It was a fresh, breezy, August afternoon. In the open sea, far out,
east of the Skerries, we were scudding along blithely, with a flock
of seagulls flying wantonly in our wake. The low hills of the
Orkneys rose like a faint haze on the horizon to westward. Light
waves, touched with green, curled over into snowy spray about our
sides as our boat bent over and plunged buoyantly through them.
Blue was the far-stretching sea, and bluer still the summer sky.
Away to the eastward, whither our bowsprit pointed, a white-sailed
clipper grew larger as we approached her. The Danish ensign flew at
her mizzen; the familiar signal for a pilot streamed from her fore
peak. My heart beat quicker, telling me who was aboard this fair
vessel as nearer and nearer we drew. Now we could distinguish the
tiny figures moving about her yards, as one by one her studding
sails were taken in.
Sitting in the stern sheets of my own pilot boat, I watched and
watched for some sign on the ship's quarterdeck. At last a white
object appeared over the rail, waving with regular motion. I took
out my handkerchief and unfurled it in reply, still with faster
beating heart.
"Lower away, my lads!" I cried, putting the helm to starboard.
"Ay, ay, sir," responded Willie Hercus, who had left the Clasper
and was now our mate. Then down fell our sails, flapping loud in
the breeze, and out went our long sweeping oars.
We crept in under the vessel's counter; a rope was thrown to us,
and in a few moments I was on her quarterdeck, standing all
trembling and nervous before a tall beautiful woman, whose
deep-blue eyes and fair, breeze-blown hair were all that I could
see--everything else was lost to me.
"Halcro!" she exclaimed, holding out her two sunburnt hands in
greeting.
"Thora!" I murmured, taking her hands in mine.
"You have expected me, then?" she said, as I drew her gently to the
rail to let the sailors pass.
We stood there, looking into each other's face, in which the four
years that had passed since our last meeting had left their
maturing touch.
"I have been expecting you these two months past," I said, looking
wistfully over the sea. "There has never come a ship from Denmark
but I have boarded her, hoping to see you."
"Well, you see me at last, and am I altered?"
"You are only more beautiful, Thora, more womanly. And so you are
coming back to Pomona to visit us again?"
"No, not to visit you, Halcro. I am homeward bound this time. I am
never going to leave old Orkney again. My schooling is over, and
there is no one left in Copenhagen now to keep me there. I am going
to settle down in some cottage near our dear sea cliffs, where I
can see the ships passing from my garden seat and dream my life
away in pleasant solitude."
"In solitude!" I stammered; then shyly asked:
"Did you not get my last letter, Thora?"
"What! the one in which you told me of Jessie's marriage to Captain
Gordon, and that the dominie had retired from his school, and that
you were promoted to captain, and had called your new boat the
Thora? Yes, certainly, I got it."
"But there was something else I said in it, Thora--something more
important to me than these things you speak of. Did you not read
that part?"
Thora looked meekly down at the white planks of the deck, her
cheeks growing rosy and her breath coming quick. Then turning her
eyes aft towards the steering wheel, she said, crossing the deck:
"Captain Ericson, do you not think you should be attending to the
piloting of this ship?"
"No," I said, following her across to the lee side, where the great
mizzen sail shielded us from the view of others on board. "No; my
mate, Willie Hercus, is looking after that. I am off duty today. I
am here not as pilot; I have come out to welcome you home."
Then, after a long silence, during which we both looked overboard
upon the dancing waves, where the porpoises rolled in play, and the
gulls dipped lightly on balanced wings, I said:
"Thora, you did not answer all my letter when you wrote. You were
not offended, were you, by what I said?"
"I know what you mean, Halcro," she said, resting her hand upon the
rail and turning her eyes full upon me, "I was not offended, or I
should not now be here. I did not answer you in writing. I have
come to answer you in person."
She put her hand in mine, and added the one word:
"Yes."
And that was the answer that Thora spoke on that summer day, long
ago, as we stood together on the ship that brought her over from
the home of her fathers to the land in the northern seas that was
more truly her own. And the ship sailed on, over the blue waters
and through breezy sounds and among verdant isles; into sunlit
fiords, where the sea birds flew; on, under the dark weatherbeaten
cliffs and lofty rocks, where the cormorant sat perched on high.
And at last, as the dusk of the evening gathered and the light of
the sunset silvered the waters, down went the chain with rattling
noise, and we came to an anchor in the peaceful haven of Stromness.
THE END.
Notes.
i According to the standard of value in 1843, the ingot of
silver, weighing six ounces, would be worth 1 pound, 13s., 0d.
ii Peerie = little.