Chapter 17

"NO GOOD IT BETOKENETH."

The positions of the two on Yelholme were reversed, and it became the man's part to speak words of comfort.

"There are plenty of boats about--must be in these parts, my lad," he said, "and some one will see your skiff. Don't lose courage about the little one. I'm as vexed as can be that this should have happened for me. I'd rather have died straight away."

The generous heart of Yaspard Adiesen was stirred from its bitterness of grief by such words, and after a time he allowed himself to hope that Signy might be rescued after all. Of his own position he thought not at all, until considering that of his companion. Then he remembered that there were some scraps of biscuit in his jacket pocket--kept there for his pets--and pulling these out he said, "I wonder if these will be of any use till some boat picks us up. I dare say you need food?"

The biscuit was very welcome; but the jacket had been of still more service in restoring a degree of warmth to the chilled and sorely injured body, and Yaspard would not listen to the man's remonstrance as he tucked the coat closer around him.

"I am not in the least cold, and don't need a jacket in such sunny weather," said Yaspard; "but I hope some of the haaf-boats may come this way soon, for you ought to be in the doctor's hands. Now I wonder if I can do anything in the way of a bandage?"

It was wonderful how the sight of those wounds had restored the lad's equanimity, and drawn his distracted mind from thoughts of the forlorn child tossing amid the waves. But that was the way God answered his prayers at first; and it is a way God often uses for helping us to bear some overwhelming calamity. The suffering of another is presented before us, and our better nature, our least selfish part, is evoked in a way that makes us dwell less upon our own trial. Yaspard's handkerchief and necktie, torn into strips, helped wonderfully to bind up some of the wounds, although the boy's hands were inexperienced at such work, and he sickened over the job.

When that was done there was nothing more to do but exercise patience, and scan the seas in hope of sighting a vessel of some sort. While they so waited, and tried to cheer each other's flagging courage, Yaspard asked, "Did you fall from a ship; or how was it you came to be tossed up here?"

The answer was startling. "You have some cursed bad men in those Shetland Isles," said the sailor, with all the energy he could command. "Hanging is too good for wreckers; they should be roasted at the false fires they light for poor seafaring men's destruction."

Yaspard stared his astonishment. "I never heard the like!" he ejaculated. "Wreckers! Why, there isn't one left in Shetland. Not one, I am sure. What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean that the stout schooner I sailed in would be in a safe harbour now instead of drifting as spindle-wood among those skerries if there were no wreckers on your islands, my lad!"

"There must be some mistake. Do tell me what happened," was all Yaspard could say. And then he heard the story.

The schooner _Norna_ was caught in a tempest crossing the North Sea, and sustained considerable damage--so much that it was deemed advisable to seek harbour for repairs. She was making for Bressa Sound when a slight fog came down which compelled the skipper to defer attempting to thread a way among those rock-bound isles till the atmosphere was clearer. While beating about, not quite sure of their exact locality, a bright light was observed which was believed to be lit for their guidance. There was no other reason why a great blaze should appear in the middle of the night on a lonely height, which loomed fitfully through the mist and gloom, and was evidently the crest of some hill. No doubt a safe harbour lay in that neighbourhood, and the _Norna_ was confidently put on another course--one which it was believed led her within the safe arms of a sheltering fiord. On the one hand could be dimly discerned a low irregular coast, on the other rose the gaunt shadowy outline of majestic crags.

It was no friendly voe the hapless schooner had come into, but the dangerous sound, studded with stacks and holmes, which flow between Lunda and Boden.

Guided by that treacherous beacon, the _Norna_ sailed slowly on and crashed on a sunken rock not far from the cliffs of Trullyabister.

The man who told the story had gone aloft to take in sail, when it was discovered that the vessel was among breakers; and when she struck he was dashed from the rigging. He could give no account of what further happened, beyond remembering that he was clinging at one time to a spar, and saw his ship backing (as he described it) into deep ocean.

"I think it must have happened not far from here," he said; and Yaspard, looking towards Boden, over which the soft tints of twilight were beginning to blend with mists from the surrounding seas, replied--

"Yes; it must have been the Easting Ban upon which she struck--that's a sunken rock quite near this holme. But I can't think what light it was you saw. You see the land on Lunda is very low along the sound, and there are only a very few people living on my island--that is Boden there; the light couldn't have been there."

The sailor raised himself on an elbow and looked at the cliffs of Boden, and the sound with its many isolated and barbarous rocks; then he said--

"The fire blazed from beside that cone. I recognise its shape," and he pointed to the Heogue towering steeply over Trullyabister and its range of mighty cliffs.

Yaspard shook his head.

"It couldn't be," he said positively; and then his thoughts once more became filled by the image of his little sister all alone in the _Osprey_ drifting out to sea as the evening fell, and he could not take further interest in the _Norna's_ fate. He never even asked if it was likely that any others had escaped the fate of their ship. Signy, in her holiday attire, with her bright face blanched with fear, her hands stretched to him, her small slight form bent in the attitude of prayer;--Signy floating away, away, and alone! It was terrible.

He rose up from his place beside the sailor, and going to the other side of the holme, he again knelt down and "wrestled in prayer" for his darling. Never once did he think of his own serious position, beyond desiring fervently that help might come in time to enable him to go in search of his sister with some hope of finding her.

But the twilight came slowly and softly down, and some sea-fowl who were wont to nest on Yelholme circled around it, clamouring to find their night abode invaded, but no welcome boat appeared.

The sailor gradually fell into an exhausted sleep, which looked so like death that Yaspard's heart sank with a new fear, and he scarcely dared bend over the still, prostrate figure lest he should find that fear realised. By-and-by the mists drew nearer, wrapping the holme in their filmy veil; then the sea-birds, emboldened by the motionless silence of the castaways, dropped upon the crags, and folded their wings for the night. Around the lonely islet thundered the ocean, whose waves rocked never-endingly, until Yaspard, gazing fixedly on them, felt as though the holme itself were some tremulous cradle swinging with the rhythmical ebb and flow of those majestic billows.

His brain seemed on fire, however, and would not be lulled to sleep by the influence of night and the anthem of ocean. The poor lad suffered such torment of soul as we can scarcely imagine; to the young, compulsory inaction during mental pain is almost unendurable, and sometimes Yaspard felt that to fling himself into the water, to struggle there and drown, would be better than sitting on the holme idle, helpless, picturing Signy's fate.

He gave up at last gazing on the sea, which seemed to mock his hopes and fears with its monotonous roll and roar, and fixed his eyes on the dim outline of the Heogue, which his sister had named "Boden's purple crown;" and he wondered if Signy could see the dear old hill from her place amid the waves. He _would not_ think that the _Osprey_ had capsized or broken on some crag, but continued to picture the child in the boat as he had last seen her.

While Yaspard sat there straining his eyes upon the hill-cap, he fancied he saw a flicker of red light on its side. For a moment he believed his sight had deceived him, and he rubbed his lashes and looked again. There it was again, a more distinct flicker than at first; then it grew brighter and steadier, and presently flashed up into a merry blaze which sent its ruddy life far over the sea.

Yaspard stood up wondering and trembling, till in a moment the truth flashed into his mind, and he sat down again dumfoundered, and saying within himself, "_That_ explains the whole affair! Yes. It's fule-Tammy without question. A pretty fix he has made for himself!"

Then Yaspard thought of waking the sailor to see the false light; but on second thoughts he muttered, "What's the use? If I _have_ to speak, and am ever in another place than this, I'll do it. But there isn't any use in telling upon that born fool just now. Well! I'm glad he is a fool. I could not bear this fellow to accuse us of having wreckers in Shetland--though there _have been_ plenty. But so there were in other places when folk were like savages."

He watched fule-Tammy's fire burn up and blaze steadily, then wane and die out; and when every spark was extinguished there came over the eastern sky a faint blush heralding the dawn of day.

The brief dream of night was over, and Yaspard, sighing wearily, murmured, "If some boat could but find Signy it would not matter so much about us--about me, I mean. I deserve my fate. I ought not to have left her in the boat alone for any earthly consideration. And yet--it seemed the right thing to do."