wa

up her

fellow as easily as winking!” glad for his sake as well as They were very keen on their

our own to get him ashore to bigger gun: it was, according the military hospital there, for to their accounts, the most more skilful treatment tban accurate weapon ever cast or we could give. In the event, wound; history would be made Whito recovered sufficiently to with it at the appointed timo. be moved back to the Base,

Many months afterwards wo and at the moment of writing met Brig Y again, and those he is still alive, but still an ohoorful souls a board her were invalid. It is doubtful if he a chastoned gathering. They will ever recover his early had sighted a submarine; it strength and vigour,–I dare approached thom confidently not mention the number of on the surface, the sea was shell-fragments that were exsmooth, and the brig herself tracted from his wounds.

as steady as a rook. At Getting a boat to replace & thousand yards Brig Y got our lost one was not a simple

guns. The four-inch matter. Such as offered were missed fire eight times, and the altogether unsuitable for our U-boat got away!

purpose : either they were teo Still, meeting up with this big and olumsy to be carried companion brig showed on our deck, or they were so possibilities. The two skippers rotten as to be entirely ungot their heads together and seaworthy, although the prices evolved an idea of oraining in demanded would have bought company, giving an imitation the latest thing in smart of a couple of coasters hanging motor-launches, with nickeled together for mutual proteo- fittings all complete. The tion. The plan was that, in boats

which fitted our requirethe event of falling in with ments were not for sale. the enemy, it would be possible In the result, growing deto turn a broadside of five spairing, a spairing, we stole one.

It was guns on him in a few seconds; a reprehensible thing to do, and surely, ran the argument, and I hope it will not be

I out of five guns some one or counted against our rooord; two would hit fatally!

but we had no other alterBefore we could play our native. Brig Y helped us in part in the scheme, however, the nefarious work: it was ber it was necessary to land oor boat that towed the loot off main casualty, and replace our to us after dark of the night shattered boat. White was a prior to our sailing. With very siok man-only just alive, that stolen boat aboard we put indeed, and suffering exoruoi- to sea at the first glimmer of ating pain. The morphia was dawn, and commenced the next

. losing its bite, and we were stage of our adventures.

(To be continued.)

A BRANCH OF THE FAMILY.

BY J. STORER CLOUSTON,

I,

SOME races seem to have this twentieth century beneath been created for blending par- & periscope in the Baltie or on poses. They appoar in the the bridge of a battle - oruiser dawn of history like a potent hounding the same ancient spirit, strong and heady; they prey across the Dogger Bank. pour into other lands, conquer, There has even been preserved dominato—and are absorbed; the same brief off-hand turn of and all that reappears in after speeoh that so puzzles other centuries is a strain of singular nations acoustomed to refer qualities in the compound. to serious things in serious The form of the conquerors- language. Hredlaf explaining their institutions and social the chieftain Ingemund's death struoture_has vanished ; their to his sorrowing friend in the soul alone seems to have been happy phrase, “He was used degtined to survive.

28 a target"; King Hakon just On the shores of our own informed of his unclo's rebelland, about twelve hundred lion and awaking his young years ago, shipload by shipload, queen in the small

hours of the the Vikings began to land, morning to tell her casually until at length they came by "Small are the tidings; there fleet-loads, and England had are two kings in Norway at & dynasty of Danish kings. once"-seem to be aoquaintVid Normandy they came ances we have heard converse again, and England had Nor- in many a smoking-room.

a wegian kings; all the Western But the social system in Isles of Scotland and parts of which the Ingemands and Ireland were Norse for cen- Hakons were reared—the whole turies; the seaboard counties relation of land to people and on the East of England were people to one another-stayed peopled by the Vikings; and behind in the North. These at the end of it all, what out- adventurers seem to bave been ward resemblanoe is there to a people who took on the be seen to-day, or has there colour of their surroundings been for centuries past, between like a ptarmigan or an Arctio a British county and the Saga- fox. Within two centuries the lands of the North? About bearded ohieftains who followed as much as between a pine- Rollo were shaven Norman tree and an olm.

knights, Frenoh, feudal, and The spirit of those sea-rovers, sophistioated. The Norse conacoursed of all good and pious querors of the Sudreyor appear mon, might still be found in presently as kilted Hebridean

an

dhuine-wassels. The descend- of the Viking colonies. For ants of King Sigtrygg of two centuries

or 80 before Dablin and his men spoke in their recorded history begins, & short space with the brogue their coasts had gradually of Brian Boru.

been settled by the earliest adMore or less of the old venturers. When their Saga Northern blood still flows in opens, about 860, they had the veins of most oitizens of got

earl of their own this kingdom, but as for the (unolo of Rollo of Normandy), old Northern ways of life, one and under their own earls and may search

Great Britain laws, and their ancient constithrough without finding more tation and system of land than here and there some frag. tenure, they lived semiment-& ourious custom or the independent life till

till they traces of a tenure-just visible passed on mortgage to the under the mioroscope. To read Soottish Crown in 1468, and such a pioture of the anoient on mortgage they are still Ioelandic society as is given held by King George to-day. by Dagent in his Introduction so that there is one corner to 'Barnt Njal,' is to read of of Great Britain where even & society utterly and funda- now may be seen things still mentally different from any. existent which are Norse in thing this island has known all their essentials, and which for many a century.

when you look through them But there are oertain islands, in the light of records, like now for more than four hundred gazing into a telescope, reveal years part of Sootland, and vistas reaching right back to separated from her only by a the Sagas. There you are in few miles of restless water, the actual land of the Vikings, where even to-day very plain where they lived for centuries vestiges of the old Norse so- andiluted by subjeet races, ciety may be seen, and where, carrying on as they began down to the middle of the six- in their northern homelands; teenth century, it was living and these vistas show how ander its own laws, & trifle that sex - roving, free-speakruinous but essentially an- ing, liberty - loving society changed. The Orkneys and flourished for a space in spite Shetlands

among the of its defeats, and deoayed at first, possibly the very first, last in spite of its virtuos.

6

were

II,

The islands' past is not upon steads, wide moorland spaces the surface. Driving along on the one hand rising to a mile after mile of blue-grey line of rounded bills, and on Orkney road that dips and the other a long straggling rises through stretches of looh or the shining island-set green dotted with small farm. sea, no hedgerows or wood

lands anywhere, and only a somewhat flavourless when one stunted tree or two occasion- is looking for Vikings. ally to be seen under the loe Still more rarely nowadays, of a low farm, the eye of the long low farmhouses with traveller looks a little hope- fireplaces in the middle of lessly for some poreoptible the floor and a smoke-bole in relio of the romantio Viking the roof above may be dispast.

covered by the eurious inThe lichened stones that quirer; but

any practical tower solitary above & field mason could tell him, from a of oorn, or stare silently at glanoe at the loose ramshackle one another aeross a oirole of walls, that those relios can moor, stood there for ages never have weathered more before the first Viking landed; than century or two of nor does any record so much Orkney gales. As old buildas corroborate the tradition ings go, they are in faet merely that their descendants used wizoned-looking youths. them as their trysts when And yet, right ander the “things

and courts were curious inquirer's eye, for mile held. Even at Tingwall, in upon milo on eithor side of Shetland, where a circle of the road he is driving along, great stones are very specifio- lies the very thing he looks ally stated by report to have for. Ho would probably be marked the site of the old still more disappointed if he Lawthing, the earliest actual were told what it is, and record of that court shows it that that is all he could sitting in 1307 beneath the hope to see; still, there the roof of Ting wall Kirk. legaoy of the Vikings is, un

The broohs—those strong sensational though it be. towers of stone whose stumps

This undramatio feature oan form the kernel of mound after be seen from some roads quite mound in every parish, and, distinotly. Driving northwhere the spade has been at wards, for instance, from the work, show a groy rim of shores of Soapa Flow into fortalice, were built and lived the heart of the Mainland of in and deserted by a race who Orkney, the country for miles fled before the Northman or is a patohwork of alternate fell benoath his sword,

brown and groen.

The road The rare ruins of an ancient runs through e district of gabled or castellated manor- small farms, with a loob on house, very oooasionally found one side and moors on every in the islands, oan always be other; aoross the Jooh lies antraood to some sixteenth- or other and separate large green seventeenth-century looal mag. patoh; then comes beather on nate; and, apart from churches, either side of the road; and the only buildings at all of then again, at the head of earlier date than that still the valley, a fertile slope; over standing were the creation of the watershed lies the moorbishops-imposing people, but land vale of Summerdale,

bave seen

400 sores,

where the Caithness men bit the top and now very much the dust four conturies ago; dilapidated. Sometimes one and then the

the road winds even gets a suggestive glimpse through green fields till it of a long stretch of one of these reaches the heather on the turf dykes ourving round the farther side.

outskirts of the fields like a Keeping over northwards, protecting boundary (whioh it this goes on for several miles, once was). And another feature till at last the green all runs to be seen now and then is the together. But even here a great moand that holds the traveller fifty years ago would remnants of a broob.

the same thing. If the intelligent inquirer Only the distriots lay oloser, were to study a large - soale and now they have joined map, he would occasionally company; and, except in some notice among the names of of the North Isles and a fow these modest farms one with parts of the Mainland, this is a very imposing sound, “The what one finds all over the Hall ” of Yenstay or Ireland, Orkneys: the arable lands still or whatever the township was lying in patches of, say, 200 oalled; or it might bear the to

or else the mysterious designation of "the patches have run together of Bu” of the town, and he would comparatively recent years. probably wonder how the And these arable patobes or modest farm oame by such a distriots stili distinot high - sounding title.

These entities termed in Orkney names are met with seldom

, " towns” or “townships." nowadays, but if our inquirer

Oooasionally one large farm were to wade for a fow weeks will dominate such a town- through the Register of ship, still more rarely it will Sasines he would find that in simply consist of one farm; the seventeenth century “the bat in the vast majority of House of so-and-So” (“So0&ses small irregular fields are and So” being the name of sprinkled fairly regularly with the whole township) was a very olusters of low buildings, som.- common foatare. Many a town. times quite bare, sometimes ship had its "house" or "head huddling under a bolt of bour- house," pocasionally also oalled trees, or-of late years—oven "the manor-house," and the

boasting a syoamore or rowan Halls and Bus to-day are the or two. There may be four survivors of this once large or five; there may be a dozen, family. or, in exceptional cases, even How this township system more such modest farms. of land-cultivation came into

Constantly, if you watoh existence in the precise form olosely, you will see in the it assumed in Orkney seems outskirts of these green towns distinotly binted at by the a fragment of an odd sort of constant presence either of a wall, & dyke of turf and brooh or what was once the heather sloping to an apex at site of one in the midst of the

are