The Pirate

“But if one of those three had spoken the news over again, and it is two to one that such a thing happened, the old lady prophesies upon velvet.”

Such was the speech of Cleveland, addressed to Magnus Troil, and heard without any applause. The Udaller’s respect for his country extended to its superstitions, and so did the interest which he took in his unfortunate kinswoman. If he never rendered a precise assent to her high supernatural pretensions, he was not at least desirous of hearing them disputed by others.

“Norna,” he said, “his cousin,” (an emphasis on the word,) “held no communication with Bryce Snailsfoot, or his acquaintances. He did not pretend to explain how she came by her information; but he had always remarked that Scotsmen, and indeed strangers in general, when they came to Zetland, were ready to find reasons for things which remained sufficiently obscure to those whose ancestors had dwelt there for ages.”

Captain Cleveland took the hint, and bowed, without attempting to defend his own scepticism.

“And now forward, my brave hearts,” said the Udaller; “and may all have as good tidings as I have! Three whales cannot but yield—let me think how many hogsheads”——

There was an obvious reluctance on the part of the guests to be the next in consulting the oracle of the tent.

“Gude news are welcome to some folks, if they came frae the deil himsell,” said Mistress Baby Yellowley, addressing the Lady Glowrowrum,—for a similarity of disposition in some respects had made a sort of intimacy betwixt them—“but I think, my leddy, that this has ower mickle of rank witchcraft in it to have the countenance of douce Christian folks like you and me, my leddy.”

“There may be something in what you say, my dame,” replied the good Lady Glowrowrum; “but we Hialtlanders are no just like other folks; and this woman, if she be a witch, being the Fowd’s friend and near kinswoman, it will be ill taen if we haena our fortunes spaed like a’ the rest of them; and sae my nieces may e’en step forward in their turn, and nae harm dune. They will hae time to repent, ye ken, in the course of nature, if there be ony thing wrang in it, Mistress Yellowley.”

While others remained under similar uncertainty and apprehension, Halcro, who saw by the knitting of the old Udaller’s brows, and by a certain impatient shuffle of his right foot, like the motion of a man who with difficulty refrains from stamping, that his patience began to wax rather thin, gallantly declared, that he himself would, in his own person, and not as a procurator for others, put the next query to the Pythoness. He paused a minute—collected his rhymes, and thus addressed her:

Claud Halcro.

“Mother doubtful, Mother dread, 
Dweller of the Fitful-head, 
Thou hast conn’d full many a rhyme, 
That lives upon the surge of time:

Tell me, shall my lays be sung, 
Like Hacon’s of the golden tongue, 
Long after Halcro’s dead and gone? 
Or, shall Hialtland’s minstrel own 
One note to rival glorious John?”

The voice of the sibyl immediately replied, from her sanctuary,

Norna.

“The infant loves the rattle’s noise; 
Age, double childhood, hath its toys; 
But different far the descant rings, 
As strikes a different hand the strings.

The Eagle mounts the polar sky— 
The Imber-goose, unskill’d to fly, 
Must be content to glide along, 
Where seal and sea-dog list his song.”

Halcro bit his lip, shrugged his shoulders, and then, instantly recovering his good-humour, and the ready, though slovenly power of extemporaneous composition, with which long habit had invested him, he gallantly rejoined,

Claud Halcro.

“Be mine the Imber-goose to play, 
And haunt lone cave and silent bay:— 
The archer’s aim so shall I shun— 
So shall I ’scape the levell’d gun— 
Content my verse’s tuneless jingle, 
With Thule’s sounding tides to mingle, 
While, to the ear of wandering wight, 
Upon the distant headland’s height, 
Soften’d by murmur of the sea, 
The rude sounds seem like harmony!”

As the little bard stepped back, with an alert gait, and satisfied air, general applause followed the spirited manner in which he had acquiesced in the doom which levelled him with an Imber-goose. But his resigned and courageous submission did not even yet encourage any other person to consult the redoubted Norna.

“The coward fools!” said the Udaller. “Are you too afraid, Captain Cleveland, to speak to an old woman?—Ask her any thing—ask her whether the twelve-gun sloop at Kirkwall be your consort or no.”

Cleveland looked at Minna, and probably conceiving that she watched with anxiety his answer to her father’s question, he collected himself, after a moment’s hesitation.

“I never was afraid of man or woman.—Master Halcro, you have heard the question which our host desires me to ask—put it in my name, and in your own way—I pretend to as little skill in poetry as I do in witchcraft.”

Halcro did not wait to be invited twice, but, grasping Captain Cleveland’s hand in his, according to the form which the game prescribed, he put the query which the Udaller had dictated to the stranger, in the following words:—

Claud Halcro.

“Mother doubtful, Mother dread, 
Dweller of the Fitful-head, 
A gallant bark from far abroad, 
Saint Magnus hath her in his road, 
With guns and firelocks not a few— 
A silken and a scarlet crew, 
Deep stored with precious merchandise, 
Of gold, and goods of rare device— 
What interest hath our comrade bold 
In bark and crew, in goods and gold?”

There was a pause of unusual duration ere the oracle would return any answer; and when she replied, it was in a lower, though an equally decided tone, with that which she had hitherto employed:—

Norna.

“Gold is ruddy, fair, and free, 
Blood is crimson, and dark to see;— 
I look’d out on Saint Magnus Bay, 
And I saw a falcon that struck her prey,— 
A gobbet of flesh in her beak she bore, 
And talons and singles are dripping with gore; 
Let him that asks after them look on his hand; 
And if there is blood on’t, he’s one of their band.”

Cleveland smiled scornfully, and held out his hand,—“Few men have been on the Spanish main as often as I have, without having had to do with the Guarda Costas once and again; but there never was aught like a stain on my hand that a wet towel would not wipe away.”

The Udaller added his voice potential—“There is never peace with Spaniards beyond the Line,—I have heard Captain Tragendeck and honest old Commodore Rummelaer say so an hundred times, and they have both been down in the Bay of Honduras, and all thereabouts.—I hate all Spaniards, since they came here and reft the Fair Isle men of their vivers in 1558.[4] I have heard my grandfather speak of it; and there is an old Dutch history somewhere about the house, that shows what work they made in the Low Countries long since. There is neither mercy nor faith in them.”