‘We go down here,’ said Eoin, pulling up at last. ‘They may be at her.’

It was not without some excitement that I followed him down the path to the beach. And there I saw her. She was high and dry, lying over against a grassy sea-bank, like a stranded sea-animal, and there was no one about her.

I became aware of Eoin’s voice drawing attention to her lines. He made me stand in front of her bows, drew me aft to the cockpit. Half the engine—a 14 h.p. Kelvin—lay about the grass, together with worn linoleum, floor boards, small bricks of pig iron ballast, oars, mast, rusty anchor, rusty chain, while the folding top of a teak table helped to support her side.

‘You are seeing her at her worst,’ he said, and stepped in over the stern seat. From this open cockpit aft we entered through a double door into the cabin. This door looked like mahogany but, as I learned later, was actually teak. She was built throughout of teak and pitch pine, except for the transom of the square stern, which was oak. The engine was on the threshold. A simple wooden seat ran down each side of the cabin full length, about fourteen feet, and the beds were two simple cots, opposite each other as one entered, that folded back against her unlined walls. Forward against the fo’castle bulkhead on the port side was a cupboard with little doors and drawers. Otherwise there was no locker accommodation. In the fo’castle the expensive lavatory faced the entrant, with chain locker to left and washbasin to right. There was some shallow but useful shelving right in the bows. As far as accommodation went, her slimness was evident, but that did not worry me at the moment, for you cannot fill a given space with lockers and mattress beds and still have it to move about in. Moreover, I had never yet struck a small boxed-in cabin that wasn’t smelly; and with a thick smell about, it doesn’t require much of a sea to upset a delicate stomach. The two skylights were large and healthy looking.

I took out my pen-knife and pricked her joints and planking all the way aft, and then performed the same friendly rite to her outside skin. She was hard and sound and the waterline rang to the knuckles. With his steel tape, Eoin measured her over all. From stem to stern she was twenty-seven feet. In beam, seven. And she would probably take a good three feet in draught. I must have wondered if she was a bit narrow, for I heard Eoin’s voice, ‘That’s where she’ll get her ten knots.’

But what I was really thinking was something quite other, if it could be called thinking at all, for it came over me, moving about her helpless condition, that she might become my boat.

Had I seriously thought of buying a boat? Had the jaunt to Skye been undertaken with any such real intention? Had it been anything more than one of those vague desires that torment us intermittently through life? Had I expected to find a boat that I would buy?