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In Gresson's eyes I must seem as harmless as a child. We spent the better part of a day at Colonsay, and Gresson, so far as his duties allowed, stuck to me like a limpet. Before I went ashore I wrote out a telegram for Amos. I devoted a hectic hour to the Pilgrim's Progress, but I could not compose any kind of intelligible message with reference to its text.
But when I woke next morning to find us casting anchor in the bay below rough low hills, which I knew to be the island of Colonsay, I could find no trace of the revolver. I searched every inch of the bunk and only shook out feathers from the mouldy ticking. I remembered perfectly putting the thing behind my head before I went to sleep, and now it had vanished utterly.
They were standing out to sea, with seven great Norse galleys and as many fishing boats pursuing them." "Alas!" said Allan; "and whose ships were those?" "They were three galleys of Coll and four of Colonsay," said Duncan, "as I learned three days past when they returned to Breacacha. Our own four ships of Bute came not within sight again, and I fear they have gone back to Rothesay."
Once uttered, anyhow, surely the glad message would instantly wing its flight away to the far North; and Colonsay would hear; and the green shores of Ulva would laugh; and through all the wild dashing and roaring of the seas there would be a soft ringing as of wedding-bells.
Ulva was visible, to be sure, and Colonsay both of them a heavy and gloomy purple; and nearer at hand the rock of Errisker showed in a wan, gray light between the lowering sky and the squally sea; but Lunga, and Fladda, and Staffa, and Iona, and even the long promontory of the Ross of Mull, were all hidden away behind the driving mists of rain. "Oh you lazy people!"
We have no longer a cross sea, and can show a little more sail to keep her from being pooped. We will bear a little off toward the land we must keep it in sight, and not too far on our left, otherwise we may miss the straits and run on to Jura." A little more sail was accordingly shown to the gale, and the boat scudded along at increased speed. "How far is it to Colonsay?" Archie asked.
This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay.
"Not so," said Allan confidently. "Our men would never return without truthfully knowing how it had fared with Earl Kenric. But what of the four galleys of Colonsay?" "They left for the north two days ago, and the men of Coll went some into the castle and some to their homes, leaving their ships at anchor in the shelter of the isle of Gunna."
There is no longer the solitude of Ulva and Colonsay, or the moaning of the waves round the lonely shores of Fladda, and Staffa, and the Dutchman; but the eager, busy life of the great river a black steamer puffing and roaring, russet-sailed barges going smoothly with the ride, a tug bearing a large green-hulled Italian ship through the lapping waters, and everywhere a swarming fry of small boats of every description.
"Why," he said, as if he had asked the question of himself, "with this sand I have traced the shores of Loch-na-Keal. This turf is green Ulva, and this is Gometra, and the shell is Little Colonsay. With this wet sand I have moulded Ben Grieg, and this higher pile is Ben More. If I had but a sprig of heather, now, or a pebble from the shore of Scridain!"
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