This is the Soay that was in the news recently, trying to get better steamer connections.

East of us, the Point of Sleat, and round it Sleat Sound, which I knew so well, with Loch Nevis, Loch Hourn—that deep wild loch, Isle Ornsay, Glenelg Bay, and so to the Kylerhea narrows and Loch Duich. Southward we could see the headland which covered Mallaig, and down from Mallaig the long indented coast of the famous white sands. Behind, stood mountain range on mountain range, and here and there in hollows dim distant peaks in the heart of Inverness-shire. As we opened out Eigg, Coll lay to the southward and east from it the long headland of Ardnamurchan. A noble country, and worth surely a better modern story than the evidence from Soay.

Between the two islands, we caught the western swell again, but now its surface for minutes at a time was completely unflawed by wind and we saw what appeared to be the machinery of the sea in motion. There was such fascination in watching it that the eyes were held and slightly dazed. Glistening alternate movements, smooth sliding movements, of light and dark, coming up to the boat, clearly defined as steel, into and out of each other, elusive and yet extraordinarily powerful—and noiseless.

At a little distance we saw a gannet asleep on this power, its head curved over on its back. As it heard us, it lifted its head and in a moment we saw the black tips of the moving wings. It made no sound, though an old fisherman told me that when you surprise one of them too closely it lets out an unearthly screech.

Small things or incidents like these were continuously surprising us, and gave the sheer living of life a vivid interest. It even quickened local history, usually so dull a subject, till its human movement took on dramatic values, till the universal was seen in fact as an extension of the local. And usually there was plenty of time for imagination to sift such a thought through, quite on its own!

But here at last was Laig Bay on the west of Eigg, and, somewhere near, the Singing Sands, that Hugh Miller discovered for print, and that Gordon Bottomley made a verse drama upon. The long waves were breaking on the brown sands. Soon we closed the bay and came over against the Sgaileach rock, showing the same basaltic formation that had been with us everywhere. A waterfall down its face was like a vein of quartz. But the chart was now being handled with some anxiety and the Crew was called to her reading lesson on our approaching anchorage:

‘. . . Eiln. Castle shelters the N. or Flod Sgeir anchorage from southerly winds, though at times a considerable swell sets in, but it is rather difficult to enter for the first time, owing to the numerous reefs, almost all of which cover at H. W. Only two of these rocks are marked by poles . . . coming in from the north—’