And if there is any excuse for such a personal irruption, it may lie in this: that after these two days’ action, our only abode was a boat in doubtful condition, and that if we had lost all visible means of support we had at least gained a little control of time.

So one fine and cloudy morning the Crew and I packed our small car with a miscellany of household gear and set off for the West. The sun was shining in Glenmoriston and we went past the oaks and the birches in the happiest mood. How complete a change had come over our earthly fortunes since, a few weeks before, Eoin and I had taken that first jaunt to Skye! The old boat had won out.

We had a few minutes’ anxiety near the crest of the steep hill behind Kylerhea when the engine, pulling away on bottom gear, suddenly roared and the car began to slip backward. I held her with both brakes until the Crew got out and fixed large stones behind the rear wheels. Three men working on the road came to our assistance. They were obviously used to this sort of trouble. I felt sure I had stripped my gears. But the oldest cheered me by saying, ‘The steepest part is still in front of you.’ They got their shoulders to the bodywork. I let in the clutch with no hope. The car moved away from them. In a flash I realised what had happened: under the continued vibration of low-gear work, the lever had of its own accord jumped into neutral.

The relief from this experience—for I had visions of hopeless delays and expense—heightened the pleasure of the day and we arrived at Duntulm in great form.

And then our troubles began.

The engine was not in the finished condition I had expected, though the job had been on hand for some two months. The floor boards were awash, though she had been dried that morning. When we tried the old pump it would not work without priming and then ejected about as much as a peashooter, so we baled her out with a bucket. Eoin had warned me about this pump, and some two weeks before, a new pump had been despatched, but had arrived without the two extension pieces of piping and so no effort had been made to put it in. The drip-feed box was absent. Wire was wound round the cylinder block. The two new lockers were upright shallow shells without shelves, and no storage room had been put in beyond the forward bulkhead. The dinghy was still unpainted and on daylight examination looked anything but the wholesome job I had thought her in the half-dark. A local fisherman hesitatingly believed ‘she might do if her bottom was heavily tarred’. The Crew could not find her primus stove, our only cooking fire, but we ran it to earth in an outhouse, where it had been used as a blow-lamp for plumbing.