Before long they were satisfied that the opening was wide enough to allow them to enter crawling. "The first one that goes in will have to watch his head," said Bill, "for I've heard that seals are very fierce when they have young ones around."

"_This_ seal is Trullya, and she will know us. Anyway, she never was a crosspatch, and I'll go first," replied Harry the wise and brave. "And I don't see," he added, "that any one else need go in there. I'll try and persuade her ladyship to inspect this aperture, and take a 'const.i.tutional' down the pa.s.sage."

But Tom wasn't going to let another eclipse him in valour, particularly as this quest was his, so, before Harry had done speaking, Tom ducked and soon wriggled himself through the opening. Harry followed, after cautioning Bill and Gloy to go out of the pa.s.sage and keep watch, to give the alarm in case Mr. Neeven or fule-Tammy should come upon the scene.

The sealkie was neither alarmed nor disturbed by her visitors. She had evidently returned to her tame confiding ways, and allowed the boys to come close to her. When Harry spoke to her by name, using also some soft notes which Fred had taught Trullya to understand as a call to meals, she responded in her plaintive voice, which left no doubt of her ident.i.ty; but when Tom attempted to touch the baby she uttered a sharp bark and glared at him in a manner that showed she was by no means prepared to allow their overtures to go a step further.

"What shall we do if she won't come out?" asked Tom; "we couldn't m.u.f.fle her _here_, could we?"

"You go along, and leave madame to me," replied Harry; and Tom made his exit.

Harry had "a way" with animals, and he soon managed to persuade Trullya to leave her couch. Then the baby, restless and curious as small persons are, crept to the opening and peeped out. The mother followed, and finding the barriers against which she had daily fretted removed, waddled slowly into the pa.s.sage, followed by her young one.

Harry hastily tumbled the earth and broken bits of wood about the opening, and followed the sealkie into the large room, where he found her looking amazedly at the three boys stationed at spots where they thought she might escape.

Tom had taken up the piece of sail-cloth, and he was preparing to throw it over the seal when all were startled by the sound of a loud cough not far away.

"Gracious!" one exclaimed in a horrified whisper.

"He's coming!" said another.

The cough was repeated, and the person who coughed was nearer.

Moreover, footsteps were heard! These sounds proceeded from the north side of the house, and the four boys promptly and silently evacuated the ruin over the south wall.

"Run for the peat-stack," Harry whispered; and when they were crouching behind it he said briefly, "It's all up. That was Mr. Neeven. We must creep round to the knowes, and then make tracks for our boat."

Setting the example, he started for the knowes, crawling over the ground like a Red Indian on the war-trail, and followed by his companions. If they reached the knowes un.o.bserved they might hope to get off in safety, for those little hillocks intercepted the view from Trullyabister, preventing any one there from seeing across the hill which the Lunda boys had to cross.

But when they reached the knowes Mr. Neeven suddenly appeared from behind them, saying sternly, "What is this? What! Tom Holtum, who calls himself a gentleman!"

They were beautifully caught, and rose from their reptile position shamefaced and discomfited. Tom, whose audacity frequently stood them in better stead than Harry's self-possession, was the first to face the very awkward situation.

"We didn't mean any harm, sir," he said. "We only came to take Fred Garson's pet sealkie."

"Indeed! and where may Fred Garson's pet sealkie be?"

"She was in the haunted room--goodness knows where she may be by this time," was the very cool answer of Master Tom.

"Are you aware, young gentleman, that breaking into a house is a burglarious offence, for which you are liable to imprisonment with hard labour during a term of years?"

That was a terrible speech; but a sudden break in the speaker's voice, and a mirthful look which he could not repress, were noted by Harry, who took them as hopeful signs; so, plucking up courage, he replied--

"You know what is fair and right as well as we do, sir; and I put it to you--were we doing a bad thing in trying to recover our friend's property in a quiet way? He might have sued Mr. Adiesen in the law courts, and made no end of a row."

"Always supposing, my lad," Mr. Neeven interrupted, "that the seal could be proved to be his."

"I can prove it easily," Harry answered confidently. "She answered to the old call Fred used; and besides that, Isabel made a sketch of her.

Every mark on her skin is in the picture."

"And more," said Tom; "the sealkie was caught on Fred's property, where no person had business to be without _his_ leave."

"That, too, is a point open to question. But what _I_ have to do with is this disgraceful burglary. I believe it is admitted that you had less business in Trullyabister than Mr. Adiesen had in Havnholme."

There was no denying that truth, and the boys hung their heads.

"Follow me," said the ogre. "First you shall show _me_ if the animal recognises your call, and after that I'll tell you what I mean to do with you."

The whole party returned to the ruins; but when they got there they were just in time to see Trullya and her baby flopping over some crags near the back of the house, which was situated only a little way from the sea on _both_ sides.

The boys were about to start in pursuit, but Mr. Neeven stopped them.

"Let her go to her own," he said almost gently. And in a few minutes the seal reached the ocean and was free once more.

[1] "Owzkerry," scoop for baling water.

CHAPTER XXI.

"NOUGHT HAD'ST THOU TO PRAISE."

When Trullya disappeared, the ogre turned upon the boys with a savageness that was very much put on; for their rueful looks, disappointment, headlong action, and love of fun, had appealed to him in a way he was not prepared to combat very seriously. But he was not going to let them know that. He laid a hand heavily on Tom's shoulder, and asked, "How came you to know about the seal?"

"I saw her at the window, and I guessed a lot."

Mr. Neeven saw in the four candid faces before him that there was more to tell.

"How did you find your way into my house, and to that particular portion of it? Very few persons know about those pa.s.sages and places."

They were silent. They would not tell on Yaspard, and seeing that his question remained likely to be unanswered, he asked another.

"Haven't you entered into a Viking campaign, with my young relative Yaspard Adiesen for your 'enemy,' of all games in the world?"

"Yes," said Tom; "but his uncle was told about it, and our fathers know."

"Then your fathers are as----" He stopped short, for Harry Mitch.e.l.l's eyes were flashing on him in a very spirited manner, and Harry's voice, raised and determined, interrupted him.

"Excuse me, sir, but I think we must not listen if you go on _that_ tack. Blow us sky high about our _own_ doings. We own up that we might have made our raid in a more open way, and given you warning that we meant to attack your castle. _That_ would have been more like honest Vikings; but, all the same, we aren't going to admit that we've done anything really wicked, or that our fathers would have permitted us to carry on so if it had been wrong. And we are ready to take any punishment you think right to inflict."

"It was only our madram," [1] added Tom, using an old Shetland word, which Gaun Neeven had heard applied to himself in days gone by more often than any other term.

"Only _boys' madram_," his gentle mother had so often said to excuse his foolishness and screen him from the results of many an escapade.

His boyhood was being swiftly recalled by the antics of those boys, and by Tom Holtum's ways and words. He saw his boyish self more in Tom than in the others, and the contact with those young spirits was doing the recluse good.

The hand on Tom's shoulder pressed more heavily, but it was not an ungentle touch, and Tom wondered what was coming next.