
face, and while he was recovering his balance I saw my opportunity,
and hit him a strong blow between the eyes. He staggered and fell,
and I saw that the fight was over. Rising to his feet he did not
retaliate, but picked up his jacket, wrapped his store of the
treasure into his seal's skin, and wiping the dripping blood from
his nose, walked away across the heath in the direction of Crua
Breck, muttering a vow of vengeance.
The combat had been sharp and effectual; but it was the outburst of
an antagonism which had long been gathering strength; it was the
practical declaration of an enmity that grew and lasted for many a
day.