The western edge of the sun’s halo was thinning, as were the seaward clouds, and though over Skye behind us immense cumulus moved and burgeoned upon dark ominous underbodies, the day seemed to be lightening. I went inside and tapped the aneroid: 29.68 and, if anything, going up. The wind was not increasing; lessening, in fact, I thought. And without any warning a feeling of exhilaration, of a rare gladness, came out of the air, and I put her straight on Canna.

The mountains of Rum rose to the left of Canna, and beyond Rum, in the haze, the Scuir of Eigg. We were a week overdue at Eigg, but as the Scuir was some forty miles away and the boat doing barely six knots, we could not bring ourselves to believe we should get there. If we fetched Canna, we should do well.

The wind became intermittent and the colours in the sea varied and fascinating. Towards the west, where the blue sky was widening, the water was living amarynth; east and south it was a leaden rolling waste. The cloud formations were of great complexity, from pure white puffs in the distant blue, airy as meadowland dreams, through snarls and wind-drawn angers overhead, to the sombre pall that lay on Skye and the inky gloom that blotted out the south-west. A gannet lank and white, like a dead bird re-arisen, passed overhead. Puffins, scuttling out of the water, disappeared as by magic over the edge of the next swell. There was a splendid exhilaration in this width and expanse, an expanse rendered all the vaster by the hazed islands and the immense stretch of the mainland highlands now rising out of the thinning clouds far to the east and south’ard. Something here very much grander, more impressive, than any circle of horizon when no land is seen.

Canna, lying low to the sea, became more defined as we drew nearer and presently we could make out the flat shelf of Sanday Island at its south point, between which and Canna was the harbour. I began memorising—and visualising—the entrance and anchorage from the Sailing Directions.

All sea directions are necessarily against dangers, but the detailing of rocks and reefs (particularly those that may be covered by the tide) and tortuous channels and depths does not make easy or pleasant reading. The sea’s teeth seem everywhere and even a very few tons moving at six knots can make short work of thin planking. Not but that one could circumspectly face up to any danger—with an engine that answered promptly. But when there is a feeling that the lever may refuse to come out of gear, that the engine may stop altogether in an attempt to slacken speed, and when one knows, over and above, that wind and tidal current continue remorselessly, then the coming gracefully to an unknown anchorage is a bit of a thought.

The Crew was looking at Canna and remembering or paraphrasing some words by the Rev. Kenneth Macleod in his Introduction to the Songs of the Hebrides. When a man on a journey landed on Canna he might stay only two or three days if he was in a hurry, and then the farewell to him: isn’t it the great pity that you are going instead of coming.