Chapter 8

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.