During the day, as the wind increased, we became anxious about our holding, for the anchor was no more than twenty pounds, and as the boat swung wildly in the terrific gusts from the hills, the light chain over the stem roared like thunder inside the cabin or snubbed so violently that the whole vessel shook. One of the ventilators had been lost on Hulm Island, the shaft that held the other one loosened, and though I thought I had both shafts fairly tight, they began to drip badly. The double skylight, despite a rather smeared evidence of new putty, also began to drip, while high up the sides one or two small trickles appeared. Fortunately we lay so near the windward shore that no sea could get up to increase our troubles, and if we broke away and were lucky enough not to pile on the pier, I had a good mile in which to get the engine going before visiting the smoking rocks on the other side.

The second anchor of at least sixty pounds, presented an intermittent nagging problem, which I tried to work out in every conceivable single-handed move. At last I decided to leave it alone, and trust to a perfect holding ground and to a chain in which I had fair reason to believe there could be no weak link. We set a watch during the night.

But the following night, with the force of the wind much increased, we smiled at these early anxieties. In the fierce gusts, the sea boiled to spindrift, while the spume thrown up by the rocks on the other side hung on the air like curtains. Several times during the long vigil of that second night I thought we were dragging. Out of the midnight gloom, in the wild swing of the boat, the pier would loom up menacingly upon us. More than once it seemed so close that I was certain we were going, and got ready to jump—but she always swung away again, though for a time we were convinced that she had dragged a bit. That pier, coming and going in the sheeted rain and roar of the wind, fascinated the Crew to a steady stare. I asked her if she was frightened. No, it was not exactly fear; but a sort of dumb deep-seated anxiety. It was an anxiety that was quiet, anyway, and companionable.

When the daylight came again (it was here was developed the intermittent habit of hot drinks in the very early morning), we were relieved, and though the glass was now down at 29.24 and still falling, we felt we were holding our own. The weather had turned very cold, and what with our wet clothes and Skye a lowering world of gloom and driving clouds and mist and incessant rain, and the fact that we were worn down by two days and nights of dull anxiety in a small and very unstable boat, we might have had some excuse for doubting the wisdom of our ways.