“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 return from the South Seas.

My father’s shipmates, as he called them, were also fine stalwart men, each of them competent to take the skipper’s place, but each willing to sacrifice anything for Sandy Ericson.  My uncle Mansie was mate, and sat forward in the bow.  The stroke oar was usually taken by Tom Hercus, a man of singular daring.  Willie Slater was an old whaler, who could stand any hardships with perfect indifference.  Then there was Jock Eunson, a good-humoured Orphir man, who, on many a dark night, had kept his mates merry as they beat about in the outer sea in search of ships; and Ringan Storlsen, of Finstown, who had been at school with my father, and with whom he had had many an adventure.

“Hurry along, my lads; there’s Kinlay started,” said my father, seating himself in the stern sheets.