154 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



and Radiata. Among the Crustaceans I found a female crab 

 of a reddish-brown colour, considerably smaller than the nail 

 of my small finger, but fully grown apparently, for the abdo- 

 minal flap was loaded with spawn and among the Echino- 

 derms, a brownish-yellow sea-urchin about the size of a pistol- 

 bullet, furnished with comparatively large but thinly-set spines. 

 There is a dangerous rock in the Kyle Rhea, the Caileach stone, 

 on which the Commissioners for the Northern Lighthouses 

 have stuck a bit of board, about the size of a pot-lid, which, 

 as it is known to be there, and as no one ever sees it after 

 sunset, is really very effective, considering how little it must 

 have cost the country, in wrecking vessels. I saw one of its 

 victims, the sloop of an honest Methodist, in whose bottom 

 the Caileach had knocked out a hole, repairing at Isle Orn- 

 say ; and I was told, that if I wished to see more, I had only 

 just to wait a little. The honest Methodist, after looking out 

 in vain for the bit of board, was just stepping into the shrouds, 

 to try whether he could not see the rock on which the bit of 

 board is placed, when all at once his vessel found out both 

 board and rock for herself. We also had anxious looking out 

 this evening for the bit of board : one of us thought he saw 

 it right a-head ; and when some of the others were trying to 

 see it too, John Stewart succeeded in discovering it half a 

 pistol-shot astern. The evening was one of the loveliest. The 

 moon rose in cloudy majesty over the mountains of Glenelg, 

 brightening as it rose, till the boiling eddies around us curled 

 on the darker surface in pale circlets of light, and the shadow 

 of the Betsey lay as sharply defined on the brown patch of 

 calm to the larboard as if it were her portrait taken in black. 

 Immediately at the water-edge, under a tall dark hill, there 

 were two smouldering fires, that now shot up a sudden tongue 

 of bright name, and now dimmed into blood-red specks, and 

 sent thick strongly-scented trails of smoke athwart the surface 

 of the Kyle. We could hear, in the calm, voices from beside 



