When we got back, the glass was still inclined to fall. The wind was freshening, and the yacht over against Eilean na mBan was pitching so badly that the sailor in charge was attending to his warps, of which he had two ashore (the owners all this time had been living on Iona). We decided if it was at all a sea morning to start at six o’clock.

We had a pretty restless night and could hear the wind and the sea outside. At six we made hot drinks. The glass was low but steady. Not liking the look of things we climbed our hill and decided to wait until ten.

By that time there were breaks in the clouds, and the glass, if it moved at all, moved up. We would go out into the Sound and see what it really was like.

XIV

The Torranan Rocks

As you go south through the Sound, there are two conical buoys that must be kept to port. Opposite the first one (after we had left the striped buoy to starboard) we got the tossing the ferryman had predicted. If there was to be nothing worse, we should be all right—provided the engine kept going, so we concentrated ahead. Distant rocks, encircled by spume, were opening out. It was the region where Alan Breck and David Balfour had got wrecked, and the farthest headland on the Mull side was undoubtedly Erraid Island itself. Away south-west of Iona, ringed in white, we could see Soay, ‘the little island where the sea-calves breed’ (the seal farm for the monks), and we practically kept her head on it, for comfort in meeting the waves, though, of course, we were to take the passage inside the Torranan Rocks. Glancing back at Iona, the Crew saw the cruciform shape of the cathedral begin to rise against the sky, so holding on with one hand, I tried to hold her with the other while she took a parting photograph, but it was difficult balancing in the running seas. The Mate was at the tiller, while I clung to the cabin door ready to dive at the engine, should there be any splutterings of rebellion. He was happy at the tiller and felt for the seas with a sensitive yielding hand. Our plan here was to make through the Sound until abreast of Erraid and Soay, round to port from roughly a sou‘westerly to a sou’easterly course, and pass between Mull and the Torranan Rocks, keeping an eye for the sunken dangers. But it was not so easy as all that to-day, and for a long time the Mate kept her heading into the seas direct on Soay. It was while she was on this tack that she got one or two very heavy smashes, from which we afterwards discovered that a seam suffered. Because of the islands and rocks and the approach of slack water, the long Atlantic waves had got broken up into fairly short, tumultuous, and unpredictable seas. A pitch, a roll, and a slew round, all in one, was the comfortable order of our going, but when she stood on her tail and came down with a wallop, the smash and shiver put my teeth on edge. She was so game, so full of gallantry, that you could not help feeling for her.