I knew where they were going. I remembered the fright one of them had given me off Talisker Distillery, some four miles farther up, many years ago. I had been out in a little canoe, fishing for haddock and flounders to a stone anchor. The wind was freshening and every now and then the water lapped in over the canoe, so that I knew it was dangerous to linger, yet could not tear myself away from the fishing, for I was having a fine catch, despite the light greedy mouths of the whiting. Then, as my anxiety was all worked up to an edge, there came a terrific snort behind that lifted me a foot off the seat. A porpoise! I saw the living brown of his body— brown in that green water anyway—at full stretch passing under me, and I was so angered that I caught up one of the light oars and jabbed it at him. How I was not upset I still do not know, for I certainly had to paddle home sideways like a crab.

At eleven o’clock we turned in and within a few minutes, despite the multitudinous noises, I was sound asleep and didn’t awake until five, when it was still blowing but not nearly so hard. We both complained of the wintry cold, though we had kept our jerseys on and covered our bunks with our oilskins. After a cup of steaming Bovril (I almost liked the stuff) and when the Crew had got a hot water bottle against the damp patch in her bedclothes next the hull, we went to sleep again. By the forenoon I was trolling a minnow round the boat in a calm innocent little bay.

That afternoon the Crew had been able to fulfil her promise to take some photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Macleod and their grand-daughter. Mrs. Macleod, who was over seventy and did not use the English lingo, was quite excited and specially prepared for the occasion. She spoke volubly in Gaelic and had a happy manner full of bright touches of humour and could hardly believe us when we failed to catch her meaning. When she saw the Crew in her blue flannel trousers, her eyes twinkled; then she gave her a playful skelp behind and said, ‘Och! Och!’

We were getting to know the folk now, and that night I had a little adventure after my heart. A boat, a net, and a wise old seaman who said that God had created all the fish in the sea for man, and made no reservations of special kinds for special men. I devoutly agreed. So about eleven o’clock we set off.

Though the weather did not smell very good, it was a calm night and the moon, near her quarter, came up in clouds of glory, while over the hill-ridge to the south, in a misty blue, Sirius hung large and red. Indeed I had never seen the redness so pronounced, and from the stillness of the night and the leaden glitter of the water, my eye would be drawn to where the red eye of the dog star watched our proceedings in a cryptic mood.