He listened to the tale they told the tall man, who seemed so faint with illness or the sea that he had to sit down to hear them.
"Who was this man that Mackenzie sent for us to take?" asked one, the captain of a frigate evidently.
"Muckle John!" cried a voice.
At that new life seemed to stream into the crouching, broken figure on the sand.
"Muckle John!" he cried.
It was the voice of Captain Strange!
All that night Muckle John and Rob sped towards the south, and at the dawn they reached the country of the Macraes, where they parted with Mackenzie, and headed for the shores of Loch Hourn.
There on a desolate, rain-lashed moor, with salt upon the wind, and the sea birds crying over their heads, Muckle John called a halt.
It was near the end of May, but a bitter day even for Loch Hourn.
"Where do we go now?" asked Rob, shivering with cold.