A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 117 



from him along the entire length of the table, flung itself 

 pettishly upon the floor. I got into my snug bed about 

 eleven ; and at twelve, the minister, after poring sufficiently 

 over his notes, and drawing the final score, turned into his. 

 In a brief hour after, on came the gale, in a style worthy of 

 its previous hours of preparation ; and my Mend, his Sa- 

 turday's work in his ministerial capacity well over when he 

 had completed his two discourses, had to begin the Sabbath 

 morning early as the morning itself began, by taking his stand 

 at the helm, in his capacity of skipper of the Betsey. With 

 the prospect of the services of the Sabbath before him, and 

 after working all Saturday to boot, it was rather hard to set 

 him down to a midnight spell at the helm, but he could not 

 be wanted at such a time, as we had no other such helmsman 

 aboard. The gale, thickened with rain, came down, shriek- 

 ing like a maniac, from off the peaked hills of Rum, striking 

 away the tops of the long ridgy billows that had risen in the 

 calm to indicate its approach, and then carrying them in 

 sheets of spray aslant the farrowed surface, like snow-drift 

 hurried across a frozen field. But the Betsey, with her storm- 

 jib set, and her mainsail reefed to the cross, kept her weather 

 bow bravely to the blast, and gained on it with every tack. 

 She had been the pleasure yacht, in her day, of a man of for- 

 tune, who had used, in running south with her at times as 

 far as Lisbon, to encounter, on not worse terms than the 

 stateliest of her neighbours in the voyage, the swell of the 

 Bay of Biscay ; and she still kept true to her old character, 

 with but this drawback, that she had now got somewhat crazy 

 in her fastenings, and made rather more water in a heavy sea 

 than her one little pump could conveniently keep under. As 

 the fitful gust struck her headlong, as if it had been some in- 

 visible missile hurled at us from off the hill-tops, she stooped 

 her head lower and lower, like old stately Hardyknute under 

 the blow of the " King of Norse/' till at length the lee chain- 



