214 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



the Betsey s deck had opened so sadly during the past win- 

 ter, as to be no longer water-tight, and the little cabin re- 

 sounded drearily in the darkness, like some dropping cave, to 

 the ceaseless patter of the leakage. We continued to sleep, 

 however, somewhat longer than we ought, for Alister had 

 been unwilling to waken the minister ; but we at length got 

 up, and, relieving watch the first from the tedium of being 

 rained upon and doing nothing, watch the second was set to 

 do nothing and be rained upon in turn. We had drifted 

 during the night-time on a kindly tide, considerably nearer 

 our island, which we could now see looming blue and indis- 

 tinct through the haze some seven or eight miles away. The 

 rain ceased a little before nine, and the clouds rose, revealing 

 the surrounding lands, island and main, Rum, with its 

 abrupt mountain-peaks, the dark Cuchullins of Skye, and, 

 far to the south-east, where Inverness bounds on Argyllshire, 

 some of the tallest hills in Scotland, among the rest, the 

 dimly-seen Ben-Nevis. But long wreaths of pale gray cloud 

 lay lazily under their summits, like shrouds half drawn from 

 off the features of the dead, to be again spread over them, 

 and we concluded that the dry weather had not yet come. 

 A little before noon we were surrounded for miles by an im- 

 mense but thinly-spread shoal of porpoises, passing in pairs 

 to the south, to prosecute, on their own behalf, the herring 

 fishing in Lochfine or the Gareloch ; and for a full hour the 

 whole sea, otherwise so silent, became vocal with long-breathed 

 blowings, as if all the steam-tenders of all the railways in 

 Britain were careering around us ; and we could see slender 

 jets of spray rising in the air on every side, and glossy black 

 backs and pointed fins, that looked as if they had been fa- 

 shioned out of Kilkenny marble, wheeling heavily along the 

 surface. The clouds again began to close as the shoal passed, 

 but we could now hear in the stillness the measured sound 

 of oars, drawn vigorously against the gunwale in the direc- 



