The Land of the Hills and the Glens 



narrow sea-way, the Sound of Mull, lay almost unruffled, 

 with the flashing lights of the Grey Islands at Salen and 

 Craignure showing up brightly in the clear air. 



An hour or two after midnight the quietness was suddenly 

 broken by a raging gale from the south, which tore up 

 through the Sound of Mull with the speed of an express 

 train, and heaped up the tide before it, so that it was by far 

 the highest of the year and flooded many of the low-lying 

 haughs. At the hour of the sailing of the mail-steamer the 

 gale was at the height of its strength, and the darkness was 

 so impenetrable, what with mist and driving squalls 

 of rain, that the captain decided to await daybreak at his 

 moorings. 



So it was that shortly after eight of the morning the boat 

 put out from the sheltered anchorage of Tobermory and set 

 her course for Kilchoan, on Ardnamurchan the first port of 

 call. We had steamed perhaps a mile when a patch of open 

 sky, green, and fringed with wild storm clouds, appeared to 

 the west, followed a minute or two later by a terrific squall of 

 rain and hail, which flattened the turbulent sea as though oil 

 had been cast upon it. And with the deluge there came, as is 

 customary on the western coast, a shifting of the wind from 

 south to west a wind which, while bringing, with it the full 

 force of the Atlantic swell, was more favourable to the chance 

 of making a landing at the islands whither the ship was 

 bound. As we came in sight of Kilchoan we could see the 

 ferry-boat put to sea in the teeth of the gale and laboriously 

 move forward, foot by foot, propelled by such powerful 

 thrusts that the strong oars bent almost to the breaking 

 point. But just as it appeared possible that the ferry would 

 in time be able to fight her way out to the steamer the wind 

 increased to hurricane force, with blinding hail and rain, so 

 that one feared the small craft might founder it was now 

 quite hidden from view by the squall and the mail-boat 

 headed to sea for her life and set her course for the distant 

 Isle of Tiree. And the wildness of this passage I shall not 

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