I

How not to Buy a Boat

Eoin is the sort of friend who can always do ‘the very thing’ for you. If you have a vague idea of buying a motor-car or a house or any other little luxury beyond your means, it is unwise to mention it to him. One night as he was going out the door I said, ‘By the way, Eoin, you don’t know of a smart little craft, something about thirty feet, with cabin to sleep two, a sound engine—sort of boat a man and his wife could work around the West Coast and the Islands?’

‘Man,’ he said, turning with his dark smile, ‘I know the very thing for you. I saw her last week in Skye. She’s mahogany from the keel up and she has the lines of a girl. You could dance in her cabin and she has a wash-basin you tip up and a lavatory that cost over twenty pounds.’

‘Sit down,’ I said, and I got hold of his glass again.

We left Inverness at six in the morning and were at Dornie Ferry before half-past eight. It was a lovely cool April morning and the Kyle was a grey shimmer. The ferry-boat was on the other side, and Eoin, stretching himself after the keen run, filled his breast with all the West. This was his own land, and, having reached it, he left haste where it belonged.

‘I want to introduce you’, he said, ‘to a friend of mine.’

So I followed him until he found his friend, who from the byre took us into his parlour, where he was very hospitable, early though it was. Through the window I presently saw the ferry-boat coming across for us. When it could wait no longer it went away with the postman. But later on it came back, and, after a last round of words, we went with it.

In Kyle of Lochalsh the fishing boats—smart Loch Fyne craft—were coming in, and we arranged to buy two cod of next day’s catch to take home with us.

The business air of hurry and responsibility is difficult to maintain in the West; and when Kyle was behind us, and Broadford, and the small new bungalow with the boarded windows that no one will inhabit because it is haunted by a woman out of the stream behind, we decided that the day was opening up very well. Then the hill beyond Loch Ainort, with its striped tawny skin, and beyond that the round summit of Ben Glamaig, white with snow.

I have so many happy memories of Skye that its bareness has an intimate attraction. Peat smoke was ascending from the small hamlets by the sea. Folk were stirring here and there. The Island of Raasay, with its sugar-loaf hill, lay ahead of us, small Paby far behind, and Scalpay over from us on our right. The seaways between were quiet glimmering channels.