And then Dr. Sutherland: the Laird was determined – in true Scotch fashion – that everybody who could not sing should be goaded to sing.
"Oh, well," said the young man, with a laugh, "you know a student in Germany must sing whether he can or not. And I learned there to smash out something like an accompaniment also."
And he went to the piano without more ado and did smash out an accompaniment. And if his voice was rather harsh? – well, we should have called it raucous in the case of East Wind, but we only called it manly and strenuous when it was Angus Sutherland who sang. And it was a manly song, too – a fitting song for our last night on shore, the words hailing from the green woods of Fuinary, the air an air that had many a time been heard among the western seas. It was the song of the Biorlinn1 that he sang to us; we could hear the brave chorus and the splash of the long oars: —
Send the biorlinn on careering!
Cheerily and all together —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
Give her way and show her wake
'Mid showering spray and curling eddies —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
Do we not hear now the measured stroke in the darkness of the morning? The water springs from her bows; one by one the headlands are passed. But lo! the day is breaking; the dawn will surely bring a breeze with it; and then the sail of the gallant craft will bear her over the seas: —
Another cheer, our Isle appears!
Our biorlinn bears her on the faster —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
Ahead she goes! the land she knows!
Behold! the snowy shores of Canna —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together —
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together indeed: who could resist joining in the thunder of the chorus? And we were bound for Canna, too: this was our last night on shore.
Our last night on shore. In such circumstances one naturally has a glance round at the people with whom one is to be brought into such close contact for many and many a day. But in this particular case, what was the use of speculating, or grumbling, or remonstrating? There is a certain household that is ruled with a rod of iron. And if the mistress of that household chose to select as her summer companions a "shilpit bit thing," and a hard-headed, ambitious Scotch student, and a parochial magnate haunted by a heresy-case, how dared one object? There is such a thing as peace and quietness.
But however unpromising the outlook might be, do we not know the remark that is usually made by that hard-worked officer, the chief mate, when, on the eve of a voyage, he finds himself confronted by an unusually mongrel crew? He regards those loafers and outcasts – from the Bowery, and Ratcliffe Highway, and the Broomielaw – Greeks, niggers, and Mexicans – with a critical and perhaps scornful air, and forthwith proceeds to address them in the following highly polished manner: —
"By etcetera-etcetera, you are an etceteraed rum-looking lot; but etcetera-etcetera me if I don't lick you into shape before we get to Rio."
And so – good-night! – and let all good people pray for fair skies and a favouring breeze! And if there is any song to be heard in our dreams, let it be the song of the Queen's Maries – in the low, tender voice of Mary Avon: —
There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
And Mary Carmichael, and me.
CHAPTER VII
NORTHWARD
We have bidden good-bye to the land; the woods and the green hills have become pale in the haze of the summer light; we are out here, alone, on the shining blue plain. And if our young Doctor betrays a tendency to keep forward – conversing with John of Skye about blocks, and tackle, and winches; and if the Laird – whose parental care and regard for Mary Avon is becoming beautiful to see – should have quite a monopoly of the young lady, and be more bent than ever on amusing her with his "good ones;" and if our queen and governor should spend a large portion of her time below, in decorating cabins with flowers, in overhauling napery, and in earnest consultation with Master Fred about certain culinary mysteries; notwithstanding all these divergences of place and occupation, our little kingdom afloat is compact enough. There is always, for example, a reassembling at meals. There is an instant community of interest when a sudden cry calls all hands on deck to regard some new thing – the spouting of a whale or the silvery splashing of a shoal of mackerel. But now – but now – if only some cloud-compelling Jove would break this insufferably fine weather, and give us a tearing good gale!
It is a strange little kingdom. It has no postal service. Shilling telegrams are unknown in it; there is no newspaper at breakfast. There are no barrel-organs; nor rattling hansoms raising the dust in windy streets; there is no afternoon scandal; overheated rooms at midnight are a thing of the past. Serene, independent, self-centred, it minds its own affairs; if the whole of Europe were roaring for war, not even an echo of the cry would reach us. We only hear the soft calling of the sea-birds as we sit and read, or talk, or smoke; from time to time watching the shadows move on the blistering hot decks, or guessing at the names of the blue mountains that rise above Loch Etive and Lochaber. At the present moment there is a faint summer haze over these mountains; as yet we have around us none of the dazzling light and strangely intense colours that are peculiar to this part of the world, and that are only possible, in fact, in an atmosphere frequently washed clear by squalls of rain. This question of rain turns up at lunch.
"They prayed for rain in the churches last Sunday – so Captain John says," Mary Avon remarks.
"The distilleries are stopped: that's very serious," continues the Laird.
"Well," says Queen T., "people talk about the rain in the West Highlands. It must be true, as everybody says it is true. But now – excepting the year we went to America with Sylvia Balfour – we have been here for five years running; and each year we made up our mind for a deluge – thinking we had deserved it, you know. Well, it never came. Look at this now."
And the fact was that we were lying motionless on the smooth bosom of the Atlantic, with the sun so hot on the decks that we were glad to get below.
"Very strange – very strange, indeed," remarked the Laird, with a profound air. "Now what value are we to put on any historical evidence if we find such a conflict of testimony about what is at our own doors? How should there be two opeenions about the weather in the West Highlands? It is a matter of common experience – dear me! I never heard the like."
"Oh, but I think we might try to reconcile those diverse opinions!" said Angus Sutherland, with an absolute gravity. "You hear mostly the complaints of London people, who make much of a passing shower. Then the tourist and holiday folk, especially from the South, come in the autumn, when the fine summer weather has broken. And then," he added, addressing himself with a frank smile to the small creature who had been expressing her wonder over the fine weather, "perhaps, if you are pleased with your holiday on the whole, you are not anxious to remember the wet days; and then you are not afraid of a shower, I know; and besides that, when one is yachting, one is more anxious for wind than for fine weather."
"Oh, I am sure that is it!" called out Mary Avon quite eagerly. She did not care how she destroyed the Laird's convictions about the value of historical evidence. "That is an explanation of the whole thing."
At this, our young Doctor – who had been professing to treat this matter seriously merely as a joke – quickly lowered his eyes. He scarcely ever looked Mary Avon in the face when she spoke to him, or when he had to speak to her. And a little bit of shy embarrassment in his manner towards her – perceivable only at times – was all the more singular in a man who was shrewd and hard-headed enough, who had knocked about the world and seen many persons and things, and who had a fair amount of unassuming self-confidence, mingled with a vein of sly and reticent humour. He talked freely enough when he was addressing our admiral-in-chief. He was not afraid to meet her eyes. Indeed, they were so familiar friends that she called him by his Christian name – a practice which in general she detested. But she would as soon have thought of applying "Mr." to one of her own boys at Epsom College as to Angus Sutherland.
"Well, you know, Angus," says she pleasantly, "you have definitely promised to go up to the Outer Hebrides with us, and back. The longer the calms last, the longer we shall have you. So we shall gladly put up with the fine weather."
"It is very kind of you to say so; but I have already had such a long holiday – "
"Oh!" said Mary Avon, with her eyes full of wonder and indignation. She was too surprised to say any more. She only stared at him. She knew he had been working night and day in Edinburgh.
"I mean," said he hastily, and looking down, "I have been away so long from London. Indeed, I was getting rather anxious about my next month's number; but luckily, just before I left Edinburgh, a kind friend sent me a most valuable paper, so I am quite at ease again. Would you like to read it, sir? It is set up in type."
He took the sheets from his pocket, and handed them to the Laird. Denny-mains looked at the title. It was On the Radiolarians of the Coal Measures, and it was the production of a well-known professor. The Laird handed back the paper without opening it.
"No, thank you," said he, with some dignity. "If I wished to be instructed, I would like a safer guide than that man."
We looked with dismay on this dangerous thing that had been brought on board: might it not explode and blow up the ship?
"Why," said our Doctor, in unaffected wonder, and entirely mistaking the Laird's exclamation, "he is a perfect master of his subject."
"There is a great deal too much speculation nowadays on these matters, and parteecularly among the younger men," remarked the Laird severely. And he looked at Angus Sutherland. "I suppose now ye are well acquainted with the Vestiges of Creation?"
"I have heard of the book," said Brose – regretfully confessing his ignorance, "but I never happened to see it."
The Laird's countenance lightened.
"So much the better – so much the better. A most mischievous and unsettling book. But all the harm it can do is counteracted by a noble work – a conclusive work that leaves nothing to be said. Ye have read the Testimony of the Rocks, no doubt?"
"Oh, yes, certainly," our Doctor was glad to be able to say; "but – but it was a long time ago – when I was a boy, in fact."
"Boy, or man, you'll get no better book on the history of the earth. I tell ye, sir, I never read a book that placed such firm conviction in my mind. Will ye get any of the new men they are talking about as keen an observer and as skilful in arguing as Hugh Miller? No, no; not one of them dares to try to upset the Testimony of the Rocks."
Angus Sutherland appealed against this sentence of finality only in a very humble way.
"Of course, sir," said he meekly, "you know that science is still moving forward – "
"Science?" repeated the Laird. "Science may be moving forward or moving backward; but can it upset the facts of the earth? Science may say what it likes; but the facts remain the same."
Now this point was so conclusive that we unanimously hailed the Laird as victor. Our young Doctor submitted with an excellent good humour. He even promised to post that paper on the Radiolarians at the very first post-office we might reach: we did not want any such explosive compounds on board.
That night we only got as far as Fishnish Bay – a solitary little harbour probably down on but few maps; and that we had to reach by getting out the gig for a tow. There was a strange bronze-red in the northern skies, long after the sun had set; but in here the shadow of the great mountains was on the water. We could scarcely see the gig; but Angus Sutherland had joined the men and was pulling stroke; and along with the measured splash of the oars, we heard something about "Ho, ro, clansmen!" Then, in the cool night air, there was a slight fragrance of peat-smoke; we knew we were getting near the shore.
"He's a fine fellow, that," says the Laird, generously, of his defeated antagonist. "A fine fellow. His knowledge of different things is just remarkable; and he's as modest as a girl. Ay, and he can row, too; a while ago when it was lighter, I could see him put his shoulders into it. Ay, he's a fine, good-natured fellow, and I am glad he has not been led astray by that mischievous book, the Vestiges of Creation."
Come on board now, boys, and swing up the gig to the davits! Twelve fathoms of chain? – away with her then! – and there is a roar in the silence of the lonely little bay. And thereafter silence; and the sweet fragrance of the peat in the night air, and the appearance, above the black hills, of a clear, shining, golden planet that sends a quivering line of light across the water to us. And, once more, good-night and pleasant dreams!
But what is this in the morning? There have been no pleasant dreams for John of Skye and his merry men during the last night; for here we are already between Mingary Bay and Ru-na-Gaul Lighthouse; and before us is the open Atlantic, blue under the fair skies of the morning. And here is Dr. Sutherland, at the tiller, with a suspiciously negligent look about his hair and shirt-collar.
"I have been up since four," says he, with a laugh. "I heard them getting under way, and did not wish to miss anything. You know these places are not so familiar to me as they are to you."
"Is there going to be any wind to-day, John?"
"No mich," says John of Skye, looking at the cloudless blue vault above the glassy sweeps of the sea.
Nevertheless, as the morning goes by, we get as much of a breeze as enables us to draw away from the mainland – round Ardnamurchan ("the headland of the great sea") and out into the open – with Muick Island, and the sharp Scuir of Eigg, and the peaks of Rum lying over there on the still Atlantic, and far away in the north the vast and spectral mountains of Skye.
And now the work of the day begins. Mary Avon, for mere shame's sake, is at last compelled to produce one of her blank canvases and open her box of tubes. And now it would appear that Angus Sutherland – though deprived of the authority of the sick-room – is beginning to lose his fear of the English young lady. He makes himself useful – not with the elaborate and patronising courtesy of the Laird, but in a sort of submissive, matter-of-fact shifty fashion. He sheathes the spikes of her easel with cork so that they shall not mark the deck. He rigs up, to counterbalance that lack of stability, a piece of cord with a heavy weight. Then, with the easel fixed, he fetches her a deck-chair to sit in, and a deck-stool for her colours, and these and her he places under the lee of the foresail, to be out of the glare of the sun. Thus our artist is started; she is going to make a sketch of the after-part of the yacht with Hector of Moidart at the tiller: beyond, the calm blue seas, and a faint promontory of land.
Then the Laird – having confidentially remarked to Miss Avon that Tom Galbraith, than whom there is no greater authority living, invariably moistens the fresh canvas with megilp before beginning work – has turned to the last report of the Semple case.
"No, no," says he to our sovereign lady, who is engaged in some mysterious work in wool, "it does not look well for the Presbytery to go over every one of the charges in the major proposeetion – supported by the averments in the minor – only to find them irrelevant; and then bring home to him the part of the libel that deals with tendency. No, no; that shows a lamentable want of purpose. In view of the great danger to be apprehended from these secret assaults on the inspiration of the Scriptures, they should have stuck to each charge with tenahcity. Now, I will just show ye where Dr. Carnegie, in defending Secundo– illustrated as it was with the extracts and averments in the minor – let the whole thing slip through his fingers."
But if any one were disposed to be absolutely idle on this calm, shining, beautiful day – far away from the cares and labours of the land? Out on the taffrail, under shadow of the mizen, there is a seat that is gratefully cool. The Mare of the sea no longer bewilders the eyes; one can watch with a lazy enjoyment the teeming life of the open Atlantic. The great skarts go whizzing by, long-necked, rapid of flight. The gannets poise in the air, and then there is a sudden dart downwards, and a spout of water flashes up where the bird has dived. The guillemots fill the silence with their soft kurrooing – and here they are on all sides of us —Kirroo! Kurroo!– dipping their bills in the water, hastening away from the vessel, and then rising on the surface to flap their wings. But this is a strange thing: they are all in pairs – obviously mother and child – and the mother calls Kurroo! Kurroo!– and the young one unable as yet to dive or swim, answers Pe-yoo-it! Pe-yoo-it! and flutters and paddles after her. But where is the father? And has the guillemot only one of a family? Over that one, at all events, she exercises a valiant protection. Even though the stem of the yacht seems likely to run both of them down, she will neither dive nor fly until she has piloted the young one out of danger.
Then a sudden cry startles the Laird from his heresy-case and Mary Avon from her canvas. A sound far away has turned all eyes to the north; though there is nothing visible there, over the shining calm of the sea, but a small cloud of white spray that slowly sinks. In a second or two, however, we see another jet of white water arise; and then a great brown mass heave slowly over; and then we hear the spouting of the whale.
"What a huge animal!" cries one. "A hundred feet!"
"Eighty, any way!"
The whale is sheering off to the north: there is less and less chance of our forming any correct estimate.
"Oh, I am sure it was a hundred! Don't you think so, Angus?" says our admiral.
"Well," says the Doctor, slowly – pretending to be very anxious about keeping the sails full (when there was no wind) – "you know there is a great difference between 'yacht measurement' and 'registered tonnage.' A vessel of fifty registered tons may become eighty or ninety by yacht measurement. And I have often noticed," continues this graceless young man, who takes no thought how he is bringing contempt on his elders, "that objects seen from the deck of a yacht are naturally subject to 'yacht measurement.' I don't know what the size of that whale may be. Its registered tonnage, I suppose, would be the number of Jonahs it could carry. But I should think that if the apparent 'yacht measurement' was a hundred feet, the whale was probably about twenty feet long."
It was thus he tried to diminish the marvels of the deep! But, however he might crush us otherwise, we were his masters on one point. The Semple heresy-case was too deep even for him. What could he make of "the first alternative of the general major"?
And see now, on this calm summer evening, we pass between Muick and Eigg; and the sea is like a plain of gold. As we draw near the sombre mass of Rum, the sunset deepens, and a strange lurid mist hangs around this remote and mountainous island rising sheer from the Atlantic. Gloomy and mysterious are the vast peaks of Haleval and Haskeval; we creep under them – favoured by a flood-tide – and the silence of the desolate shores seems to spread out from them and to encompass us.
Mary Avon has long ago put away her canvas; she sits and watches; and her soft black eyes are full of dreaming as she gazes up at those thunder-dark mountains against the rosy haze of the west.
"Haleval and Haskeval?" Angus Sutherland repeats, in reply to his hostess; but he starts all the same, for he has been covertly regarding the dark and wistful eyes of the girl sitting there. "Oh, these are Norse names. Scuir na Gillean, on the other hand, is Gaelic – it is the peak of the young men. Perhaps, the Norsemen had the north of the island, and the Celts the south."
Whether they were named by Scandinavian or by Celt, Haleval and Haskeval seemed to overshadow us with their sultry gloom as we slowly glided into the lonely loch lying at their base. We were the only vessel there; and we could make out no sign of life on shore, until the glass revealed to us one or two half-ruined cottages. The northern twilight shone in the sky far into the night; but neither that clear metallic glow, nor any radiance from moon, or planet, or star, seemed to affect the thunder-darkness of Haskeval and Haleval's silent peaks.
There was another tale to tell below – the big saloon aglow with candles; the white table-cover with its centre-piece of roses, nasturtiums, and ferns; the delayed dinner, or supper, or whatever it might be called, all artistically arranged; our young Doctor most humbly solicitous that Mary Avon should be comfortably seated, and, in fact, quite usurping the office of the Laird in that respect; and then a sudden sound in the galley, a hissing as of a thousand squibs, telling us that Master Fred had once more and ineffectually tried to suppress the released genie of the bottle by jamming down the cork. Forthwith the Laird, with his old-fashioned ways, must needs propose a health, which is that of our most sovereign and midge-like mistress; and this he does with an elaborate and gracious and sonorous courtesy. And surely there is no reason why Mary Avon should not for once break her habit and join in that simple ceremony; especially when it is a real live Doctor – and not only a Doctor, but an encyclopædia of scientific and all other knowledge – who would fain fill her glass? Angus Sutherland timidly but seriously pleads; and he does not plead in vain; and you would think from his look that she had conferred an extraordinary favour on him. Then we – we propose a health too – the health of the FOUR WINDS! and we do not care which of them it is who is coming to-morrow, so long as he or she comes in force. Blow, breezes, blow! – from the Coolins of Skye, or the shores of Coll, or the glens of Arisaig and Moidart – for to-morrow morning we shake out once more the white wings of the White Dove, and set forth for the loneliness of the northern seas.