“Didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t walk home? Besides, every one goes to see the Grey Mare’s Tail—eh, Scood?”
There was a nod and a mirthful look which troubled the visitor, who sat with his face contracted, and a spasm seeming to run through him every time the boat made a leap and dive over some wave.
They were running rapidly now toward a huge mass of rock, which ran gloomy looking and forbidding into the sea, evidently forming one of the points of a bay beyond. The mountains came here very close to the sea, and it was as if by some convulsion of nature the great buttress had been broken short off, leaving a perpendicular face of rock, along whose narrow ledges grey and black birds were sitting in scores.
“See the birds?” cried Kenneth, as they sped on rapidly, Max gaining a little confidence as he found that the boat did not go right over from the pressure of the wind on the sail.
“Are those birds?” he said.
“Yes; gulls and cormorants and puffins. Did you feed Macbrayne’s pigeons as you came along?”
“No,” said Max quietly; “I did not see them.”
“Oh, come, I know better than that. Didn’t you come up Loch Fyne in the Columba?”
“The great steamer? Yes.”
“Well, didn’t you see a large flock of grey gulls flying with you all the way?”