in the silent street, and looking up the passage of the
Anchor Close I saw a company of men quickly passing. Among them
were Carver Kinlay and his son Tom.

I told my father who they were, at which he expressed much wonder,
and tried to assign a cause for their hurrying. But soon our
questioning was fully answered by the unexpected appearance of my
sister Jessie.

"Father!" said she, very much out of breath, for she had walked
very quickly from Lyndardy, where she had been staying during the
whole of that past week.

"Well, lass?" said my father, looking round at the girl's agitated
face. "What have you seen that you look so scared?"

"I've seen from the cliffs," gasped Jessie. "I've seen the Lydia
makin' for Stromness. She has surely put back, for her masts are
away, and her bulwarks are wrecked."

"The Lydia! What, Captain Gordon's ship? Ay, lass, but ye're
telling me a strange thing. You'd better gang and tell Mansie to
get the men out. There'll be a race wi' the new pilot, I'm
thinking."

And he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and came down into the boat
to get her ready.

Jessie, however, had no need to go and tell the crew to get ready,
for she had hardly turned away when my uncle Mansie and the men
hurried down the jetty and sprang into the Curlew.

The day was so fine and bright that my heart yearned for a sail in
the boat, and I was about to ask my father if I might go out with
him, when he forestalled me by ordering me to be seated among the
ropes in the bow.

The quietude of the Sabbath was now changed to bustle and
excitement. The oars and rowlocks were put in place, the sail made
ready for hoisting, and soon all was trim and ready to start.

My father's pilot boat, the Curlew, was strongly built and of great
breadth of beam. It was of a pattern and rig peculiar to the
Orkneys, much after the fashion of a whaling boat, and called a
"sixter," from having a crew of six men. It was propelled by either
sail or oars, as either was most convenient, but the Orcadian
boatmen never employed the oars when the sail could be used.

The boat's crew was a picked one, and seldom could six finer men be
seen together. The skipper, my father, was himself a picture of
manly strength, handsome and agile. His father and grandfather had
been pilots; the latter, indeed, had been the chief pilot of
Stromness in the year 1780, when Captain Cook's ships, the
Discovery and the Resolution, lay in the harbour on their r