‘Think’, said Eoin in the drowsy voice of legend, ‘of sailing down them.’

I had been thinking of it for some time. To be passing out there, where no craft was visible, would be a sailing out of time. To cast our warps, not for escape, but for adventure—into that which all our moorings have kept from us.

‘That is the life I would like,’ he told me confidentially. Behind his tone was the echo of what may never be won—but for the hope that comes again on such a morning in the West.

The business he had in Portree was probably in his mind as well, for it was of an intricate nature—nothing less than attempting to get a drinking licence for an hotel which he had rented in the north end of the island.

But if he knew little about hotel-keeping, he certainly knew most of what any one man may know of the complex Gaelic mind. And here was occasion for exercise of the astutest in all the devious ways of its courteous diplomacies.

For the motives that move the licensing authorities of an island like Skye may appear on the surface bland as Ah Sin’s face but in reality are deeper far than Shakespeare’s well. This is no simple affair of a popular vote; no question of elected representatives carrying out the will or desire of their constituents. At one point I was called into an office, charged around with black deed boxes like children’s coffins, and asked to vouch for Eoin’s character (to a man who knew of him and his antecedents far better than I), so that he might be deemed a fit and proper person to hold a licence. This was a thing I could do, with my bonnet off, for if there is one matter that should be sifted out beyond all others it is the character of the man in whose company a drink would retain all its friendliest, most refreshing, and inspiring properties.

‘But wouldn’t the folk in his hotel area like him to get the licence?’ I asked innocently.

‘No doubt.’

Whereat I all but blushed.

Landowners, female teetotallers also landed, ministers of the Gospel, bankers, retired gentry—from such as these are the company of licensing authorities gathered together. And each in the light of his or her peculiar beliefs decides what is good for the commonalty.

When Eoin said he was not going to ask any favour from anyone, I saw the matter was getting too complicated for me, so I left him and went down to the harbour, and there saw a converted ship’s lifeboat about thirty feet long.

I had a prejudice against conversions and the sight of this one deepened it, for all her new paint. She looked top-heavy and swung to the fitful airs in a way that made it easy to visualise her flat bottom. Bravely tricked out, too, with her high cabin, brass portholes brightly polished, and small windlass forward. But the game of pitch and toss in a western sea needs more qualities than a stout stomach. So I left her and climbed the hill behind the harbour.