XX

Homeward Bound

We left Kintallen in time to catch the first of the tide up the Corran Narrows. It was a day of tall cloud and sun and fragrance after the rain. The transformation that makes life on the West so dramatic; from glooms and drowning deeps to the sky-shepherd driving his white flocks down the blue fields of paradise (as the ancients saw it).

Even the Mate vowed he would catch fish, and told us that the red-headed boy had caught nothing in his short net last night, and that all his father had got in his long net after rowing many miles to set it were five dogfish. But the Crew, for once, did not respond and we wondered what was wrong.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. But we could see she did, and at last she owned up frankly. ‘I am sorry we are going back.’

Shades of the fear and excitement that had stuck her lips! We laughed; but all the same there was something in her remark that affected us, and we too were suddenly sorry to think that this was the last salt-water trip of the cruise.

The Morven hills were alive with light and shadow but no longer fabulously high; Glencoe opened out its dark passage to the sun; Ballachulish slate quarries; the bright homesteads of Ardgour; the brilliant white of the Corran lighthouse; and here we were rounding last night’s red buoy with its ‘staff and globe and white light every six sees.’ It marked the end of Culchenna Spit, and over against it on the Corran side was a red and white ringed beacon, with ball on top, marking the end of Salachan Spit. We sailed between, picking up two black buoys on our port side and so straight for the Narrows where the flood tide makes six knots. We saw a passenger steamer coming from Fort William and judged that we should meet right in the Narrows. Which we did. But the Thistle has her moments, and merely heaved her stern once or twice at the retreating Lochfyne. The engine paid little attention to us to-day. Couldn’t be bothered, and once eased off her throttle as if she, too, were a bit sick at going home.

There is an anchorage round the lighthouse in Camus Asaig, and, passing in front of the hotel, we went and had a look at it; but somehow we felt that to anchor here would be unreal, a malingering, a mere stop-gap, so we put about and headed for Fort William, not even altering course to look at Inverscadle Bay, two miles farther on, though it was inviting, with a glen behind.

Soon we saw Fort William in the distance and presently came on a road with hurrying cars, and enclosures by houses with tents and caravans. The sight quite depressed the Crew, and even the Mate, lying on his back on top of the house in the sun, wondered lazily what all the haste was about (though he has a lot of motoring to do himself). This hurry, and grouping of folk in enclosures, and congested social activity generally, did seem a bit of a mistake that afternoon.