106 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



Wrath went out and we saw the beetling cliffs backed with 

 high, bare ridges of the Sutherland mountains against a yellow 

 sunrise. On a soft, rolling, rippling sea and far off, a mere 

 speck beneath the cliffs, we made out a fellow-whaler (only a 

 steamer), with its long trail of smoke beneath the cliff steam- 

 ing east, and we thought she was the Hebrides, one of the 

 steamers of a small company, the Blacksod Bay Company 

 in Ireland, which I wish well. Evidently it was on its road 

 to Norway, so we gathered that whales must be scarce and 

 the weather probably bad on the Irish coast. 



Our saint has answered our prayer, and instead of the 

 wild weather we associate with these parts we go comfort- 

 ably along at eight knots, with the engine singing a soft song 

 to its gentle beat. What a difference between the lot of the 

 motor engineer at sea and the steamer's engineer, the motor 

 man in a pleasantly warm, spacious room, the other in 

 cramped space with considerable heat, and the clanging of 

 stokers' shovels. 



Past the E. of Lewis we motor steadily. One killer or 

 grampus we saw, and about a dozen dolphins in the three 

 days' run south, and very few birds. So we felt confirmed 

 in our belief that we should proceed to Southern Seas 

 now, instead of waiting for whales in northern latitudes. 

 Evidently the season here is over. 



Now we have Neist Light and its double flash, to port, 

 and we pass Dunvegan and wish we could see the familiar 

 mountains of Skye. But the light is all we have, and welcome 

 it is ; past it a little and we will have the light on Hyskeir 

 Rock to guide us on our way till we pick up Colonsay and 

 our old friend Ardnamurchan, and the light on its point 

 where the white-tailed eagles used to breed. 



Burns said : " Man's inhumanity to man makes countless 

 thousands mourn." If he had been picking up lights from 

 Flugga on Ultima Thule down our intricate west coast, 

 with its tides and islands, on a dark night, he would have 

 held his breath with the thought of all the human effort and 

 forethought these lighthouses express of man's humanity to 

 man to our countrymen, to my Norse companions, to the 

 Russian trader, whose light we see to-night not far astern ; 



