Across the sea loch beyond our boat, little settlements or townships were scattered here and there, and individual dwellings; and in the vast treeless area that the eye covered everything was static, so that each house looked wind-swept and very quiet, while the landscape itself took on a dream quality that had in its stillness something incommunicably sad. As we sailed round the wild north-west coast, this effect had been particularly strong. It is an effect, no doubt, entirely in the mind of the beholder, but surely there is, too, that extra-universal feeling of the essential loneliness of human life and even something of the mystery of its being and doing on a planet of so remote and incredible a geological past. For looking thus on Skye we did, in truth, get the effect of looking on a planet, on one small curve of the green hide that formed over the forming structure of the earth. And to feel as much does not lessen the sweetness of wind and sun on the face, or the pleasure of seeing the plant life or watching the birds.

And as for birds, we certainly were provided with every opportunity of studying the herring gull, for one insisted on being companionable. He generally rode the dinghy while waiting for food, but if we took no notice of him, he dropped on the edge of the cockpit, gave us first the benefit of one yellow eye-ring, then of the other, reformed the perfect lines of his pure white neck, splayed his webbed pinkish feet more comfortably, opened his yellow beak with the blood-red spot near the tip, and in a strong, impatient voice, said ‘Skoo-awk! ’ But the real instinct of the wild was in him, and it was interesting to watch the internal struggle that went on when a crust landed in a position where he could see it but where he would for a moment lose the instant use of his wings. To do him justice, he never allowed his greed to overcome his instinct.

Sea-bird life was, however, not very plentiful and the only other regular visitor to our little bay was a black guillemot that showed a pair of red heels when you looked at him even from a distance. There were night cries along the beach, some of them young and wavering and sorrowful—though not, one imagined, unduly distressing the breast of the mother bird. It was never quite dark. In the middle of the night near things loomed and far things were clear against a sky from which a certain pale light did not fade. Then a curlew passed over our heads, calling in the long tremulous whistle that as boys we had always said brought rain. A dark curtain came about the world and the rain descended.

The rain, and then the wind rising.

For three whole days we were in the grip of a storm that for two of these days prevented our going the fifty yards to shore in our dinghy, so that we were finally without milk and very nearly without matches. Since our arrival the glass had been steady at 30.40, without any inclination to waver, and though the wind had been strong the weather had been invigorating. The change was complete, the wind coming suddenly out of the west and the rain driving in sheets across the water and over the hills. It grew cold, too, and at five o’clock in the morning the primus was pumped for hot drinks.