A Stranger Came Ashore by Mollie Hunter Page B

only once before they reached the geo.
    “Did you tell anyone?”
    “No one,” Robbie answered, thankful he could speak truthfully.
    They reached the narrow entrance passage to the geo – too narrow to allow even a reflection of starlight from the water. Robbie backed the boat in, feeling mortally afraid of what just
might
happen in the darkness of this roofless tunnel; but they came out into the wider water beyond, with Yarl Corbie sitting as silent and motionless as before.
    The boat touched the shingle, and he shipped the oars, then leapt ashore. Yarl Corbie came clumsily after him, and they pulled the boat up on to the beach.
    “Up there – right at the back of the rocks,” whispered Robbie, pointing to where the cave lay; and reaching inside his coat, Yarl Corbie brought out a piece of candle and a tinderbox.
    “We’ll need these,” he remarked, then motioned Robbie on.
    Robbie had forgotten it would be quite dark inside the cave, and this reminder was enough to make him determined he would not be the first to enter it. He clambered on over the rocks, hearing Yarl Corbie following close behind, and at the mouth of the cave he turned to say nervously,
    “We’d better light the candle now.”
    A sound that might have been a chuckle came from Yarl Corbie. “Afraid of the dark, are you?” he jeered, and the next instant Robbie felt a large hand grasping him by the scruff of the neck and forcing him forward into the cave.
    Darkness stole his eyesight, smothered him, ate him up. He cried out, gaspingly, then tore himself free of Yarl Corbie’s grip and backed until he hit the wall of the cave. A laugh echoed hollow in his ears. The laugh was followed by the sound of Yarl Corbie striking the flint of his tinderbox.
    A spark leaped golden through the darkness. The little red flare of the tinder came next. Then at last, as Yarl Corbie lit the candle from the flare, there was a small, but growing pool of real light. The beaky dark face of Yarl Corbie loomed into the light, his eyes searching out the cowering figure of Robbie.
    “You did that just to frighten me!” Robbie accused him shakily, and Yarl Corbie smiled the smile that was not pleasant to see.
    “That’s right,” he answered. “There’s nothing like a taste of fear to remind you of what could happen if you break the promise you made me!”
    The light flickered for a moment as he raised the candle high. He waited till the flame steadied, then turning slowly about, he let its light spread through the cave.
    The sealskin was there, lying spread right out to cover a wide rock shelf a few feet from the floor of the cave. The fur of it was the colour of Finn Learson’s hair – dark, almost black, streaked with silvery grey – and it shone so richly that it seemed to turn the whole pool of candlelight into gleaming black and glittering silver.
    Yarl Corbie and Robbie stood staring at it, both of them struck quite dumb at the sight. The empty sockets of the head on the selkie skin stared back at them, and after a few moments of this, Robbie found he could no longer face the eeriness of that empty stare. He turned his head away, and the movement broke the spell of silence in the cave.
    “Well, there it is,” Yarl Corbie said triumphantly. “The Great Selkie’s skin. And we two are the only two in the world who have ever seen it like this!”
    Robbie nodded, and asked nervously, “And what do we do now?”
    “You take this,” said Yarl Corbie, handing him the candle.
    Then, much to Robbie’s horror, he reached up and pulled the skin down from the shelf as casually as he would have pulled a blanket off a bed. “And I take this!” he added, as the skin came tumbling off the shelf.
    Bundling the great pile of it into his arms, he was about to turnaway from the shelf, but Robbie’s eye had caught a sudden glimpse of something else there.
    “Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to the back of the shelf, and Yarl Corbie looked where he pointed.
    There was