end that with
his own ears he heard the Holy Islanders so pray. It was told to him by
the Governor of the island. But, then, this Governor, Robin Rugg by
name, was "a notable good fellow, as his great read nose, full of
pimples, did give testimony." Perhaps he exaggerated, or it was but one
of his "merry discourses." Yet I think he told the truth in this
instance. To "wreck" was the habit of the day, and by all coastal
peoples the spoil of wrecks was regarded as not less their just due than
was the actual food obtained by them from the sea. On our own coasts and
in our islands until quite recent times such was undoubtedly the case,
just as in savage lands it continues to be the case to this day; and the
distinction is a fine-drawn one between doing nothing to prevent a
vessel from running into danger which would result in profit to the
spectators, and the doing of a something, greater or less--say the
showing of a light, or the burning of a beacon--which may make it
certain that the same vessel shall go where she may be of "the greatest
good to the greatest number"--the "greatest number" in such instances
being always, of course, the wreckers. A wrecked vessel was their
legitimate prey, and the inhabitants of many coastal parts are known to
have deeply resented the building of lighthouses where wrecks were
frequent. In his notes to _The Pirate_, Sir Walter Scott mentions that
the rent of several of the islands in Shetland had greatly fallen since
the Commissioners of Lighthouses ordered lights to be established on the
Isle of Sanda and the Pentland Skerries. And he tells of the reflection
cast upon Providence by a certain pious island farmer, the sails of
whose boat were frail from age and greatly patched: "Had it been _His_
will that a light hadna been placed yonder," said he, with pious
fervour, "I wad have had enough of new sails last winter."

Then as to the saving of life--in those days, and well on into the
eighteenth century, it was believed to be a most unlucky thing to save a
drowning person; he was sure eventually to do his rescuer some deadly
injury. A similar belief, as regards the ill luck, prevails in China to
this day; nothing will induce a Chinaman to help a drowning man from the
water. In our own case, probably this superstition as to ill luck
originated in the obvious fact that if there were no survivor from a
wreck, there could be no one to interfere with the claim made by the
finders to what they con