We were soon abreast of Ardmore Point, where there used to be a tidy crofting hamlet, before it was cleared for sheep. This crofting area is interesting because, as I was later told in Tobermory, it was one of the last places where the ground was worked on the run-rig system and the whole farmed out on a communal basis. Each crofter was finally responsible for a single plot, after lots had been cast yearly over the subdivision of the common land. The system worked harmoniously over most of the Highland area, and if we may now think that the land was not put to the best use, we are judging from a standard of crop rotation and production that is universally quite modern. In these days rent was paid in kind and in labour. Even MacCrimmon’s fees for teaching the bagpipe were expressed in terms of cows, and that did not lessen the coveted value of the diploma which he sealed with his own seal after it had been won. Another thing I was told about Ardmore: that it is a very good example of land, once cultivated, going back to a wilder and ranker state of nature than before it was originally broken in. The sheep paid for ten years. Then they didn’t.

As we rounded Runa Gall lighthouse, glistening white and spick and span, the old anxiety over making a decent anchorage began to heave itself up. It was all very well struggling away in front of some crofters’ houses, but a famed yachting centre, with its piers and daily steamers and smart yachtsmen with their smarter women and still smarter craft—with little else to do, likely, but watch a poor devil, struggling with the malignant demon that inhabits a thrawn bit of machinery, and misunderstanding the situation with the interest that demands amusement anyhow—that was a different kettle of fish entirely. Not to mention a very natural desire to do the thing decently before our friends. There certainly was no need to put them to shame, too. If only she would repeat her behaviour before Arisaig, I, on my part, promised myself a quite professional performance. But already—wasn’t that a queer knock? There again. I refused to listen. The Arisaig yachtsman would certainly not have been able to open his mouth now! There it was again—a rat-tat-tat of metal. Let it rat!

For we were opening out the bay. I’d better try to reduce speed. I gave Maurice the helm and made to ease back the spark, but immediately got the impression that she would stop if I touched anything. Something was wrong—and pretty far wrong. We daren’t stop here. And when I pushed my head up, there, still, was the bay, but where were the piers, the houses, the yachts? I actually consulted the chart—as though the blessed engine had hallucinated us.