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The tide was at half flood, and lying above the water's edge was a small fishing boat. Young Harald of Islay had grasped the boat's gunwale and was pulling and tugging with all his strength. A few more pulls and the little craft would be launched. Every effort he made brought it a foot nearer the water.
In vain the book went behind the Paymaster's boy; Islay saw the ragged pages. "Oh!" he cried, "you'll not cheat me this time; you're reading."
"By my conscience, you're no small judge of spirits, wherever you learned it," said the major; "it's like Islay malt!" "I was aye reckoned a gude ane," said the doctor, "and my mither's brither Caimbogie had na his like in the north country. Ye may be heerd tell what he aince said to the Duchess of Argyle, when she sent for him to taste her claret."
It was still constantly repeated, in verse and prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of royalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion, the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More.
Gilian did not hear it, but Miss Mary felt it sting to her very heart, and she moved away, pressing upon her favourite's arm to bring him with her. "We must be moving," said she; "Peggy will be scolding about the dinner spoiled with waiting." But no one else seemed willing to break up the group. Young Islay had become the centre of attraction. MacGibbon and Major Hall, the Sheriff, Mr.
She flushed all at once, overtaken by feelings she could not have described feelings of gratitude for the old rescue, of curiosity, pleasure, and a sudden shyness. Following it came a sudden recollection of the old glamour that was about the ensign such another, no doubt, as Young Islay who had given her the first taste of gallantry as he passed with the troops in a day of sunshine.
The Eagle galley then unattended made sail across the wide channel westward towards Islay, whose high hills could already be seen like blue mists upon the far-off sea line. "Now, my young valiant," said Sir Piers to Harald the hostage, who sat upon the after deck looking wistfully over the tumbling waters, "know you the colour of your native hills?"
"My dear Gilian," said Young Islay, "I once fought you for less than that." He laughed as he said it. "If you mean," he went on, "that you are in love with Miss Nan, that's nothing to wonder at, the miracle would be for you to be indifferent. We're in the same hunt, are we then? Well, luck to the winner! I can say no fairer than that.
Ye sons of the strong, when that dawning shall break, Need the harp of the aged remind you to wake? That dawn never beam'd on your forefathers' eye, But it roused each high chieftain to vanquish or die. O, sprung from the Kings who in Islay kept state, Proud chiefs of Clan Ranald, Glengarry, and Sleat!
It was often the scene of forays, which one clan was wont to make on another, in the good old days, as people delight to call them, when the ancestors of the present race were scarcely more civilised than the South Sea islanders. Though rock-girt, Islay is fertile, and a large portion has been brought under a state of cultivation.
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