28 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
hanging in white soft folds filled out hard and dark, and 
streams of water poured down their hollow sides, and 
splashed on the glistening decks. The air was filled with 
the sound of the rushing wind and the hissing of the sea 
as we tore along before the squall. Hoarse orders 
were shouted along the deck : — ' Let go flying jib there ! 
Clew up fore-to'gallant ! Main-to'gallant ! In spanker!' 
the men repeating the orders, and yeo-hoing in all different 
high keys as they hauled on the down hauls. We were 
pulling on the topsail reefing halyards when the squall 
passed, rumbling and growling, into the distance. 
And so began our troubles in the Northern Seas. 
Was there no weather-clerk or spaewife wise enough to 
tell us that gales and head-winds waited us in the north, 
when we would have sailed south down Channel with a 
fair wind on our quarter. The weather cleared with the 
squall. It had besides a vivifying effect on our men. 
They went about a little jollier than before ; but the wind 
had gone round to the N.W., and there it stopped. In 
the evening we steamed past Duncansby Head, past 
the Paps of Caithness, bathed in a yellow sunset, past 
Stroma, the island of many streams, through the Firth 
with a nine-mile tide helping us through to the Atlantic. 
It is an interesting country that Pentland Firth, with its 
islands, with its mixed people, and its stories and legends, 
Celtic, Spanish, Norwegian, and Dutch — plenty store there 
for a New Argonautica. On the 8th, with fresh westerly 
wind and clear weather, we steamed past Cape Wrath. 
In the afternoon we took in the two whale-boats that were 
hanging on the davits, and lashed them down to the ring- 
