"Too much tide," began Paul, eyeing the set of the lines from his retreat, when four mighty and coincident strikes silenced his wisdom for a while. But only for a while, since amid the rasp and rub of wet lines against the side came Will's voice despondently.
"I'm in to some of you others."
"So am I--and I----" echoed Marjory and the Reverend James. Only Donald Post whispered softly, "It is the deevil is on mine whatever," and Paul, without stirring hand and foot, suggested the mainland of Scotland. But it was neither. The lines passed to the stern produced conjointly a codling, which after swallowing two baits had tried at a third, and so hooked itself foul in the fourth.
"There's an object lesson for you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, teasingly. "How about your theory of the cruel hook and the poor fish?"
"It is not feeling a tamn, fish is," commented Donald, calmly disgorging the baits. "It was fishin' for bodachs old John Boy was, and he was catchin' her foul by the eye, and the eye she come out. But John Roy wass leavin' it on the hook and the bodach was comin' again an' takin' his own eye."
"And there is a fact for you," continued Paul.
"No! No! sir," protested Donald, with a twinkle in his eye; "it will no be a fack whatever, but John Roy he wass tellin' it to me." Whereat there was laughter again.
So, as the day drew down, they landed on Shuna to boil the kettle for tea with driftwood gathered from the shore, and wonder idly as the flames leapt up to shrivel the lowermost leaves of the rowan tree by the spring, whence the wreckage which burnt so bravely had come; for storm and stress seemed far from their world.
Then, while the boatmen took their turn at the scones and cake, the jam and toast, they climbed the grassy slopes, and, sitting down by the old tower, watched the sunset idly; for all things, even pleasure, seem idle on such days as these. The clouds had pricked westwards, as if to aid the Atlantic in a coming storm, but below their heavy purple masses lay a strip of greeny gold sky, into which the sun was just sinking from a higher belt of crimson-tinted bars.
"No Green Ray for us to-night," said Marjory, with a smile.