28 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY j OB, 



ed, presumed the natives had fled, and satisfied their revenge- 

 ful feelings by ransacking and pillaging the empty houses. 

 Probably the moveables were of no great value. They then 

 took their departure and left the island, when the sight of a 

 solitary human being among the cliffs awakened their suspi- 

 cion, and induced them to return. Unfortunately a slight 

 sprinkling of snow had fallen, and the footsteps of an indivi- 

 dual were traced to the mouth of the cave. Not having been 

 there ourselves at the period alluded to, we cannot speak with 

 certainty as to the nature of the parley which ensued, or the 

 terms offered by either party ; but we know that those were 

 not the days of protocols. The ultimatum was unsatisfac- 

 tory to the Skye-men, who immediately proceeded to 'adjust 

 the preliminaries' in their own way, which adjustment con- 

 sisted in carrying a vast collection of heather, ferns, and 

 other combustibles, and making a huge fire just in the very 

 entrance of the Uamh Fhraing, which they kept up for a 

 length of time ; and thus, by ' one fell smoke/ they smothered 

 the entire population of the island." 



Such is Mr Wilson's version of the story, which, in all its 

 leading circumstances, agrees with that of Sir Walter. Ac- 

 cording, however, to at least one of the Eigg versions, it was 

 the M'Leod himself who had landed on the island, driven 

 there by a storm. The islanders, at feud with the M'Leods 

 at the time, inhospitably rose upon him, as he bivouacked on 

 the shores of the Bay of Laig ; and in a fray, in which his 

 party had the worse, his back was broken, and he was forced 

 off half-dead to sea. Several months after, on his partial re- 

 covery, he returned, crook-backed and infirm, to wreak his 

 vengeance on the inhabitants, all of whom, warned of his com- 

 ing by the array of his galleys in the offing, hid themselves 

 in the cave, in which, however, they were ultimately betrayed 

 as narrated by Sir Walter and Mr Wilson by the track 

 of some footpaths in a sprinkling of snow ; and the impla- 



