It was indeed water, fresh drawn from the Atlantic. The constable, it seems, feeling cold after his immersion, broached the keg in our absence, and had taken a good pull at it before he discovered that it wasn’t the ‘rale Innishowen.’ It produced such a nausea and sickness of stomach, that the poor fellow thought he was poisoned, and became frightened into the ludicrous state of distress in which we found him.
I now examined the contents of another keg in the boat. Salt water also. Meanwhile, our three prisoners, who understood not a word of English, stood composedly looking on, and seemed quite satisfied with their position. Our own position was certainly a novel one. There we stood, eight men in Her Majesty’s service, with three prisoners in charge, and for what? For having two kegs of salt water in their possession, whilst the broad Atlantic rolled at our feet. No one appeared to be able to give any explanation of our peculiar ‘seizure;’ and we were about to leave the place in disgust, when the coastguard drew my attention to the sound of oars farther up the shore, and we could dimly discern a boat putting off towards the island.
‘Depend upon it,’ said he, ‘that boat has just been landing the poteen; and this has only been a decoy, to divert our attention from the real culprits.’
This indeed was the true explanation of the mystery, so I discharged my prisoners, who coolly tossed the kegs into their boat and pulled off towards Innismurry.
I afterwards learned that Mickey, with all his apparent simplicity, was a shrewd confederate of the smugglers, and that it was really he who planned and set us on this ‘wildgoose chase.’ They expected, it seems, a raid made on them that night; and Mickey was deputed, under cover of giving information, to learn the mode of attack, and, if possible to thwart it. In this he was but too successful. And although, on many subsequent occasions, I had ample revenge for the trick played on me that night, I must confess that these later and more successful experiences appear to me but tame and commonplace, compared with my first encounter with the Donegal smugglers.
SOME FAROE LEGENDS.
Adapted from the Danish.
I. THE SEAL-GIRL.
Seals have their origin in human beings who of their own free-will have drowned themselves in the sea. Once a year—on Twelfth-night—they slip off their skins and amuse themselves like men and women in dancing and other pleasures, in the caves of the rocks and the big hollows of the beach. A young man in the village of Mygledahl, in Kalsoe, had heard talk of this conduct of the seals, and a place in the neighbourhood of the village was pointed out to him where they were said to assemble on Twelfth-night.
In the evening of that day he stole away thither and concealed himself. Soon he saw a vast multitude of seals come swimming towards the place, cast off their skins, and lie down upon the rocks. He noticed that a very fair and beautiful girl came out of one of the seal-skins and lay down not far from where he was hidden. Then he crept towards her and took her in his arms. The man and the seal-girl danced together throughout the whole night; but when day began to break, every seal went in search of its skin. The seal-girl alone was unsuccessful in the search for her skin; but she tracked it by its smell to the Mygledahl-man, and when he, in spite of her entreaties, would not give it back to her, she was forced to follow him to Mygledahl. There they lived together for many years, and many children were born to them; but the man had to be perpetually on the watch lest his wife should be able to lay hands on her seal-skin, which, accordingly, he kept locked in the bottom of his chest, the key of which was always about his person.