TOBERMORY
is a commonplace town with a semicircle of well-to-do houses on the shores of a sheltered bay. At one end of the wooded heights that follow the curve of the town is a big hotel; at the other, Aros House, a brand-new castle, in among the trees. The harbor is shut in by a long, narrow island, bare and flat. It seemed a place of endless rain and mist. But when we thought the weather at its worst, the landlady called it pleasant, and suggested a two miles' walk to the light-house on the coast. Children played on the street as if the sun shone. We even saw fishing parties row out towards the Sound.
We had to stay in Tobermory two interminable days, for it was impossible at first to find a way out of it. Our idea was to walk along the north and then the west coast, and so to Ulva; but the landlady was of the opinion that there was no getting from Tobermory except by boat. Fishermen in the bar-room thought they had heard of a rough road around the coast, and knew that on it we should find no inn. The landlord, to make an end of our questions, declared that we must go to Iona by the boat due the next morning at eight. This seemed the only chance of escape unless we were to return to Oban.
In the mean time there was nothing to do, nothing to see. The hotel windows looked out on the gray, cheerless bay, dotted with yachts. Once we walked in the rain to the light-house, and back across the moors. The wind never stopped blowing a gale.
"If anybody wants to know what Mull's like in summer," said J——, in disgust, "all they've got to do is to go to a New Jersey pine barren when an equinoctial's on."
At our early breakfast the next morning, the landlord told us that it was dark outside the bay. It must have been wilder even than he thought. No boat for Iona came.
It was after this disappointment that J——, by chance, in the post-office, met the Procurator Fiscal, whatever he may be. We have good reason to be grateful to him. He mapped out a walking route to Salen, and thence to Loch-Na-Keal, at the northern end of which is the island of Ulva—the soft Ool-a-va which always leads the chorus of the islands in Mr. Black's tragedy, "Macleod of Dare."
We did not care to walk to Salen in the rain; we were not willing to spend another night in Tobermory. Therefore, that same afternoon, when the boat from Skye touched at the pier, we got on board. We believed in the roughness of the sea beyond the Sound when we saw tourists prostrate in the cabin, with eloquent indifference to looks. But it was short steaming to