A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 141 



ing in huge masses from the bottom ; and now our bows 

 heaved abruptly round in one direction, and now they jerked 

 as suddenly round in another; and, though there blew a 

 moderate breeze at the time, the helm failed to keep the sails 

 steadily full. But whether our sheets bellied out, or flapped 

 right in the wind's eye, on we swept in the tideway, like a 

 cork caught during a thunder shower in one of the rapids of 

 the High Street. At one point the Kyle is little more than 

 a quarter of a mile in breadth ; and here, in the powerful 

 eddie which ran' along the shore, we saw a group of small 

 fishing-boats pursuing a shoal of sillocks in a style that blent 

 all the liveliness of the chase with the specific interest of the 

 angle. The shoal, restless as the tides among which it dis- 

 ported, now rose in the boilings of one eddie, now beat the 

 water into foam amid the stiller dimplings of another. The 

 boats hurried from spot to spot wherever the quick glittering 

 scales appeared. For a few seconds rods would be cast thick 

 and fast, as if employed in beating the water, and captured 

 fish glanced bright to the sun ; and then the take would cease, 

 and the play rise elsewhere, and oars would flash out amain, 

 as the little fleet again dashed into the heart of the shoal 

 As the Kyle widened, the force of the current diminished, 

 and sail and helm again became things of positive import- 

 ance. The wind blew a-head, steady thotigh not strong ; and 

 the Betsey, with companions in the voyage against which to 

 measure herself, began to show her paces. First she passed 

 one bulky vessel, then another : she lay closer to the wind 

 than any of her fellows, glided more quickly through the 

 water, turned in her stays like Lady Betty in a minuet ; and, 

 ere we had reached Kyle Akin, the fleet in the middle of 

 which we had started were toiling far behind us, all save one 

 vessel, a stately brig ; and just as we were going to pass her 

 too, she cast anchor, to await the change of the tide, which 

 runs from the west during flood at Kyle Akin, as it runs from 



