Look at the map of Scotland, and you will find its most northerly county, Shetland of the Hundred Isles, lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Perhaps you know this part of the world mostly in connection with the pretty little shaggy Shetland ponies which feed upon the young heather, and are brought to England for children to ride; but those who have visited it can tell very interesting stories about the wild country, with its warm-hearted kindly fisher-folk, and they often bring home with them beautiful shawls which the women and girls knit from the soft wool of their sheep.
They tell us that of the hundred islands, about thirty are inhabited. Some are large, but others so small that only one or two families live upon them; and others are little more than rocks—the home of sea-fowl of every wing.
In the largest island you will soon find Lerwick, the chief town. Now look to the very south for the lofty cliff called Sumburgh Head, and near it Grutness Harbour, where they catch the grey fish.
It was from this harbour that a small vessel, the Columbine, set sail on Saturday, January 30th, 1886, intending to make the voyage—rough at all times, but often very perilous in winter—along the coast to Lerwick.
Many a boat had perished on these cruel shores, even since lighthouses have been placed to warn the seamen from the most dangerous rocks. If you had asked the captain of the Columbine about his route, he would have told you that he must steer past Cape Noness, then close to the Isle of Mousa, with its ancient castle built in the time of the Picts; Bressay Island would next come in sight, and then the tall lighthouse which guards Lerwick Harbour. He might have told you, too, that upon that January morning he was starting with only one passenger on board—an elderly woman who was leaving her home in the south of the island to go and see a doctor at Lerwick, as she had been ill for some months.
The two men who formed the crew of the Columbine returned the same day as they had set sail, in an open boat belonging to their vessel. They said it had been blowing hard when they started, and they had not got more than four miles on the way when the captain was knocked overboard by a sudden jerk of the boom. They quickly lowered the boat, and rowed hard to save him; but, sad to tell, all their efforts were in vain, and they were at length obliged to give up the attempt as hopeless, and were about to return to the ship, when, to their dismay, they saw that she had drifted out to sea, and, with her helpless passenger on board, was now far beyond their reach.
The men pulled with all their strength; but the sea was so heavy, and the Columbine drifted so fast, that the distance between them rapidly increased; and at last they had to turn and make for the shore, which they reached with difficulty in their little open boat.
They told their tale, but nothing could be done to reach the drifting vessel. Towards nightfall, some fishermen on the Isle of Mousa, where opposing currents meet, and the sea is white with foam, saw the Columbine pass, driven along by the wind. She was soon out of sight, and was heard of no more upon the shores of Shetland.
And what became of Elizabeth Mouat, the sick and lonely passenger, who shared the fate of the abandoned ship?
You must hear her story, for, wonderful to say, she lived to tell it; and I know those who saw her safe and sound in her Shetland home, and heard it from her own lips. But she had been to Norway meanwhile, a much longer voyage than to Lerwick.