But the engine, going slow, showed an entirely new belief in discipline. She accepted neutral, went ahead again, reversed, and remained running while the anchor was let go. It all seemed like a fairy story, and with proper solemnity we attributed it to some miraculous influence from the Island. The Crew took the depth—a couple of fathoms, with about two hours of ebb to run. Perfect—with good holding in tough weed. The heavens acknowledged our gratitude, drew the mists about us, opened their gates, and let the rain descend solidly. We had reached Iona.

In oilskins and long boots, the Crew and I got ashore at the sandy slip, and using a half-broken oar as a roller, pulled up the dinghy clear of the surf. The sand, composed of the pulverised shells of land snails, was so fine that it stuck to our hands and coated the rope. In striking contrast to the Mull shore opposite, where the broken-down granite remains sharp-edged, here the pebbles were smooth and rounded and beautifully and variously coloured. There was immediately the feeling of landing on a different, almost a strange and foreign, shore, though it was yet more intimate, as a shore of tradition, or dream, or actual past experience is intimate. On the right hand the conjunction was seen in a massive rugged boulder of red granite lying on smooth greenish-blue water-worn rock. At the head of the little slipway, where two row-boats were drawn up, springs of water came through the clean pebbles, and the scent of clover was in the air. Masses of ragged robin gave way to eyebright and buttercups. As we went up by the hayfields and over the fallow ground, we saw that this was a fertile island, and suddenly the rain was warm and soft. The barley was green and heavy in the ear. The root crops hid the soil. The fields were well barb-wired, but we won through to the pasture lands at the foot of Dun-I; and there, on impulse, we decided to climb this rock which had so attracted and baffled us from beyond the Treshnish Isles.

We took a rather steep face, but in time we reached the cairn on the top and opened out the west side of the island, the green machair land, the sandy bays, the innumerable rocks with the swell breaking on them and throwing its spume high in the air. Here at last was the true Atlantic roar.

When, after a long interval, I come upon such a scene, my mind goes back to Benbecula, to a picture of great waves on its western strand, a herd girl sheltering against a stook of corn, wild geese on a stubble field, in a grey day of small rain. What virtue there is in that picture I cannot tell, but it has already much of the force of legend, and the human feeling in it is made the more intense by a long-thoughted conception of human destiny, ironic and tragic perhaps, but not without its own worth and a certain underlying, evasive, and even defiant happiness. It is the mood of human comradeship, quiet and simple, but strong. It is the smile that acknowledges Fate—and no more.