Towards evening several yachts came in, all under auxiliary power, white, blue, lovely craft. They floated in with assurance, took soundings, slid ahead, found the desired spot, dropped anchor, and, with a boil of reverse, paid out chain. So quietly, so efficiently done! I felt we had no right to be here at all. What to us was a long-drawn-out anxiety and excitement was to them a normal performance, like taking a booked seat in a theatre. And when at night they lowered their flags and hung out their riding lights, humiliation could do little more than have an amused smile to itself. Having seen a three-light navigation lamp on board, I had in these early busy days possibly assumed the existence of a riding light. But there was no riding light. We had, however, a three-and-sixpenny storm lantern (or so it was called) and about eleven o’clock at night, when I thought nobody was looking, I stole out and hung it up on the forestay. There was a thick smirr of rain, a heavy sky, and a moderate wind. I watched the wick flutter till my head got wet. Then I ducked into the cabin and with an electric torch—the only other light on board—saw the Crew’s concern for my difficulty; whereat we both laughed, and the water being hot in the kettle—it had a habit of being hot about this time—I brewed such a soothing draught as no other craft could produce in that bay, and we drank it as we lay in our bunks looking out through the grey light of the open doors.

This last hot drink with a slow cigarette was the day’s luxury, its perfect all-reconciling end. We envied nobody anything. We realised, in the warmth of that beneficent concoction, that yachting with two or three white-capped professionals, who know every anchorage, was doubtless very pleasant, but also very easy. God bless them, we were doing grand! And we had lured our two friends through some of the finest scenery in Scotland in order to take them round one of its stormiest headlands, killing in the process any tendency towards either boredom or museful rhapsodizing by making them hunt rocks and buoys, study charts, and hope for the best. The engine lay in a bad, perhaps a ruinous, condition, and the boat was making far too much water for comfort, but, after all, we were here, and with luck and decent weather we might go farther. The weather had certainly been broken, so there was always the chance it might mend. On Eigg last year they had had months of perfect weather, blue skies and sparkling seas, until they had thought it was never going to end.

I went out for my last look around. The lights were still bright in the Mishnish hotel, where our friends were safely housed. Farthest out in the bay, the S. Y. Killarney was a blaze in every porthole, and as I stood there the orchestra played ‘God save the King’ to its army of trippers. Very wonderful she looked in the grey night light with its smother of fine rain. Not far from her a puffer had come to anchor. A sailing yacht of ten to fifteen tons, all white and beautifully lined, lay light in the water as a seabird; and in from her, a blue yacht of about the same size, was already asleep. Other craft, larger and smaller, swung to their riding lights; and our friend the schooner, a dark hulk on the grey water, lay in a friendly way close to us. The contrast between puffer and schooner on the one hand and the pleasure craft on the other was strangely marked, and one’s heart went out to those toilers who do so much to keep the whole show going. I glanced at our own light, an uncertain feeble flicker, but burning still. ‘What are you smiling at?’ said the Crew. No one could see anyone smiling in the dark. But there are moments when she is like that.