All that night it blew from the sou‘east, with continuous slashing rains. For the first time, too, we were troubled with one or two bad bouts of bumping by the dinghy. At seven o’clock in the morning the glass was down to 29.50 and I had to bail the dinghy with a zinc bucket. It was quite impossible to put to sea. The rain taking off for spells round about ten o’clock, we started for Fionnphort over very broken ground to fetch some fresh stores.

Going up the ravine from the Bull Hole, we came on a narrow green mound, with a low shaped granite stone at its head innocent of all writing. A few yards above it were the ruins of a cottage. In that barren place, the nameless grave and the tumbled walls made about as desolate a corner as I had ever seen.

Between the Bull Hole and Fionnphort there were extensive granite quarries that employed many men a generation ago. At Ardmore, half-way, there is a solid pier, with the double line for the bogeys or trucks rusting before the eye where it is not covered with grass. Immense hewn blocks of the red granite are still piled high here, and on the hillside nearer Fionnphort lies the largest single block ever hewn out of a British quarry (or so we were told).

No one could tell us exactly why these quarries were abandoned, though it is generally held that transport charges had become prohibitive. We had a long talk with the solitary fisherman at Ardmore, who works lines in the Sound just south of Eilean na mBan. He had his line all baited with slug worm, waiting for weather to get out. If he did not get out to-day the bait would go rotten.

He appears to be the only line fisherman on this coast, though there are a few lobster fishers, for the rocky nature of the ground is suitable for lobsters. But the great trouble here is the weather, which for long spells in the winter-time makes small-boat fishing very difficult if not impossible. It was easy to believe him, as we gazed southward at the heavy seas spouting towards the Torranan Rocks.

The Mate wanted to know why he had been so unsuccessful in his own fishing and was told that fish were certainly extremely scarce, though he could give no reason for this—apart from trawlers. He then related specific experiences, such as: he was making a fair fishing of small haddock last year in a bay round the northern point of the Ross, when one night a trawler dropped in, and ‘after that I didn’t see a tail’. ‘They often come in at night, too, to the south of Iona over there, but they are a bit frightened I think to risk coming into the Sound itself.’ He was a gentle quiet man with a young wife who obviously helped him with the fishing. He showed no animus against the trawlers. ‘It’s a fine spot this, isn’t it?’ he asked, with a Columban smile.