The only thing that troubled us for a time here was picking up a twelve-foot rock somewhere between Dubh Sgeir (not named on our chart, but referred to in the Directions as ‘a small islet off the Ross’) and Eilean Chalman farther south. For some reason I had expected this to be a conical rock, and, anyway, from the angle of our approach its long back seemed to be completely out of the way. But Eiln. Chalman was clear enough and we knew that if we kept a cable length from it we could not go far wrong. The other unmistakably clear mark was the beacon on Ruadh Sgeir. Yet the rock Bogha nan Ramfhear, which dries four feet, and lies a few cables southward of Eiln. Chalman, and ‘is the only real danger on the inside passage’, evaded us in the breaking seas for some time.

The scattered Torranan Rocks, spouting to starboard, were now an impressive sight, but the Mull shore, a short distance to leeward, looked pretty merciless. It took a real romance writer to get a wrecked crew over these smoking skerries!

A landmark at this point, not referred to in our Direction but given to us by the ferryman, was ‘three round humps of land open of Eilean Chalman’, and when they were picked up away in the distance, they got a shout of welcome. Shortly afterwards, Bogha nan Ramfhear, well clear to starboard, was seen smashing and blowing like a demented whale. We were steering a fine course and the engine, round which I went every now and then, never even felt like missing a beat. True, she raced and slowed as the propeller heaved and sank, but there was never any dangerous hesitancy. When she took the load again she took it solidly, with a dour reserve of power. True, again, her vaporiser joints may not have been quite gas-tight, and I had put so much oil into her bearings that she was blue-smoking a little, and once for about a quarter of an hour I had to take the air in a light-headed condition, which the extreme tossing and pitching did not help, but she kept going, a tribute surely to the fine workmanship that had been put into her a quarter of a century ago. There is a slow solid beat about a real marine engine that is very heartening in dirty weather. What would it matter if we did foul a smart yacht or two, running with their showy flexibility on converted motor-car engines? Off the Torranan Rocks we were in the mood to foul a round dozen in the quiet waters of Oban Bay without undue distress—so long as we got there! For there was the better part of an hour when, if the engine had given up, there could have been no hope for the boat or, indeed, for ourselves.

Yet, as it happened, our worst spell came when we had cleared Bogha nan Ramfhear and set our course on Ardalanish Point, the most southerly corner of Mull. For three miles, with tide and sea behind us, we had an anxious time. The real trouble was the dinghy, a heavy water-sodden brute of a craft for her size, and leaky. I had meant to put a half-hundredweight in her stern to keep her head up, but hadn’t, and now she was yawing and charging down in the most thrawn way. There was no cleat on our starboard side to which we could have fastened a second head rope, even if we had been able. As it was, she was being towed through a cleat some two feet to port of the rudder. When she was coming up the wave, the water in her rushed astern and she cocked her nose up prettily enough, but coming down the near side, the water rushed forward and she buried her stem to the tip. One slight thing helped here. Right round her rail I had tied a double stout rope and this perhaps prevented her from shipping those small lashings of water that in time would undoubtedly have sunk her.