We had a look at the entrance to the Clam-shell Cave, with its twisted pillars, the Boat Cave, and McKinnon’s, but when we finally put her about off the rocks on the western side and saw what seas were breaking there, we bade farewell to Staffa, for it was not the wind that bothered us but the sliding treacherous swell, on which, however, we had managed a few exciting moments—particularly the Crew. Perhaps the circumstances had been a trifle more dramatic than those that attend the usual visitors, and the wind and brilliant sun and flashing seas had given the rocks a glittering and memorable beauty.

So we consoled ourselves, anyhow, as we held south—and perceived at last, beyond doubt, that the mysterious rock which had guided us since we had rounded the Caliach was no other than the round hill of Dun-I in Iona.

At the back of all our possible landfalls on this day, Iona had been waiting, and now here at last it was, only an hour or two away.

‘What about it?’ asked the Mate.

But I couldn’t see how we could make it. From what I had read, I knew that the swell must be coming right up the narrow sound between Iona and the Ross of Mull. There would be a tide too, and on the Iona side there seemed to be very little in the way of shelter. We had had enough movement and adventure for the day, and on the sheltered north coast of the Ross there was one obvious anchorage, where we could go to sleep in a quiet calm. I asked him to look up Loch Lathaich.

Agreement was unanimous. From Loch Lathaich, too, we could find out about the Sound. With our minds made up and the old engine plugging away stolidly, we felt in very good spirits.

It was at that moment that the Crew saw the cloud over Iona, on whose northern rocks and pale sands the sea broke white.

It was quite a small cloud, not much bigger than a good puff from a railway train, at no great height, and the colour of pipe tobacco smoke. It was the only low cloud of its kind far as our eyes could travel, for high in the heavens were cirrus and blue fields, and where it could have come from we had no idea, for it was a real cloud and its tenuous blue was irradiated with light. The Crew said it was a sign.

‘A good sign?’

‘It’s a sign,’ she said, with an enigmatic smile and a nod to herself.

Here was evidence of the curious superstition that grows in one against naming certain things at sea, and we laughed and said she was frightened to say yes or no lest she might ‘alter it’. But she would not be drawn. Along the Moray Firth coasts there used to be many words that a fisherman would never mention at sea, such as clergyman, salmon, rabbit, and for these there were special words. The rabbit, for example, was ‘clever feet’ or ‘clever feeties’. When a member of the crew took God’s name in vain there was a cry of ‘cold iron’, and each held on to the nearest bit of iron until the danger passed. I can just remember, as a very small boy, the strange shock I got on learning that the skipper of a certain boat had turned back one morning on his way to sea because he met an old woman who was reputed to be a witch. I knew her by sight well. She always wore a black skirt, a closely wound black shawl that came up over her head and framed her wrinkled face, and she was bent.