THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE 'LAURA;'
OR, THE STORY OF JACK MILMAN.

It was in the midsummer of this year that my friend Milman, of the Household Brigade, invited me to accompany him on a trip in his new steam yacht, the Laura, along the shores of the Baltic.

She was a well-formed, smart—indeed, elegant—little vessel, the Laura, a good sea-going boat, as well as a safe coaster.

We were five of a party. Little Tom Tucker, fresh from Oxford; his chum, Harry Winton, ditto; Morton Parker, of the late Bengal Army, home on two years' leave—great on the subjects of niggers, hog and tiger hunting, chutney, and curry—Jack, and myself; and a merry party of thoughtless addlepates we were.

We had "done" the entire Baltic, and the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, and had come to the conclusion that the said Baltic was all very slow, stupid, and that there was "nothing in it," though we had seen Cronstadt; the Malta of that sea, with all its batteries and countless cannon, had flirted with the fair-haired girls of the Rue de Goths and Amalien Gade at Copenhagen, drunk lager beer at Dantzig, steamed past Elsinore, and actually, with our four six-pounders, had exchanged salutes with a Danish man-o'-war in the Cattegat, as poor King Christian IX. has been an ill-used man; and then we stood down the Skager Rack for old England.

My friend Jack, or Long Milman, as we called him, for he was above six feet, was the beau ideal of a fine young Englishman. "A trump, a brick," and so forth, Jack was termed by all who knew him; but he was a finished gentleman and a thorough good fellow, a prime bat and bowler, always had the stroke oar at Oxford, and was a good rifle-shot.

All the girls envied her who waltzed with Jack. He was a king of every pic-nic, and always shone in amateur theatricals, disdaining such tame characters as John Mildmay, and choosing such as Sir Affable Hawk, in which (privately) it was Jack's weakness to think that he quite equalled Mr. Charles Mathews.

As the very antipodes of his home costume and Guards' uniform, on this voyage Jack wore a round blue jacket, with anchor buttons, a straw hat, with a blue ribbon (changed occasionally for a sou'-wester), and a black handkerchief knotted loosely round his neck. In London Jack wore the best fitting gloves that Houbigant could produce; but now he disdained any such coverings for his digits, which were as dark as salt water, tar, and exposure could make them, for Jack was every inch a man, and could tally on to a rope with the best seaman on board.

"By Jove, if Laura could only see me with these paws!" he would sometimes say; and then we laughed, for we knew who Laura was, and rather envied Jack's ascendency in that quarter.

The yacht was under steam, with her fore and aft, fore and mainsails set, as we sat at dinner, on the day we quitted the Skager Rack, and the summer weather was soft and balmy.

Jack proposed that, instead of standing through the North Sea for the coast of England, we should steam westward, and visit some of the Scottish Isles before returning.

"Impossible," said Harry Winton.

"And wherefore impossible, thou man of objections?"

"I'm due in London by the end of the month."

"So am I," said Jack; "but we'll manage it in time. Pass the bottles. Consider the magnificent scenery we shall see."

"Pshaw—scenery! It is, as some one writes, but a weak invention of artists and innkeepers."

"'Oh, blessed are they that sneer!'" exclaimed Jack, brandishing his cigar case; "'for they shall never make fools of themselves.' An addition to the list of beatitudes well becoming the spirit of the present day. Try another glass of that glorious old port—it's 1820 vintage—and see how my project looks then. Buttons, wine for Mr. Winton."

"I certainly have a curiosity to see some of those islands, where no one ever goes to, and no one ever comes from," said Morton Parker.

"Mere curiosity," replied Harry, while sipping his wine; "but beware of it. It was their wives' thirst for unwise knowledge which wrecked alike the peace of Father Adam and of Bluebeard."

Winton's opposition was soon laughed down. Jack Milman consulted his skipper, and the yacht's head was at once trimmed west and by north.

"We shall only be a fortnight or so longer absent," said Parker; "no heart will break in that time."

"Laura will be sure to think I am lost," said Jack, in a low voice to me.

"It may excite her."

"No difficult matter, by Jove?" replied Jack, laughing; for Laura Hammond was a girl who was fond of all excitement—made up her book on the Oaks and Derby, and had herself photographed on horseback, on skates, at archery meetings, in fancy dresses, and all manner of ways, as we well knew, by the albums with which Jack's cabin was plentifully strewn.

On the second day after this, while at luncheon, we heard the cry of "Land ahead!" and saw a stern and rocky coast rising slowly from a dark grey and rather bleak and stormy sea.

It was the Scaw of Lambness, the most northern point of the Shetland Isles, towering up amid foam, with mist resting on its scalp, and the wild seabirds whirling round it.

"Deuced glad we are drawing near home, anyway," said Jack, as he tied his sou'-wester on, and levelled his telescope at this shore of most uninviting aspect.

"Ugh!" said little Tom Tucker, who hailed from, the region of Bayswater. "Heavens, Jack, do you call this home?"

"Well, Tom, it is the first instalment of it. We are four hundred miles from the Tweed, as a bird flies."

"So that beastly chart below tells me."

"Seven hundred and fifty, at least, from Bayswater, Tom," I added, laughing.

"And we have polished off the most of our wines," said Jack. "Buttons gave us the last bottle of that tidy Bordeaux yesterday, and to-day he has opened our last case of Cliquot, so we shan't stay hereabout long, I promise you, Tom."

By nightfall we had run through the Sound of Yell, amid little sandy holms and mossy rocks, where the eider-duck and grey gull seemed the only inhabitants, and where whales appeared spouting at times, and the young sillocks were in swarms. We came to anchor in a quiet and sheltered little voe (as the inlets are there named), and then we discovered from a fisherman who came on board that we were off Northmaven, part of the mainland of Shetland, one of the most northern and primitive of the almost countless isles of Scotland, forty-four leagues west of Bergen, in Norway, and forty-seven north of the coast of Buchan.

Night was setting in when the "native," "the Sawney Bean," as some of us termed him, was brought down to the cabin for our inspection, and his own delectation in the matter of grog.

Magnus Kolbainson—for so this northern named himself—was a rough and weather-beaten old stump of a Shetlander, in his seventieth year; but hardy, hale, and active as a southron of half his age, with a clear, bright grey eye, and a face which, though a mass of wrinkles, was still ruddy and fresh.

He removed a black fur cap from his white, silvery hairs, and glanced round the little cabin with much of wonder in his face, for he was quite unused to luxury, and had spent all the years of a long life amid storms and shipwrecks, in pursuit of the whale and the walrus.

He drank horn after horn of stiff boatswain's grog, and his conversation—in a strange dialect, and at times unintelligible—consisted of weird tales of wrecks upon the rocks of Eaglesbay and Gunister, or of whales stranded by hundreds in the shallow voes of Burra, Quayfirth, and Gluss; of the terrors of the Holes of Scraada; of witches' spells; of spirits haunting holms and dunes, and Pict-houses; of names, places, and things that seemed and sounded strange and barbarous to us; and yet this queer old man was a loyal subject of Queen Victoria, and a Briton like ourselves, though he knew as much about steam or electricity as Noah or Tubal Cain might have known. Hence we questioned and surveyed him with wonder and speculation.

From subsequent circumstances I am thus particular in describing old Magnus Kolbainson.

When he rose to go ashore in his little punt, the summer moon was shining brightly, and we could see all the rocky indentations of that most picturesque coast with great clearness. As he crossed the deck, he suddenly started, and after an exclamation expressive of surprise and alarm, asked:

"When was that man drowned?"

"Who?—where?—what man?" asked Jack Milman.

"He there!"

"Where?"

"Lying by the capstan, with a white handkerchief over his face," said Magnus, gravely and earnestly.

"Stuff! my good fellow," said Milman. "There is no man lying there. It is a shadow you've seen—or has our grog been too strong for you, old boy?"

The old man, with fear and wonder in his face and manner, approached the spot he had indicated, and passed his hands over the planks, and then across his eyes.

"Strange!" said he; "I thought I saw a man lying there, dead and cold, wet and dripping. It must have been the shadow of a bird or a cloud—perhaps a spirit—between us and the moon."

"The poor old fogey is screwed," said Jack, as we carefully assisted him into his little punt, and, with honest anxiety, watched until we saw him safe ashore, and proceeding in the pale moonshine up the steep rocks, to where a red light shone in the window of his hut. The skipper was ordered to get the yacht close in shore, and alongside the rocks, in the morning, so that we might land as easily and as often as we pleased, as we had resolved to pic-nic on the island.

The morning proved a lovely one. Breakfast over, Buttons packed a hamper to take ashore, while Jack produced from his armoury guns of all kinds, double and single-barrelled, muzzle and breech-loaders, as we meant to make a great slaughter among the gulls, cormorants, seals, and whatever else came within range of our fire.

"Buttons, my boy, give us plenty of the Cliquot," said Jack to his steward. "Chuck in the old Melton pie for Mr. Tucker—chutney for Captain Parker; he'll die without it—Bengal chutney."

We all landed with our guns and game-bags, and, under the guidance of old Magnus Kolbainson, made our way along the slopes of Mons Ronaldi, which is said to be the highest hill in all those isles, being nearly four thousand feet in altitude; and to Londoners—we travelled Londoners, as we rather flattered ourselves we were—the scene we witnessed was certainly novel, exciting, and terrible.

We shot a few seabirds, but they were scarcely worth picking up; and we scared great herds of the wild ponies, and made them scamper to and fro.

With many a strange tale of the rude and antique tower that crowns the mountain, and of the chain of watch-houses or Pictish dunes that guard the coast, our quaint old cicerone beguiled the way, all unsuspicious of how we "chaffed, and trotted him out," though puffing, blowing, and perspiring sorely, for the heat of the weather was great, and the mountain paths were steep, rugged, and tortuous, and seldom trodden by aught but sheep, rabbits, and wild ponies.

At last we reached the western side of the peninsula, where the cliffs are stupendous in height, and seem to have been rent and torn by billows, earthquakes, and volcanic throes, into strange and fearful shapes.

In these cliffs are the perpendicular caverns known as the Holes of Scraada.

These are two immense natural perforations, distant from the sea-cliffs two hundred and fifty feet inland, sinking down collaterally like two deep pits, separated only by a bridge-like mass of grass-covered rock, under which the sea communicates by a cavernous tunnel, where the waves, surging with the whole force of the Atlantic, boil, suck, gurgle, and thunder, with the most appalling sound.

Little Tommy Tucker shrank back, and could by no means be persuaded to approach, and, though stigmatised by Jack as "a muff," candidly wished himself at Bayswater, or anywhere else. Even Morton Parker, who had seen more of the world than any of us, and had peeped into the Bloody Well of Cawnpore, felt timid, while plucky Harry Winton declared it "doocid good, and the best got up thing of the kind he had ever seen."

"So well got up, indeed, old fellow, that I mean to make a sketch of it for Laura Hammond's album," said Jack Milman, producing his sketch-book, and seating himself in a secluded spot, unpleasantly near the verge, though.

"What the dickens, Jack," said Tucker, ruefully; "you don't mean to say that you are about to bother and make a sketch of this place?"

"And why not, by my halidame, by'r lady, or anything else?"

"It will occupy the whole afternoon, and it is past two now. I'm a lineal descendant of that Mr. Thomas Tucker who sang for his supper, and I'm dying for something to eat."

"And I for something to drink," chorused we all.

"Well," said Jack; "till I've made my sketch for Laura Hammond, I won't budge—that's flat! You know where Buttons has opened the hampers and spread out the grub. Walk slowly back, and I'll rejoin you, Keep a bottle of the sparkling in a cool runnel for me—I won't be twenty minutes behind you. Now be off, those who are hungry. Meantime, I'll have a quiet weed, and sketch this truly infernal hole!"

"All right," said Tommy; "but if you are late, Jack, I hope you won't give us the trouble of coming up this awful road after you; for really it's rather hard upon a fellow in his thirties, and on the confines of fogeydom."

"Never fear! I may see something else to sketch. Away! I'll be on board the Laura, dead or alive, by four o'clock—dead or alive! Look after that old Sawney Kolbainson—supply his little wants, and now, au revoir!"

Shrugging his shoulders as if he wished to be rid of us, Jack commenced his sketch, and as we descended, we saw him contemplating it from time to time complacently, with his head on one side, and a cigar between the fingers of his left hand.

Pure hunger and an intense thirst, conduced by exercise, heat, and the keen breeze from the sea, made us enjoy the luncheon of cold fowl, Russian tongue, and other condiments provided for us by Buttons, who had spread a snow-white cloth on the grassy sward, and in a runnel that gurgled close by he had the most acceptable of all viands, the Cliquot, sunk among the pebbles for coolness.

We were all very merry, and uncorked bottle after bottle of champagne; and great was the astonishment of old Magnus Kolbainson, after imbibing such a beverage as he had never seen or heard of before, and to his throat it was new and strange as the ambrosia of the gods.

Inspired thereby, however, he told us a long, weird story of the stone ship we saw, and how it was the craft of a pirate, on whom a spell or curse had fallen; and then he sang us a strange and uncouth song, which sounded exactly like a Norse ballad.

"Four o'clock," said Tucker, looking suddenly at his watch.

"And yet no appearance of Jack," said I, starting up.

"He spoke of twenty minutes. His sketch has taken longer."

"Less, I should say. There is Jack half a mile off, and making his way straight for the yacht!"

"Without us," cried Parker.

"Without lunch, too. Strange. I hope we hav'n't offended him in any way," suggested Tucker.

"Should be sorry if so. Milman's the best fellow in the world. Hallo! Jack—Jack Milman!"

But Jack walked steadily on by the rugged and descending road, which led to the voe where the yacht lay. Leaving Buttons and two of the crew to pack the débris of the luncheon, we picked up our guns, and a few of those birds which we proposed to have stuffed in London as souvenirs of our sojourn in Ultima Thule, and hurried after Milman, who had now disappeared in a conie, or hollow. We had evidently gained on him though, for when he reappeared we were much nearer him.

"He's in a devil of a hurry, surely," said Parker. "Thinks, perhaps, we've polished off the Cliquot, and wants some of that '41 Lafitte, or brandy and seltzer."

We shouted singly and together; but received no answer.

Jack's conduct was unaccountable, and we began to fear that something untoward had happened. Jack had neither his gun, straw hat, nor shot-belt; the back of his jacket was rent open, and his right arm seemed to dangle helplessly by his side.

Thoroughly alarmed by these indications, we ran on to overtake him, but were not quick enough. He reached the steamer before us, and, unnoticed, apparently, by the crew, stepped from the rocks upon the gangway, crossed the deck, and, after lingering for a moment, as if looking at the sky, descended into the cabin.

We soon followed, and dived below; but Jack was nowhere to be seen. We searched all the state-cabins, and every locker and bunk, without finding a trace of him.

"He's hiding somewhere," said I. "Come along, Jack; show yourself. Are you ill, old fellow, or only up to some of your usual larks?"

There was no reply, and after a minute search we became painfully certain of the fact that Jack Milman was not on board at all!

We questioned the crew on deck. All denied having seen him, and the skipper, who had been seated all the time in the cabin, had seen no one enter, heard no one come down. What mystery was this?

All our weariness vanished now; and, with emotions of alarm, astonishment, and anxiety difficult to describe, we retraced our steps towards the western side of Northmaven, just as the sun was verging towards the Atlantic, expecting to meet Jack returning; but no trace of him was seen till we reached the brink of the Black Holes of Scraada, where the sea boiled through its subterraneous caverns, in surf and foam, with the dreadful sound I have described.

By the edge of the rocks, we found a double barrelled gun, a half-smoked cigar, and a pencil lying. Lower down lay a sketch-book open, with its leaves fluttering in the wind; the grass of the bridge or middle rock was torn and rent, as if someone had fallen there, and clung thereto; and lower down, alas! a hundred feet or more, was the body of poor Jack Milman, appearing and disappearing momentarily, as it was tossed upward or sucked down, a drowned, sodden, and battered corpse, the sport of the furious waves, in that appalling hole.

Bewildered and in silent horror, we stood for a time looking at it, and in each other's blanched faces. Old Magnus Kolbainson alone took off his fur cap, and said:

"The Lord receive his soul! Mind ye o' his parting words, that at four o'clock he would be on board, dead or alive, and he hath kept his word!"

We knew not what to think of all this, and sat by the margin of the dreadful place, utterly crushed.

Not so old Magnus. Aided by his sons and grandsons, all hardy Islemen, who now came to our assistance, he was slung by a rope down into that watery profundity. He fastened a line to the body; it was drawn reverently upward, and laid on the grassy slope. Then we found that the face and hands had been sorely bruised by the rocks, and that his right arm was broken in three places, just as it had appeared in that of the figure we had followed on board the steamer.

Poor Jack had kept his promise; but at the moment we were questioning the skipper, he had been for three hours a drowned corpse.

Slowly and sadly we bore him down from that frightful place to the Laura. When we brought him on board, the ghostly moon was shining clearly; and that a complete fulfilment of the strange foreshadowing of his fate might not be wanting, it chanced that we laid him down by the capstan, and spread a handkerchief over his pallid face; and as we did so, the last night's vision of Magnus Kolbainson rushed vividly and painfully on the memory of us all.

Poor Jack Milman, the king of good fellows, lay there!

After such an adventure as this, it may well be conceived that the next morning found us running, as fast as steam, and wind could take us, on our homeward path, towards the Orkneys and the mainland of Scotland.

THE END.

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.