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employed such criminal means for that end they never dreamed of.
The appropriation of wreck was viewed, with smuggling, as a very
light offence by the Shetlanders, who, at the same time, would have
shrunk with horror from such crimes as those which Bartle had
committed, and however little the boys might have thought of the sin
against human codes of morality, they saw in all its deepest
blackness the enormity of their parent’s offence against Divine laws.
Therefore, as I told you, these things went a great way to work a
change in the characters of the lads, adding to their hatred of sin,
and taking away much that was evil in their disposition.
But time, that never flies from the happy, nor lingers with the sad,
although we often think he is cruel enough to do so; time, whose
monotonous footsteps echo along the years at the same even pace,
no matter how we smile or suffer; time went on, and marked another
season on the tablets of eternity, and, as he traced the first lines of
the coming year, he also brought back the brave old Yule. Yule came
this time with glittering frost and smiling sky, quiet waves, and scarce
a breath of wind, and Rassmie launched his fishing boat for a day’s
excursion among the cliffs. Their home was, as usual, unbrightened
by festivity, so the good lads persuaded their mother and Tronda to
accompany them on the water, and the four made a pleasant, if
sober, party. Tronda had seldom been upon the sea, and had seen
very little of the sublime scenery so near her home, therefore she
easily prevailed on her brothers to row close to the shore, that she
might the better admire the varied beauty of the crags and caves.
One of the latter particularly attracted Tronda’s girlish fancy, and at
her desire the boat entered the rock-hewn hall, whose tinted walls
gave back a thousand silvery echoes of the splashing oars. It was a
vast cavern into which the boat had entered, and the further she
went the wider and more extensive seemed the boundaries of that
ocean home. Even Doya’s broken spirit seemed to share in the
enthusiasm of the young people, whose exclamations of rapture
mingled with the shrill cry of the brooding sea fowl, and the
whispering of the billows. But suddenly Tronda’s voice changed to a
scream of terror, and she pointed to a ledge of rock in one of the
deepest recesses of the cave. There lay what at first appeared to be
merely a heap of ragged clothing, but which contained too surely a
human skeleton. Rassmie’s first instinct was to turn his boat and fly
from the horrible sight, but his mother was quite above the vulgar
fears of the ignorant, and, after she had by her quiet mien and pious
words reassured her children, their skiff was gently impelled nearer
to the object of their alarm. There was nothing loathsome about
those poor mortal remains; only a few whitened bones, huddled
within the folds of a seaman’s dress, and a fleshless hand spread
out upon the chilly stone. He had escaped from drowning by the help
of a little boat, whose broken bits, cast up beyond the reach of the
sea, by some unusually high tide and storm, spoke to so much of the
sad tale. On that hard bed of shelving rock the unfortunate man had
met a more dreadful death than that of the engulphing wave.
Unheard, unsuccoured, he had died of starvation. “What had we
better do, mother?” said one of the boys, after a long silence, which
had been employed by the young people in gazing upon the
miserable spectacle of man’s helpless humanity, and in gathering up
the courage which had so suddenly deserted them. Doya did not
reply, and the pallor and anguish which had fallen so suddenly upon
her features gave much alarm to her children. “Are you ill, dear
mother? What is it?” they queried. When at last she spoke, her voice
trembled, and her figure shook with the force of some inward trouble,
which she evidently tried to conceal and overcome. Having
summoned all her strength of mind, she said, hurriedly—“No one
must come here, no one must know of this but you and I. Children,
children, the guardian spirit, who never forsakes its charge, has
guided us here.” By the mother’s direction, Rassmie and Hermann
landed on the little strip of sand which carpeted the further end of the
cave. There they gathered together some bits of wood belonging to
the broken boat, and, clambering up the rude walls, they deposited
the spars on a ledge close to that on which the sailor lay. Then Doya
got out of the boat, telling her children to return to the mouth of the
cavern, and linger there out of sight until she called them. They were
reluctant to leave her alone in such a place, and with such a task as
they rightly guessed she had set herself to do, but obedience was
the first lesson these young people had learned, and reverence for
their mother and her wishes was the consequence of her wise
training. The oars were dipped into the quiet water, and in a few
moments Doya was alone with it. Ah! who but a wife would have
knelt so tenderly by that ghastly object, and wrapped it in the folds of
her cloak? who else would have laid her living lips on the bleached
and bony palm, and have recognized in those un-sepulchred bones
something she had once loved? Who but a wife, whose young
affections had been altogether his, would have forgotten the sin and
sorrow, the neglect and unkindness of years, and have thus cared
for the poor remains of a wicked man?
Doya knelt long and prayed by her husband’s corpse, then with
reverent hands she wrapped it closer in the shroud she had taken
from her own person for that purpose, and while doing so she found
among the skeleton fingers a small pocket-book. With an eager hope
she opened this message from the departed. The sleeve of the dead
man’s oil-skin coat had protected the paper from destruction, and the
words which Bartle’s dying hand had pencilled on the leaves were
easily deciphered. This is what he had written:—
“My wife and children, forgive me. God has done so. I am
dying here, within a short distance of you all and home. I do
not know how many days I have been here. It seems like
ages. No help can come to me, and I am beyond the reach of
being heard. I fled from your accusing eyes, and the boat
carried me here. She was tossed like a weed on the rocks,
and I have crawled up hither to die a harder death than any I
ever dealt. It is the meet reward for all my crimes—that I
know; but I am not alone, and I am forgiven. Try to think kindly
of me. I have been very wicked, but now I am at peace, and
dying. Something whispers you will know my fate, my
children, my wife.”
Just as Cousin Cyntha concluded her story, the clock struck, and
then a strange stare of astonishment stole over every face. What the
hour was it is not necessary to state, but a general stirring among
the company told the fact that all of them were of opinion it was high
time to be thinking of returning to their homes. But while glasses
were being handed round, Old Merry took the opportunity of
arresting attention; and, amid cries of “Hurrah, bravo! A speech! Old
Merry, a speech!” got upon his legs, and after polishing his bald pate
and adjusting his specs, according to time-honoured usage, he thus
delivered himself:—
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