CALM J3^D ST01(M 93 



hills mirrored in the placid water, may well have 

 wondered what cynic christened it the Lake of Hell. 

 But when sudden tempests, rushing madly down the 

 steep side of Ben Serial, lash all the angry water into 

 foam, and 



" lift it in their grasp 



And hold it up and shake it like a fleece," 



clearer then is the ominous meaning of its Gaelic 

 name. 



Along the beach, close above the golden weed that 

 marks the tide line, stand the rude houses of the village ; 

 their dark, discoloured walls almost in unbroken line ; 

 their blackened thatch hardly varied by the masonry of 

 a single chimney. Behind them rise their strips of corn 

 land that seem to fight their way by inches up the 

 sterile hills. The bare brown mountain is veined with 

 milk-white torrents, vanishing at last in the caverns 

 they have worn deep into the rock. One mist-like sheet 

 of foam leaps in three mighty plunges into a great dark 

 hollow ; and, at times, the wind, rushing up the glen, 

 catches the water as it falls, and hurls it backward up 

 the hill in a white veil of spray. 



Such was the scene, as late one August evening the 

 Thekla sailed into the bay. Knowing the loose nature 

 of the bottom and the consequent badness of the anchor- 

 age, we brought up a good hundred yards clear of any 

 other craft, though a fleet of herring boats, that had 

 brought in their takes of fish to smacks and steamers 

 anchored in the bay, lay all around us. Clouds of 

 sea-gulls hovered round the ships, or floated far up on 



