My first question was to ask them the name of this island.  What joy it was to me to hear once more a human voice, to see a fresh and rosy face!

“It’s the Fair Isle,” said one of them.  “We thought you was lost.  Where have you been, my lad, all this while past since Davie Flett fell owerboard?”

“What!” I asked, “did Davie come ashore?”

“Ay, did he,” said the fisherman; “he was picked up by his own boat, and they brought him ashore here the next morning.  We sent three luggers out to seek you yourself, when we heard that you were aboard the Falcon alone, but they could find you nowhere.”

The men brought their boat astern and came aboard.  I asked them further about Captain Flett, and learned that he, with the mate and Jerry, had only the evening before gone back to Orkney in a Kirkwall fishing sloop.

The two Fair Islanders then helped me to take the Falcon into their small landlocked haven, where, having supplied the good people with an abundance of provisions, I engaged the services of three fishermen to help me with the schooner back to Stromness, and on the morning following we set sail.

It was well that I got this timely assistance, and that I was not suffered to remain any longer alone on the Falcon, for on leaving Fair Isle we encountered boisterous weather.  For two days we were tossed about on the great, white-crested waves of the open sea, and frequent showers of hail and sleet added to our discomfort.  The storm abated somewhat as the rocky shores of Pomona hove in sight, and soon the familiar bay of Skaill and the cliffs of my native parish seaboard showed me that the voyage was approaching a welcome end.

It was evening when the schooner passed abreast of the rocks of Yeskenaby, and now I watched eagerly for the light in the windows of Lyndardy farm.  As I looked landward, however, I observed something through the growing darkness that excited considerable wonder in my mind.  Low down in the North Gaulton cliffs I noticed a peculiar hazy light.  Presently it grew brighter and developed into a flickering flame and then disappeared.  The light was not seen by any of my crew; but from its position I judged that it proceeded from a torch which someone was using in that cave in the cliff wherein Thora and I had met with our adventure some weeks before.

Chapter XXXIV.  Colin Lothian Makes An Accusation.

When I went ashore at Stromness I found that Captain Flett, who had landed in Orkney three or four days before me, had not yet come over from Kirkwall; so next morning I paid off my three Fair Islanders, who went over by land to Kirkwall, intending to return to their home by the sloop that had brought my skipper and shipmates.

I saw the schooner safely moored in the bay, with her cabin door locked and her hatchway closed, and then went up home to Lyndardy.  My mother and Jessie had already heard that the Falcon had come into the harbour; they gave me a very warm welcome from this my first voyage, and listened with interest and surprise to the things I had to tell them.