‘You wouldn’t mind if she drowned while you argued,’ said the Crew. ‘Will you please tell me what happened to the woman on the rock?’

‘She cried and screamed,’ said the Mate, ‘but there were no fishers out there in that dark world; so the tide began to wash over her feet, and to rise higher, until she stood knee-deep in the icy water. And she screamed and listened again, but heard only the answering screams of the astonished sea-birds.

‘The tide continued to rise, as the tide will, and when it was nearly at her breast, as the story goes—so it could not have been a stormy night—the dawn broke, and a boat, a small skiff, hove in sight. Though now nearly exhausted, she managed to attract its attention. The fishermen turned out to be Argyll’s men and they took the woman off the rock and bore her away safely to her father’s castle.

‘And now the scene moves to Argyll—for something original and terrible in its cunning. You can feel it coming? It came.

‘Argyll waited until the bereaved husband acquainted him of his great grief caused through the death of his beloved wife, the daughter of his lordship.

‘Argyll was deeply affected, and sent an invitation to the Maclean to come and mingle a husband’s sorrow with a father’s. And Maclean with his kinsmen and followers, all dressed in deepest mourning, duly arrived, and was met by Argyll, clad in black. A solemn feast was spread in the great hall. They all took their places. Then the door opened and the Lady Elizabeth, superbly dressed, entered, walked to the table, and took the vacant seat.

‘Maclean sprang up, and in his terror got as far as the castle gate, before the Lord of Lorn slew him. But the Earl stuck to the kinsmen—until the child which had been saved by its nurse was given back to its mother.’

‘That is so terrible and dreadful a story,’ said the Crew, ‘that most people will forget in their minds that it is a story with a happy ending.’

‘Can you tell me’, I asked, ‘what lighthouse is on the Mull there opposite the Lady Rock?’

‘I heard about that on the steamer also. It has something to do with a monument to William Black, the novelist. But I’m not sure,’ said the Mate.

A lighthouse to commemorate a novelist! It seemed too good to be true. And to dear William Black through whom the Highland rivers ran, whose novels had touched to romantic visions not a few of the days of our youth! Not a great novelist, so he had only a little lighthouse all to himself. I took off my sou’wester.

What more perfect memorial to a great man than a lighthouse! How superbly apt!

‘Let us start,’ said the Crew, ‘by giving Ardnamurchan to St. Columba.’

Well—perhaps—seeing Stevenson had already collared Skerryvore.

‘Hold on!’ said the Mate. ‘I have one or two scientists I want to fix up first.’