16 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



CHAPTER II. 



had rich tea this morning. The minister was among his 

 people ; and our first evidence of the fact came in the agree- 

 able form of three bottles of fine fresh cream from the shore. 

 Then followed an ample baking of nice oaten cakes. The 

 material out of which the cakes were manufactured had been 

 sent from the minister's store aboard, for oatmeal in Eigg is 

 rather a scarce commodity in the middle of July ; but they 

 had borrowed a crispness and flavour from the island, that 

 the meal, left to its own resources, could scarcely have com- 

 municated ; and the golden-coloured cylinder of fresh butter 

 which accompanied them was all the island's own. There 

 was an ample supply of eggs too, as one not quite a conjuror 

 might have expected from a country bearing such a name, 

 eggs with the milk in them ; and, with cream, butter, oaten 

 cakes, eggs, and tea, all of the best, and with sharp-set sea- 

 air appetites to boot, we fared sumptuously. There is pro- 

 perly no harbour in the island. We lay in a narrow chan- 

 nel, through which, twice every twenty-four hours, the tides 

 sweep powerfully in one direction, and then as powerfully in 

 the direction opposite ; and our anchors had a trick of getting 

 foul, and canting stock downwards in the loose sand, which, 

 with pointed rocks all around us, over which the currents ran 

 races, seemed a very shrewd sort of trick indeed. But a 



