As we stood there, the wind died quite away into a listening calm. In the crofting land beyond Loch Lathaich a cock crew, and the sound was very forlorn. Out at sea, but invisible, gulls were crying. From far away in the hills came the lowing of a cow.

Our eyes fell to Eilean Lathanach, and there, amid the encircling gloom, uprose the white finger, man’s beacon light.

We decided to go.

XIII

Hii, Hy, I, Ia, Io, Y, Yi . . . or Iona

Under way, the Mate insisted he was going to rig up the mainsail, and as we came down Loch Lathaich he sat into the mast. There was now a slight sou‘westerly breeze and, when we had passed inside the rocks at the entrance to the loch, up went the white canvas for the first time. There was a cheer at that, for this was, in fact, the very first time we could reasonably have used a sail on our type of boat, for either there had been no wind or it had been against us. Back in the cockpit, feeling the pull of the sheet, the Mate was delighted, and we had to admit that the sail both steadied us and added to our speed. To please him we had to feel the pull on the sheet. His hair was everyway. He smiled to himself and offered us cigarettes and then dislodged me from the tiller. If he had to choose between a sail and an engine—‘a sail every time,’ said he.

The shore on the north coast of the Ross of Mull is very barren. We passed some salmon nets and a strand of yellow sand, and the Mate regarded the salmon nets thoughtfully. Northward, the lowering gloom still held. The weather showed little signs of clearing up, and the waves were smashing on the rocks off the north end of Iona. Soon we opened out the pale white sands of Iona itself, the red roof and white walls of its first house, the cathedral so dull and grey that it was scarcely distinguishable, and, well down the Sound, the clustering houses of the village. Dun-I was now seen to stand above the slopes of a pleasant land, green and cultivated. One cornfield, yellow with charlock, gave us a feeling of home.

A steady small rain was carried against us, and up the Sound with it came a considerable swell. Though the weather looked anything but promising, the glass was steady at nearly 30. Very reluctantly the Mate took down his precious sail, and we entered the Sound of Iona.

We had intended anchoring in the Bull Hole, of which the Sailing Directions gives a very helpful chart, but now as we passed it on the north side and saw it hemmed in between gaunt granite rocks, it looked dull and anything but inviting. Manifestly, too, in a northerly wind it would be anything but comfortable. But that was not what was worrying me at the moment. I had the feeling that, having come into the Sound at all, we were in courtesy bound to land first on Iona. I should like to do it, anyway, and when we saw the modern dwelling, which we had inadvertently misdescribed, I suddenly made up my mind to land at Port-na-Fraing. It was not shown on our chart, but we headed for the house and discovered the anchorage just a little south of it. A short reef of black rocks half-guards its southern side, and the slipway of wet sand looks smooth as cement. The Mate, standing over the bow, could tell the depth of water at a glance, for the bottom was white sand and brown weed. He signalled me inside the outermost point of rock, just clear of the tide race. I could almost find time to be amused at his easy air of assurance.