Chapter 33

The favourable breeze from the northwest continued with little variation for several days after the foundering of the Pilgrim, and I kept the schooner on the one tack, sailing before the wind, with the tiller often tied up for many hours together without my needing to touch it. I contrived, after many failures, to take an observation on the second day, for the sky was then clear, and I had all the necessary appliances excepting only the skill to use the quadrant with a seaman's confidence. I made out that I was to the northwest of the Faroe Islands, and I made no doubt that I should sight one of that group in the course of that same day or the day after.

But such was not to be my good luck. For eight full days and nights I kept on the same course, with a dull, leaden sky above and a mist creeping over the sea, and never a bit of land could I discover, nor any light, whether of beacon or of ship.

On the twelfth day after the sinking of the Pilgrim, however, I saw, to my great joy, a strip of land on the southeastern horizon. I had not the slightest notion whether it belonged to the Faroe or to the Shetland islands, but I fancied it might be the latter. It was a small island with a high rocky coast, and a vast number of sea fowl flying about and above it.

I was some six miles from the island when I noticed a brown-sailed fishing smack bearing out towards me. As the boat came near enough I hailed it. Two men were aboard, and they answered me in good Orkney dialect. They dropped alongside of the Falcon, and I threw them a rope's end.

My first question was to ask them the name of this island. What joy it was to me to hear once more a human voice, to see a fresh and rosy face!

"It's the Fair Isle," said one of them. "We thought you was lost. Where have you been, my lad, all this while past since Davie Flett fell owerboard?"

"What!" I asked, "did Davie come ashore?"

"Ay, did he," said the fisherman; "he was picked up by his own boat, and they brought him ashore here the next morning. We sent three luggers out to seek you yourself, when we heard that you were aboard the Falcon alone, but they could find you nowhere."

The men brought their boat astern and came aboard. I asked them further about Captain Flett, and learned that he, with the mate and Jerry, had only the evening before gone back to Orkney in a Kirkwall fishing sloop.

The two Fair Islanders then helped me to take the Falcon into their small landlocked haven, where, having supplied the good people with an abundance of provisions, I engaged the services of three fishermen to help me with the schooner back to Stromness, and on the morning following we set sail.

It was well that I got this timely assistance, and that I was not suffered to remain any longer alone on the Falcon, for on leaving Fair Isle we encountered boisterous weather. For two days we were tossed about on the great, white-crested waves of the open sea, and frequent showers of hail and sleet added to our discomfort. The storm abated somewhat as the rocky shores of Pomona hove in sight, and soon the familiar bay of Skaill and the cliffs of my native parish seaboard showed me that the voyage was approaching a welcome end.

It was evening when the schooner passed abreast of the rocks of Yeskenaby, and now I watched eagerly for the light in the windows of Lyndardy farm. As I looked landward, however, I observed something through the growing darkness that excited considerable wonder in my mind. Low down in the North Gaulton cliffs I noticed a peculiar hazy light. Presently it grew brighter and developed into a flickering flame and then disappeared. The light was not seen by any of my crew; but from its position I judged that it proceeded from a torch which someone was using in that cave in the cliff wherein Thora and I had met with our adventure some weeks before.