‘It would do no harm’, I suggested to the Mate, ‘if you kept her straight on Airds Point—for that’s it ahead.’

The little bay where we were to anchor turned out to be all that we could desire. Nicely wooded, with bracken and grass and a little burn entering its inmost reach, it looked remote from all the world. By the weed on the shore, we felt sure of the holding ground. The Crew took the sounding, the engine stuck in reverse, and the Mate towed her head to the perfect spot, while three oyster-catchers, two herons and a whole string of curlew told a silent world that we had arrived.

The rain increased until it was coming down in torrents. We tried to gather from the chart our general direction from Taynuilt, but the chart misled us, for which you couldn’t blame it, as the village itself is not on the coast. In the afternoon the Mate and I set off inland, heavily oilskinned, through cataracts of woods, over low hills, and across swamps. Once, lifting my head, I saw what appeared to be the Mate surrounded by a dark aura violently in motion. It was the perfect illustration of the scientific conception of atoms or molecules hurtling around one another to compose matter, with the extra conception of electrons hurtling round nuclei thrown in. But when I opened my mouth to laugh, some of my own buzzing aura entered, and I had to spit the brutes from my throat. They were house flies mostly, and if they had stayed still for a moment, we could have sliced them. By the time we struck the railway line we had had two Turkish baths each, but when we stood for a moment to let the steam moderate, the flies were upon us again.

But the rain was taking off, and indeed if we could not have located the sun we should not have known which way to turn. After two or three miles of the line, our oilskins, wetter inside than out but swinging behind us now in a gentle breeze, we saw Taynuilt ahead, with the great Ben Cruachan behind. The station-master hunted up all sorts of travelling information for the Mate and then directed us to the hotel. We entered and groped down a dark passage, where a bar window was slammed down against our faces. ‘I thought you said this was the way?’

‘It’s all right. Ssh!’ said our informant.

But there was no conspiracy about the beer, when it came in pewter pots.

Taynuilt is an airy scattered place, with reasonable shops, an obliging postmaster, and agreeable folk. As we returned to the station, we heard one or two explosions from a great scar on the mountain across the loch. We sat beside a workman on the platform, who told us that the scar was Bonawe Quarries, ‘the finest granite in the world’, and he pointed to a house close by of bright grey stone.

‘Where do they send it to?’ I asked.