212 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OK, 



We tacked in long reaches for several hours, now opening 

 up in succession the deep withdrawing lochs of the mainland, 

 now clearing promontory after promontory in the island dis- 

 trict of SI eat. In a few hours we had left a bulky schooner, 

 that had quitted Isle Ornsay at the same time, full five miles 

 behind us ; but as the sun began to decline, the wind began 

 to sink ; and about seven o'clock, when we were nearly abreast 

 of the rocky point of Sleat, and about half-way advanced in 

 our voyage, it had died into a calm ; and for full twenty hours 

 thereafter there was no more sailing for the Betsey. We 

 saw the sun set, and the clouds gather, and the pelting rain 

 come down, and night fall, and morning break, and the noon- 

 tide hour pass by, and still were we floating idly in the calm. 

 I employed the few hours of the Saturday evening that in- 

 tervened between the time of our arrest and nightfall, in fish- 

 ing from our little boat for medusae with a bucket. They 

 had risen by myriads from the bottom as the wind fell, and 

 were mottling the green depths of the water below and around 

 far as the eye could reach. Among the commoner kinds, 

 the kind with the four purple rings on the area of its flat bell, 

 which ever vibrates without sound, and the kind with the 

 fringe of dingy brown, and the long stinging tails, of which 

 I have sometimes borne from my swimming excursions the 

 nettle-like smart for hours, there were at least two species 

 of more unusual occurrence, both of them very minute. The 

 one, scarcely larger than a shilling, bore the common umbi- 

 liferous form, but had its area inscribed by a pretty orange- 

 coloured wheel ; the other, still more minute, and which pre- 

 sented in the water the appearance of a small hazel-nut of a 

 brownish-yellow hue, I was disposed to set down as a species 

 of beroe. On getting one caught, however, and transferred 

 to a bowl, I found that the brownish-coloured, melon-shaped 

 mass, though ribbed like the beroe, did not represent the true 

 outline of the animal : it formed merely the centre of a trans- 



