RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 469 



member of some dissenting body ; but, living with him in 

 the little island of Grsemsay, separated by the sea from any 

 place of worship, he rarely permitted her to see the ihside 

 of a church. At one time, on the occasion of a communion 

 Sabbath in the neighbouring parish of Stromness, he seemed 

 to yield to her entreaties, and got ready his yawl, apparently 

 with the design of bringing her across the Sound to the town. 

 They had, however, no sooner quitted the shore than he sailed 

 off to a green little Ogygia of a holm in the neighbourhood, 

 on which, reversing the old mythologic stoiy of Calypso and 

 Ulysses, he incarcerated the poor woman for the rest of the 

 day till evening. I could see, from the broad grin with which 

 the boatmen greeted this part of the recital, that there was, 

 unluckily, almost fun enough in the trick to neutralize the 

 sense of its barbarity. The unsocial fisherman lived on, 

 dreaded and disliked, and yet, when his skiff was seen boldly 

 keeping the sea in the face of a freshening gale, when every 

 other was making for port, or stretching out from the land 

 as some stormy evening was falling, not a little admired also. 

 At length, on a night of fearful tempest, the skiff was marked 

 approaching the coast, full on an iron-bound promontory, 

 where there could be no safe landing. The helm, from the 

 steadiness of her course, seemed fast lashed, and, dimly dis- 

 cernible in the uncertain light, the solitary boatman could 

 be seen sitting erect at the bows, as if looking out for the 

 shore. But as his little bark came shooting inwards on the 

 long roll of a wave, it was found that there was no specula- 

 tion in his stony glance : the misanthropic fisherman was a 

 cold and rigid corpse. He had died at sea, as English juries 

 emphatically express themselves in such cases, under "the 

 visitation of God." 



