A PALACE UNDER THE SEA.

BY DAVID KER.

For any one who wants to take a month's holiday, there are few better places than the islands of Orkney and Shetland and Faroe. They are a long way off, to be sure, and in the midst of a very rough sea, that plays sad tricks with any one who is not a good sailor; but there is plenty to be seen when you once get there. The great black cliffs rising straight up out of the sea for two or three hundred feet, with thousands of sea-birds fluttering and screaming around them; and the wide, bleak, gray moorlands, without a single tree to relieve their grimness—for on most of these Northern islands no trees will grow; and the bright blue sea dancing and sparkling in the sunshine, or flinging itself up against the rocks in flying gusts of foam; and the little red-tiled cottages, inhabited by hard-faced old sailors, who have chased the whale in the far Northern seas, through many a floating "ice-pack," and many a fearful storm; the Shetland ponies, with their funny little black faces and shaggy manes, frisking about the lonely hill-sides, and many other objects of interest.

But in the Shetland Islands there is one sight worth all these put together, and, by good luck, it is close to the town of Lerwick, where all the steamers from the South put in. But for all that, it is no easy matter to see it properly. To begin with, you can only go there in a boat, and you must go at low tide, and you must take all sorts of things with you—ropes and boat-hooks and pine torches, and sometimes food as well; and perhaps, after all this, you may have to come back again without seeing anything at all.

And what is this wonderful sight, then? you will ask. Wait a little, and you shall hear.

Early on a fine spring morning, when the March gales seem to have fairly blown themselves out, and the sea is smooth as glass, I come tramping down to the shore through the straggling streets of Lerwick, which, with its little one-storied cottages, and its narrow windows, and its tiny fort, and its pavement of slippery cobble-stones, and its quaint old-world aspect, looks quite like a town in a fairy tale. So close does it lie to the water's edge that many of the houses have boats drawn up under their very windows; and beside one of these boats I find two old acquaintances of mine standing together. The one is a tall, handsome young fellow of five-and-twenty, the other a grim old "salt," with a voice as hoarse as a raven, and a face like the figure-head of some storm-battered vessel.

"Good-morning, Hay; good-morning, Peter. Can we go to Bressa Head to-day?"

"We can try't," growls old Peter, in his broadest Scotch, "and maybe we'll do't, if the wind dinna get up."

"And if it does get up, what then?"

"We'll a' be at the bottom in twa minutes."

This is certainly comforting; but "nothing venture, nothing have." I jump into the boat, the two sailors get out their oars, and off we go.

Away, away, over the smooth bright water, with the green sunny slopes of mainland on one side, and the huge gray cliffs of Bressa on the other. We are soon round the point, right out into the open sea; and to our left a sheer wall of black frowning precipice towers up against the sky for six hundred feet, while to our right, far as eye can reach, extends the great waste of dark water, which may at any moment lash itself into rage, and ingulf us all. Looking from it to that tremendous cliff, on which not even a cat could find footing, I begin to see that Peter was right as to what might happen should the wind rise.

But for the present all is going well. Not a ripple on the water, not a breath in the air, not a cloud in the sunny sky. And now we turn our boat's head, and steer, as it seems to me, straight into the rocks, for look as I will no sign of an opening can I see.

Ha! what is this dark line that suddenly shows itself in the face of the cliff? At first it seems no broader than the stroke of a pencil; but the line soon widens into a rift, and the rift grows into a deep shadowy archway like the mouth of a tunnel. We shoot into it, and instantly the bright sky and the golden sunshine and the sparkling sea vanish like a dream, and around us is the blackness of midnight, while far within we hear the dull boom of unseen waves, rolling through the sunless caverns where no man has ever been.

Suddenly Peter lights a pine-wood torch, and a blaze of splendor bursts upon us, dazzling as a tropical sunrise. Roof, walls, archway, every point and every corner, are one great rainbow of blue, and crimson, and yellow, and green. Pillars stand ranged along the sides, polished and shapely as if carved by a sculptor. Long icicle-like points of rock hang from the roof, glittering like diamonds in the sudden light. There are tapestries, too, such as no Norman castle ever had—tapestries of purple sea-weed, smooth and glossy as the finest velvet. And instead of a floor, this strange place is paved with smooth clear dark green water, upon which the red glare of our torch comes and goes like the light of a magic lantern.

This is the sight for which we have come—our "palace under the sea." And a palace indeed it is, which might suit the Sleeping Beauty herself. For all we know (for in such a place any wonder seems possible) she may be dreaming out the last of her hundred years behind these heavy folds of sea-weed, which are undoubtedly a curtain worthy of any princess. Aladdin may be sitting in yonder corner industriously rubbing his wonderful lamp; Tom Thumb may be peeping slyly at us over the edge of that pointed rock; the "Little Mermaid" and her sisters may have been swimming in this pool when we entered, and fled at our approach. And as we glide into the smaller cave that opens out of the larger, what is this queer-looking creature that scurries off along the nearest ledge? Puss-in-Boots? Hop-o'-my-Thumb? one of Gulliver's Lilliputians? Alas! no—only a big crab.

At the farther end of the second cave a wide cleft in the rock seems to offer us an easy passage, but another look shows me two sharp rocks planted within, like huge teeth, threatening certain destruction to any boat that may venture between them.

"Mony a mon has tried to pass yon place," says old Peter, shaking his gray head, "but nane ever did it, nor ever will. And noo, Maister Ker, the tide's-risin', and I'm thinkin' the sooner we're oot o' this the better."