‘You’re telling me,’ I replied bitterly.

But first of all we had to go ashore to get milk and eggs. We walked up a deep green glen, past a splendid herd of cattle, and came to a farm house. The rain had taken off and the freshness of the nether world was very vivid. I suggested we should walk on and down the glen to Duror. ‘The map shows “Church and Inn” together, and it’s interesting historically.’

‘The only thing I’m frightened of is that it might rain,’ said the Mate dubiously.

So I smiled and returned with him to the fishing. He had brought a tin of mussels from Loch Etive, and to the Crew’s ‘Good luck!’ he replied, ‘It’s not that I mind having to pay for your old fish.’ She laughed and said, ‘I dislike being long at a time.’

So we spent an evening on Loch Linnhe in our dinghy, until the gloom of the day passed into the gulf-deep gloom of night and the light from the red beacon that divides Loch Leven from Loch Aber shone warningly upon us.

I knew that country well, and as we sat there fishing into the rain-pitted sea, memories of odd and adventurous days came back. The Moor of Rannoch towards a summer midnight, where I had gone with a Glencoe crofter to inspect the village herd (which included three beasts of his own). The one-armed Irishman who looked after the herd, and his lonely hut in the waste of the moor, with bog-pine candles leaning against its wall. The collie—the twining lean tawny collie—that couldn’t believe the miracle of a digestive biscuit. The bog-pine fire that flared at the touch of a match; and the tea. There were one or two miracles in that place. Passing west of Kingshouse in the dead of the summer night and two hulking tramps stopping us to inquire—the time! But we had coolly faced up to them and they had gone on. Then down Glencoe of the massacre with the dawn breaking in bright silver and the birds singing. A riot of loveliness and singing over the graves of the murdered.

Or coming along the road here towards Kintallen with Captain MacDougall, the harbourmaster from Kinlochleven, to meet a foreigner and pilot her up the narrows. (One good man’s name will give a halo to a clan.) Capital fellows these Norwegian skippers, with their white-jacketed stewards and generous saloons. I used sometimes to take the wheel and respond, ‘Steady it is, sir,’ for I got to know the seaway to Kinlochleven almost as well as the pilot himself. What friendly outings, what rich laughter often!

All that caught into time—the murders, the riot, and the singing, and the steadiness in the heart of the pilot like the beacon light.

‘Everything in the sea is drowned,’ said the Mate; ‘even the dogfish.’

So he wound in his lines and we rowed back to where a light was shining from the open door of our boat.