But Dougal (of the ivied ruin) was all for Haco, who gave him fifty-five galleys to plunder Cantyre and Bute, which ‘King Dougal’ so thoroughly did, that by the time he had also plundered Loch Long and Loch Lomond he was too late for the Battle of Largs, where Haco was defeated, and as he thought he had better not take on the victorious Scots by himself, he followed Haco and met him again in Oban Bay. There they took their breath for a little, while the lads of the village did some private thinking, and then King Dougal convoyed the defeated king of all the Vikings as far as Tobermory, where he bade him farewell and returned to the castle, not yet with the ivy on it, to await the next move by Scotland’s king.

In the well the water was crystal clear and we decided we should cleanse our tank of the brown moss of the Bull Hole before filling it with this remarkable liquor, so strangely without taste. Tall foxgloves grew about and large buttercups. But there was no hurry, so we climbed up to the needle monument and found it commemorated one David Hutcheson by whose energy and enterprise the West Highlands had received the blessings of steam navigation. A far far better reason than for being a landlord or even (as we had expected) a clan chief. Oh that we had his like with us now to amend the transport to suit the age! Still, a lighthouse and a monument, both for merit, in one day! And when, later, we investigated the Colosseum, and on a tablet over the entrance traced the words: ‘Erected in 1900 by John Stuart McCaig, Art Critic and Philosophical Essayist, and Banker, Oban,’ we were moved.

‘And Banker,’ murmured the Mate. ‘What a conjunction is there!’

The more we thought, the more were we moved.

Alas that the building had never been completed, that it should be no more than the round shell of that strange conjunction! For what a project had been envisaged:

Statues he willed that his trustees should raise,
His parents’, brothers’, sisters’ effigies. . .

We hurried to buy a guide book in the town, from which I beg permission to quote a descriptive passage so admirable for its conjunctive ease:

‘When the Tower was begun, the half-dozen ancient cannon, 32-pounders, which had long lain overlooking Oban from their semi-lunar battery (which originated the adjacent street name, Battery Terrace), were removed to the un-levelled centre of the interior, where they lie derelict, objects of curiosity to visitors. They were brought to Oban by the second Marquis of Breadalbane, ‘dear Lord Breadalbane’, Queen Victoria called him in her Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands (written twenty-four years later on the occasion of her Majesty’s visit to Oban, 10th August 1847), when on the Royal Yacht coming in sight, they boomed forth a hearty welcome (Walk No. I). They were not again fired till 1871, when there were rejoicings all over Scotland on the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorn, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. The Queen had seen the Marquis as a child at his home, Inverary Castle, in 1847, and described him as a “dear, white, fat, fair, little fellow with reddish hair”, never dreaming that in after years she would have him for a son-in-law. It was of this marriage that an old Argyllshire woman on hearing of it exclaimed—“And it’s a proud lady the Queen will be, whatever.”’