It was a lovely spring morning when the Queen of the Clyde caught the light breeze, and began manoeuvring down the river, Skipper Ross himself holding the tiller. The old man declared he could steer his ship through a hundred herring-boats and never run foul of anything.
Mrs. Mackenzie and party had seats on the deck. And everything was as clean and tidy, too, as the duke's yacht itself, not a rope's end or belaying-pin out of place, and the paint-work as bright as a gipsy's caravan.
The invalid heaved a sigh of relief when at long last the great noisy ship-building yards were left behind, with the awful din of their ringing hammers, and the bonnie river began to open out before them broad and wide, with the sunshine glittering on its bosom, and the greenery of trees and far-off hills bounding the horizon.
Mrs. Mackenzie was thinking sadly of her dear departed husband, who was buried at the lovely town of Helensburgh, and Maggie and Jack were seated on deck at her feet. Then Peter drew out his fiddle.
"Ah! man, ay," cried the skipper. "Play up, lad, do. Sweeter to me is the soond o' the fiddle and its lang-drawn melody than the cry o' the sea-birds, sailin' tack and half-tack roond ma wee bit shippie. Play, laddie, play!"
So down the Clyde they dropped, floating as easily as cormorant on the wave, past villages, past towns, and wilds and woodlands green, and it was quite near eventide when the Queen at last got alongside the pier.
They had indeed enjoyed the voyage. And Jack had spread the banquet on the white planks of the deck, and everybody enjoyed that also.
Just after it was done and cleared away, Skipper Ross drew out a black bottle from a handy locker.
"Ye'll tak a wee skyte, Malony; winna ye?"
But Malony shook his head.