The wool used is mostly from the club sheep farm, so that, apart from some shop-bought dyes, the cloth, stockings, and scarves are products of the place. It is a common sight to see a woman walking along the road, looking round about, and knitting away, the sock held no more than waist high. When she meets a neighbour and talks, the needles keep going, though they have their dramatic little pauses.

This evening the Dunara Castle (a tenth-day visitor) came to the pier with her cargo of goods from Glasgow and her ‘towrists’. Mrs. Morrison could have sold all her scarves if only the young man she had left in charge, while she went on a visit, had known their price. But he did not know or had forgotten, so he didn’t sell one. Whereat she and the Crew laughed merrily.

But always behind our pleasant life in Portnalong had been the wind. The glass would go up only to fall again; a calm was no more than a lull. Here is a note I made lying in my bunk:

‘Now and then beyond the low dark clouds scurrying and tearing from the sou’west, we catch a glimpse of a sunlit blue with small white summer clouds high and still, before the whole is blotted out again.

‘Last night from sou’sou’west, the breeze increased to gale force and woke us with its violence about three o’clock. Terrific gusts boil the sea white and curtains of rain obscure the pier at fifty yards. The glass is falling steadily and slowly. I tap it often but always to be disheartened. We have not yet reached the worst.

‘At noon it is as bad as ever, and looks as if it might last for ever.

‘I think there is no force in nature so wearing as the wind. And though out of fear, as out of all elemental emotions, there emerge moments of great exaltation, yet there is no outlasting the ruthless persistence of the wind, because even the persistence is not steady but (near land, at least) subject to swift shrieking violences, when every plank in the boat shakes, the anchor chain goes crack! and for a moment one wonders if everything has gone. Actually at times it seemed that some malevolent force caught the boat by the stern and shook it.

‘At two o’clock the glass remains steady at 29. 50. I imagine the wind is lessening in force, but it is difficult to say, for this business of staring at the sea becomes hypnotic. In half an hour the glass has risen a point. A change of some sort is coming. I forecast a lull, followed by a change of wind to round about nor’west and a more violent storm than we have yet experienced.

‘The herring gull rides the dinghy and as I stare at his yellow eye and dead white breast I see him like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. There are moments when a gull has an almost terrifyingly dead look. And being white, he is not lucky. I throw him a monster mackerel. He is on it at once, but can neither rise with it nor swallow it. The wind drifts him towards the pier, while he struggles with outstretched wings. He manages to keep on flying a yard or two out from the piles until at last he actually rises with the hard heavy fish to the top of the pier. A common gull comes along—or perhaps a lesser black-backed gull, for the wings seem darker than our herring gull’s—but does not interfere. Then over the water are swift sharp cries and about us all at once is a cruising company of terns. How graceful they are with their leisurely wing-beats and swallow-pointed tails! The moment of poise—the dive: and up and off again.