In short, between one thing and another, I was disheartened to the point of despair, except for the moments when I internally cursed the sloth of the West generally and one or two Skyemen in particular! And what I should have to pay for all this, heaven alone knew, for there had been no contract.

There followed four days of unceasing toil. I had the boat beached again and the carpenter sent for. When the tide left her we found a bad leak from the lavatory outlet pipe, which moved bodily as the handle was worked inside. The carpenter made a perfect job of fixing this pipe, and after some attention to the pumping mechanism, we had no further trouble from the lavatory: a point worth making, perhaps, against small-yacht owners who have written uncomplimentary things about the functioning of this modern contrivance. Not that I am prepared to go into details of use and wont in the wilds. But the contrivance worked in a civilised way when called upon.

But the shining porcelain wash-basin—it was a fraud, for when it was tilted up the water merely ran on to the floor. The extension pipe from the zinc pan beneath had at some distant time been torn away. Before going to sea, we got a piece of flexible piping and made quite a respectable job of fixing it underneath to the hole in the zinc, with just enough length to reach the lavatory pan.

The real saga of these four days, however, was the hunt for extension pieces to the new bilge pump. When I think of it now I smile, but at the time the humour was very intermittent. It covered the whole social and individual background of Skye, including the religious (for a watch had to be set on a half-holy day while work went on behind closed doors).

It began by my ’phoning the plumbers in Portree to find that they did not possess inch piping in lead, iron, copper, or any other substance; the size was apparently an unusual one. For two days we went through the Island in a car, in quite a fair emulation of Caoilte after the deer, hunting blacksmiths, garagemen, joiners, or anyone remotely likely to have anything to do with piping. For the delay that would result from having to send to Glasgow or elsewhere on the mainland was at this point simply intolerable to contemplate. The weather was bright and pleasant—splendid sea weather, that one could not reasonably expect to continue, after such a glorious May. A break was overdue—and it might easily last a fortnight. As we flew along the coasts, the sea mocked us with its brilliant sparkle.

Then on the third day someone heard of someone who knew someone who was close neighbour to someone who had purchased some surplus piping some time or other from the Board of Agriculture, and would it be worth while going to enquire? I was in the mood to go to Timbuctoo, as long as I could go myself; so off we set and duly arrived. While the mechanic was going across fields and ditches towards the croft house, I sat in the car beside the neat-handed lad from the hotel and offered him wild odds in shillings that the piping, if any, would not be inch. He contemplated the bet seriously, and then declined it.