“Art thou still sick, Snorro?” he asked at length.
“Not I.”
“Why, then, art thou idle?”
“I am thinking. But the thought is too much for me. I can make nothing of it.”
Few noticed Snorro’s remark, but old Jal 101 Sinclair said, “Tell thy thought, Snorro. There are wise men here to read it for thee; very wise men, as thou must have noticed.”
Snorro caught something in the old man’s face, or in the inflection of his voice, which gave him an assurance of sympathy, so he said: “Well, then, it is this. Jan Vedder is evidently a very bad man, and a very bad sailor; yet when Donald Twatt’s boat sunk in the Vor Ness, Jan took his bonnet in his hand, and he put his last sovereign in it, and he went up and down Lerwick till he had got £40 for Twatt. And he gave him a suit of his own clothes, and he would hear no word wrong of him, and he said, moreover, that nothing had happened Twatt but what might happen the best man and the best sailor that ever lived when it would be God’s own time. I thought that was a good thing in Jan, but no one has spoke of it to-day.”
“People have ever thought thee a fool, Snorro. When thou art eighty years old, as Jal Sinclair is, perhaps thou wilt know more. Jan Vedder should have left Twatt to his trouble; he should have said, ‘Twatt is a drunken fellow, or a careless, foolhardy fellow; he is a bad 102 sailor, a bad man, and he ought to have gone to the bottom.‘” Then there was a minute’s uncomfortable silence, and the men gradually scattered.
Peter was glad of it. He had no particular pleasure in any conversation having Jan for a topic, and he was burning and smarting at Tulloch’s interference. It annoyed him also to see Snorro so boldly taking Jan’s part. His indignant face and brooding laziness was a new element in the store, and it worried Peter far beyond its importance. He left unusually early, and then Snorro closed the doors, and built up the fire, and made some tea, and broiled mutton and bloaters, and set his few dishes on the box which served him for a table. Jan had slept heavily all day, but when Snorro brought the candle near, he opened his eyes and said, “I am hungry, Snorro.”
“I have come to tell thee there is tea and meat waiting. All is closed, and we can eat and talk, and no one will trouble us.”
A Shetlander loves his tea, and it pleased Snorro to see how eagerly Jan drank cup after cup. And soon his face began to lose its weary, indifferent look, and he ate with keen relish the 103 simple food before him. In an hour Jan was nearly like himself once more. Then he remembered Margaret. In the extremity of his physical weakness and weariness, he had forgotten every thing in sleep, but now the delay troubled him. “I ought to have seen my wife to-day, Snorro; why did thou let me sleep?”