“I must get there to-night,” said Jemmy. “Which is the way?”
“The nicht!” came back the buzzing bewilderment. “To the magistrate at Kirkwa’ the nicht? Mon, what’s upon ye?”
Jemmy wished the fellow would not talk so loud, though reason told him lungs of brass would hardly reach the Revenge. Panic.
“Do you know any one would show a man the way to Kirkwall for a bit of money?” asked Jemmy, inspired.
The void answered not. Then, ponderously, “It would take a muckle o’ siller for a man wi’ bairns to go out the nicht.”
“A half-guinea, supposin’.”
Long pause.
“Aye—supposin’ as ye say. Cam, lad.”
Jemmy’s guide stopped a little while at a cottage to warn the guid wife he would be out making an honest penny, and then they were off on the shadowy leagues. Cicerone tried with rude probe to find out what Jemmy’s business with the magistrate might be, a fact which, perhaps as much as the coveted “siller”, had bought his services, but when daylight and Kirkwall appeared together, he left his queer employer at the house of the magistrate with all of his information unbroached.
“This is a funny cock to be crowing in my parlor the morn,” thought the magistrate as, with sleepy peevishness, he was compelled to journey to Santa Cruz, to provision at Porta Santa, to double Cape St. Vincent and what not by this boy with early manhood’s whiskers unshaven, drawn, sallow face, uncurbed hair and clad in a striking symphony of old sea clothes. “But sairtainly there has been an egg laid somewhere.”