For it is remarkable how all the bloody deeds are remembered, and the happiness, the greatness, and the love forgotten.

XXII

The Last Trump

And so we came to the lifting of our anchor on the last day, and as we stood down the second half of Loch Oich, the weather was moist and windless and the white sail lay sodden along the deck. Our hope had been for sparkling water and a following wind, so that we might have set both sails in a final splendid run up the twenty-four miles of Loch Ness and have come with gratitude, if regret, to our last anchorage. But this was denied us. And, unfortunately, the sad weather did not make the prospect of leaving the sea more appealing. It merely deepened the sadness. An odd sort of perversity this, but there it was.

Yet so valiantly did the Crew ‘Whistle for Bridge’ at Aberchalder that the adventurous spirit was restored, and we smiled and admired the land and saw the mists dragging their phantom armies up Corrieyairack Pass.

At the first lock I shut off the engine in such good time that we finally moved by slow inches while the lock-keepers, when they could spare their hands from the midges, waved us in with not unnatural impatience. But presently it was explained to them how we had so strange a beast in our keeping that, given its head at the wrong moment, it might charge the locks and break them down and so spread havoc over this sunny land.

So they laughed and helped us through.

‘You find the midges bad?’ said the Mate to one keeper.

‘I do that,’ he answered. ‘I am not a native and have never got used to them.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Thirty-four years.’

‘And the clegs?’

‘Aye, there are clegs. See that man over there—when he came first he could not shave for three months with the lumps on him.’

We exchanged sympathies in the moist weather and so off again on our winding wooded ways to Kytra. There is a friendliness in being helped through locks in a small vessel. And here a stranger addressed me by name and asked if we could take two little girls and a boy to Fort Augustus.

I said we should be delighted and helped our shy passengers on board. The Thistle was being promoted in the sphere of social service, and we were not untouched by this evidence of trust in her. She responded very properly, making a steady wash behind and waves that ran up the banks in a pretty rhythm. The Mate suggested that if the worst came to the worst, I might seriously contemplate turning her into a passenger vessel—to run hazardous trips, based, say, on Iona.

‘Or Arisaig of the perches,’ said the Crew.

But I refused to be drawn, for the thought had been vaguely worrying me as to what, in fact, I was going to do with her. Our rule had been to live from day to day. And actually at that moment I did not know where we were going to tie up in the evening—which must be our last, for the reason that we could go no farther, except into the North Sea, and already the corn was turning to gold and the rowan berries were red.