Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“They told you I was dead, Miss Margaret,” said I, and I know my voice trembled very much, and I know that had I not leant on the chair I should have fallen. “They were mistaken; I went to Plymouth only lately, and found you were no longer there; and when I discovered that you had gone north, I came here to seek you.”

She recovered herself while I was speaking, and rising from her seat, came up and gave me her hand. I do not say that there was anything very extraordinary in the action, but I know that it made me very happy. Her friends at first looked very much astonished; but a few words served to explain matters, and then they were doubly glad that they had had the opportunity of being of so much service to an old friend of their young relative.

I found that the name of my host, the uncle of Miss Troall, was David Angus, and that the place where the smack had been wrecked was in Saint Magnus Bay, in the parish of North Morven. My friends were the holders of one of the largest farms in the district, and lived in a very comfortable, though what people in the south would call a rough way. I am not going to talk of all that passed between Margaret and me. I should not have believed that she had thought so much of me as she had done, it seemed; but our first meeting had been under peculiar circumstances. She had seen me mourning deeply for a lost relative, and she had discovered thus that I had a tender heart, so I may venture to say, and now my coming all the way north to look for her showed her that she had made no little impression on it.

Well, all that has passed and gone. I got every day better and better, and was soon able to walk out with her along the tops of the high cliffs, and to visit the wild scenes to be found especially in that part of the island. I especially remember one place we visited, called the Navis Grind. It is a gap in the cliffs formed by the whole force of the western ocean rolling against them during a succession of heavy gales, age after age, till vast fragments of the rock have been forced in for hundreds of yards over the downs, and now lie like the fragments of some ruined city scattered over the plain. We delighted in returning to those scenes of wild grandeur, because they contrasted so strongly with our own quiet happiness.

This was only the second time in my life that I had enjoyed what might be properly called idleness. The first was during my short stay with Aunt Bretta, and then I confess that I often did at times feel weary from not knowing what to do with myself. Now I never felt anything like weariness, I was too happy to spend the greater part of the day in the society of Margaret. Sometimes I used to walk by myself over the downs by the edge of the cliffs, and at others visit the different parts of his farm with my host, and assist him to look after his cattle and horses and sheep, which were scattered far and wide over the peninsula.

I have scarcely mentioned his daughter Minna. She was a fair-haired, smiling, good-natured lassie, who was contented with her lot, because she had sense enough to discover that it was a very happy one.

There was one person, however, who would, I soon with some pain discovered, have been better pleased had I not come to the islands. That was John Angus, my host’s son. He did not treat me uncivilly or unkindly, but I saw that it cost him an effort to be as cordial as the rest of his family. He was a good-natured, frank, kind-hearted man, whom under other circumstances I should have hoped to have made my friend. I cannot but think, too, that in time he would have won Margaret’s regard, and he was certainly a man to have made any woman happy.

In two weeks or so I was Margaret’s acknowledged suitor, or rather, I may say, her affianced husband. I was so happy that I thought sorrow could never again come near me. Now Margaret herself reminded me that I was a Shetlander,—indeed, as I was born at sea, no other people would claim me,—and that I ought to try and find out some of my family. I talked the subject over with Mr Angus. He remembered many of them, but when he came to consider, every one of my near relations were gone. Some cousins of my father’s were the nearest remaining, and then there were several of Aunt Bretta’s old friends, the companions of her youth whom she wished me to see. John Angus volunteered to accompany me, and he provided two strong, shaggy little ponies for our journey.

We started away one morning soon after daybreak over the wild tracks, the only substitute for roads through the islands in those days, and crossed into the chief part of the mainland by a causeway so narrow that I could have thrown a biscuit across it. On one side of us was Rowe Sound, and on the other Hagraseter Voe, a long, narrow voe running out of Yell Sound. It would be difficult to describe the wild, and often beautiful scenery through which we passed. Long, deep voes, full of inlets and indentations, with high heathery hills on either side, was the most characteristic feature, and quiet, little inland lochs, with wildfowl resting on their bosoms, was another, and then high rocky cliffs, the habitation of innumerable sea-birds, and hundreds of green islands and rocks scattered about on every side on the surface of the blue ocean.

John Angus did his best to point out to me the various points of interest we passed. Among the most curious were the Pictie towers, little round edifices built with rough stone, beautifully put together, with passages inside winding up to the top without steps. They were built by a race who inhabited those islands long before the time of which history gives any account. Whence they came, or how they departed, no one knows. Every hamlet throughout Shetland is called a toun. The cottages composing them are very far from attractive-looking edifices, generally built of mud, of one storey, and thatched; with a midden on one side of the door, and a pool of a very doubtful colour and contents on the other. The insides were often large and clean, and tidy enough, and in such I found many of my aunt’s friends residing.