WHEN the little cutter Tern, agile and beautiful as the
sea swallow from which she takes her name, weighed anchor in Tobermory Harbour, and began to work westward through the Sound of Mull towards Arduamurchan, the long swell coming in from the Atlantic was beginning to whiten under a stiff breeze from the north-west ; and it became a question whether or not she should fold down her wings and run back to her nest in the bay.
We looked wistfully to windward, and began to doubt our wisdom in venturing so far on board so tiny a craft—seven tons register, open aft, and rigged with a boom and racing mainsail sure to bring her on her broadside in stormy weather. The gloomy prognostics, both of fair-weather yachtsman and hard- weather seamen, were sharply remembered, as the big rollers began to break knee-deep over our bow, and the strong wind to lay the decks under to the very edge of the cockpit " dooming." But the Viking in the blood prevailed. A third reef was taken in in the mainsail, and the little craft was urged on ; and scarcely had she beaten a mile and a half to windward, when the breeze died suddenly away, and the waters, washing troublously, grew weaker and weaker, till the tops of the long heaving rollers were almost calm. A light air and a strong tide soon carried the Tern outside of Ardnatuurchan, where, dripping and quivering like a thing of life, she has paused, nearly becalmed, with the lonely islands whither she is bound opening one by one on the dim and misty sea.
To the south lies Mull in mist, piling her dull vast hills out above the line of breaking foam ; while out to the south-west cairn after cairn, looming through the waters, show where barren Coll is weltering in the gloomy waste. To the far west, only cloud resting on cloud, above the dim unbroken water-line of the Atlantic ; but northward all brightens, for the storm has passed thence with the wind, and the sunlight has crept out, cold and clear, on craggy Rum, whose heights stretch grey and ghostly against a cloudless sky. Hard by, in shadow, looms the gigantic Scaur of Eig, looking down on the low and grassy line of Muck, which stretches like some green monster at its feet. Beyond all these, peeping between Rum and Eig, pencilled in faint and ghostly peaks hued like the heron's wings, are the wondrous Coolin Hills of Skye—ghastilly beautiful, born of the volcano on some strange morning in the age of mighty births. The eye seeks to go no further. It rests on those still heights, and in a moment the perfect sense of solitude glides into the soul—thought seems stationary, a solemn greyness brooding over life subdued.
For a sight such as that words are the merest pencil scratches, and for the feeling awakened by such sights there is no kind of symbol at all. In trying accurately to describe nature, one glides at once into the mood of the cicerone ; the moment of enjoyment has past, and the pain of explanation Inis begun. But to see and feel such things to the true spiritual height, let no man stand on the paddle-box of a steamboat or on the carefully washed deck of
a big vessel. The still power of waters is not quite to be felt until the very body and blood have known their stormy might; and how better know their might than by slipping out upon the waste in as tiny a vessel as can live thereon ? The smaller the craft, the fewer the fellow-beings at band, the intenser the enjoyment both of storm and calm. It is a proud pleasure to dash like a sea-fowl under the very mouth of the tempest, conscious of the life in one's veins, drunken as it were with the excitement and uncertainty of the hour,—awake to every quiver of the little yielding creature under whose wings you fly, feeling its panting breath come and go with your own, till perchance its wings are folded down close, and it swims with you for very life before the elements which follow screaming in its track. After a flight so fine, the soul is ready for strange calm waters and ghostly peaks, fit to feel the pathos and sweetness of things at rest, ending with that dim chill stir which we call the thought of God. In this life, and perhaps in lives beyond, there seems need of some such preparation for great spiritual peace ; and it is therefore a poor soul which has not felt some very rough weather.
The British lover of beauty wanders far, but we question if he finds anywhere a picture more exquisite than opens out, vista after vista, among these wondrous Isles of the North. Here year after year they lie almost neglected, seen only by the hard-eyed trader and the drifting seaman ; for that mosaic being, the typical tourist, seldom quits the inner chain of mainland lakes, save, perhaps, when a solitary example, dull and bored, oozes out of the mist at Broadford or Portree, takes a rapid glare at the chilly Cooling, and shivering with enthusiasm hurries back to the South. The heights of Rum, the kelp caverns of Islay, the fantastic cliffs of Eig scarcely ever draw the sight-seer; Canna lies unvisited in the solitary sea ; and as for the outer Hebrides—from Stornoway to Barra Head—they dwell ever lonely in a mist, warning off all fair-weather wanderers. A little, a very little, has been said about these isles ; but to all ordinary people they are less familiar than Vienna, and further off than Calcutta.
Forbidding in their stern beauty, isolated and sea-surrounded, they possess no superficial fascinations; their power is onethat grows, their spell is that of the glamour, holding only the slowly selected soul. Not merely because these isles are so strangely, darkly lovely, but because we owe to them so much that is noblest and best in the heart of modern life, did it seem fitting to attempt some faint pic- tures of their scenery and their people; and to wander from island to island, mixing freely with poor folk, seeing and noting what may afterwards pass into noble nourishment for the heart, is the errand of those on board the little Tern. The reality soon exceeded all expectation. As the eye became more and more accustomed to hill and sea, as the first mood of awe and pleasure at the weird vistas wore away, human figures, group after group, before invisible, loomed slowly into view :—the kelp-burner moving blackly through the smoke of his fire on the savage shore, the herring fishers tossing at their nets, while the midnight sea gleams phosphorescent below and the clouds blacken in the lift above ; the wild, wandering women, foul with the fish they are gutting, shrieking like the cloud of gulls that hover over their heads; the quaint country folk streaming down to the little ports on holidays and fair days ; the shepherd on his bill, the lobster fisher in the quiet bay, the matron grinding her corn and weaving her petticoat with instruments hundreds of years " behind the age ;" and all these moving against so mighty a background, and speaking a speech stranger to common ear than any modern tongue of Europe—a speech old as the hills, and full of their mysterious music and power. Here surely was something for the eye and heart to rest upon, a life subtly colouring ours through many generations, yet preserved quite fresh and unchanged by the spirit of the waters, a life far more surely part of us and ours than that of Florence, or Paris, or Wiesbaden.
To lie becalmed in the little Tern off the terrible Rhu, the Ardnamurchan, most dreaded by those best acquainted with its mighty tides and fierce waters, is by no means an unmixed pleasure. Yonder stretches the ocean, dead still now, but likely to be roused in an instant into frenzy ; and, still more to be dreaded, half a mile on the starboard band, the gloomy cliffs of the point seem coming nearer, as the fitful eddies of the tide swing the vessel this way and that. Out go the long oars, and slowly, very slowly, the Tern draws from the shore. Two long hours of hard pulling, with scarcely any perceptible progress, is not altogether desirable, even in the presence of a scene so fair, and one whistles for the wind more and more impatiently. At last the waters ripple black to northward, the huge mainsail-boom swings over with a heavy jerk, and in a minute the Tern flashes ahead full of new life, and the sky brightens over a fresh and sparkling sea, and
with hearts leaping, all canvas set, and the little kittiwakes screaming in our track, we leave the mighty Rhu behind.
We are four,—the skipper, the pilot, the steward, and the cook, —only the seaman being a sailor by profession. The skipper, to describe him briefly, is a wild, hirsute being, faintly bespattered with the sciences, fond of the arts, but generally inclined (as Walt Whitman puts it) to " loafe and invite his soul." his hobby is his vessel, and his hate is "society," especially Scotch society, whatever that may mean. The pilot is of another turn, a Gaelic fisher, deep in knowledge of small craft, and full of the dreamy reasonings of his race. As for the steward, lie is a nondescript, a moouer on the skirts of philosophy, fleshly yet tender, whose business it is to take notes by flood and fell, and cater for the kitchen with rod and gun. What the steward provides is pre- pared to perfection by the cook in a den about the size of an ordinary cupboard, and served up in a cabin where Tom Thumb might have stood upright and a shortish man have just lain at full length. Over the sleeping accommodation we draw a veil.
As the Tern flies nearer to the mighty Scaur of Eig, a beetling precipice towering 1,300 and odd feet above the sea, the sun is sloping far down westward behind the lofty peaks of Rum ; and in deep purple shadow, over the starboard bow, the rugged lines of the mainland, from Loch Moidart to the Sound of Sleat, open up, gloam strangely, and die ridge after ridge away. The distant Cooling grow yet more ghostly against the delicate harebell of the sky, catching on their peaks the roseate airs of Emmet ; and the mountains of Rum deepen more and more in under-shadow, as the light flames keener on their rounded heights. The wind falls again, faint airs come and go, and the low sound of the sea becomes full of a strange hush. As we draw close under the lee of Rum, the still sea is darkened on every side in patches as of drifting sea-weed, and there is a still flutter as of innumerable little wings. Hither and thither, skimming the water in flocks of eight or ten, dart the beautiful shearwaters (puffini Angtorunt of the ornithologists), seizing their prey from the sea with their tender feet as they fly ; while under them, wherever the eye rests, innumerable marrota and guillemots float, dive, and rise. All these have their nests among the blackly shaded cliffs close at hand. The black cormorants are there too, wary and solitary ; and the gulls, from the lesser black- backed to the little kittiwake, gather thickly over one black patch of floating birds astern, where doubtless the tiny herring are dart- ing in myriads. Save for the fitful cry of the kittiwakes, or the dull croaking scream of a solitary tern beating up and down over the vessel, all is quite still, and the presence of these countless little fishers only deepens the solitude. Quite fearless and unsuspi- cious, they float within oar's length of the vessel, diving swiftly at the last moment, and coolly emerging again a few yards distant. Only the cormorant keeps aloof, safe out of gun range. Rank and unsavoury as this glutton is, his flesh is esteemed by fisher- men, and he is so often hunted, that he is ever on the watch for danger.
Low, undulating, grassy, yonder is Muck—the Gaelic Elan- na-Muchel, or Isle of Swine—Buchauan's hank Poreorin. It is green and fertile, an oasis in the waste. Muck, Big, Ruin, and Canna form collectively the Parish of Small Isles, with the pastor of which Hugh Miller took his well known geologic cruise. It must be no lamb-hearted man who carries the Gospel over these waters during winter weather.
Lower, deeper sinks the sun, till he is totally hidden behind the hills. Haskeval and lioudeval, the two highest peaks of Rum, throw their shadows over the drifting Tern, while from some solitary bay inland the oyster-catchers and sealarks whistle in the stillness. A night mist coming from the west deepens the gloaming, and we look somewhat anxiously after a harbour. Somewhere, not far away, below the two peaks, lies a little Inch with safe anchor- age; but no eyes, except those of a native, could pick it out in the darkness. We drift slowly upward on the flood tide, eagerly eye- ing every nook and cranny in the shadowy mass at our side. Just as the day dawns, we spy the mouth of the loch, and launching the long oars, make wearily towards it. But the anchor is soon down, all cares are over for the time being, and, after pipes and grog, all hands turn in for a nap.
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