of shipping, he was the one man in Stromness whose word was
taken above all others.

When Bailie Duke was comfortably settled in his easy chair, and
there was a lull in the noise of conversation, he turned to Captain
Gordon and asked him to tell the company how he had come by the
hurt in his head, and what sort of a time he had had in the recent
storm.

"Well, ye see," said Gordon, taking a glance round his hearers'
faces, "it was a most unlucky affair from the first. I was warned
before I left Stromness that my masts were too high, and in
addition to the fear of losing them I was troubled by my men
declaring that the ship was bewitched. We were overrun with mice,
d'ye see. Well, I got a cat, a wild-like animal, from old Grace
Drever here. Young Ericson brought the beast aboard, but what
became of it I cannot exactly tell, for no man could find it,
though we could often hear its wild squealing at night.

"From the moment Pilot Ericson left us outside the Sound we
encountered misfortune. We reached Cape Wrath after a struggle
against contrary winds, and off the Butt of Lewis we lay to for two
days. The men swore that the cat down the hold was possessed of
some evil demon, and that we would never make any progress on the
voyage unless we turned back and took the animal home. Well, we
beat about until we sighted St. Kilda, where wet weather came on,
and a gale from the west sprang up. We made no headway, and the
island lay like an impassable rock on our beam for three days. The
sea came rolling on from the west--great snow-topped mountains of
waves--and the spray and the cutting sleet were hard to stand
against. One night we shipped a heavy sea, which carried away our
port bulwarks and stanchions and sent me into the lee scuppers,
where I was stunned by a blow on the head. The same sea smashed the
jolly boat.

"I was insensible for a couple of days, and when I crept on deck
again I found the other boat had been stove in. The fore and main
topgallant masts were gone. I was standing on the quarterdeck,
when, just at midnight, I was startled by a most unearthly
caterwauling, as though all the furies in the infernal regions had
broken loose. I looked in the direction it came from, and, behold!
there stood the cat like a frightful apparition. He seemed four
times his original size, and his eyes were like two gleaming fires.
Even now I am not sure if it was the flesh-and-blood Baudrons or
his ghost come to explain the my