Chapter Eight.
Rolling Home—A Rough Passage—The Welcome Back—The Way a Sailor Sleeps.
When the royal eagle, the bird of Jove, paid a visit to the Castle of Arrandoon, and dropped so daringly into the poultry yard, intent only on turkey, it will be remembered that his presence created no little commotion, but I question if the din of even that memorable morning equalled the hubbub that arose when Allan and his friends returned from their four months’ cruise in the cutter.
A letter from Oban had reached Mrs McGregor three days beforehand, so that they were quite expected, and even the probable hour of their arrival in the creek in Glentroom was known.
The voyage from Portree to Oban had been an uneventful one. The wind was favourable all the way, but strong enough to make a glorious passage with a close-reefed mainsail and storm-jib, so they bowled along, impatient now to get back to bonnie Arrandoon. But they did not mind the roughness of the passage; they did not mind the tumbling and the tossing they got; they despised even the danger of being pooped. They made heavy weather just off Ardnamurchan Point. McBain stuck to the tiller, and for a whole hour, or more, perhaps, there was not a word spoken by any one. They are fearful cliffs, those around the wild highlands of Ardnamurchan, black and wet and fearful; the largest ship that ever floated would be dashed to pieces in a few minutes if it had the misfortune to run amongst them. Perhaps our heroes were thinking how little chance their cockle-shell of a cutter would have, if she got carried any where near them, but they kept their thoughts to themselves, and meanwhile the yacht was behaving like the beauty she was. Indeed she seemed positively to enjoy rolling homewards over these great, green, foam-crested seas; for she bobbed and she bowed to the waves; she curtseyed to them and she coquetted with them as if she were indeed a nymph of the sea and a flirt as well. Sometimes she would dip her bowsprit into a wave, as if she meant to go down bows first, but in a moment she had lifted her head again, and tossed the water saucily off, ere ever it had time to reach the well; next she would flood the lee-rail, and make the waves believe they could board her there, then righting again in an instant, after a nod or two to the seas ahead, as much as to say, “Please to observe what I shall do now,” she would sink herself right down by the stern, with the foam surging around her like a boiling cauldron, but never admitted a drop. There were times though, when she sank so far down in the trough of the sea that her sails began to shiver, yet for all that she was uphill again in a second or two, and scudding onwards as merrily as ever.
The seas were shorter in Loch Sunart, they were choppy in the Sound of Mull, and seemed to get bigger and rougher every other mile of the journey; the crew were not sorry, therefore, when the anchor was let go, and the mainsail clewed, in the Bay of Oban.
“Why,” said Ralph, after dinner that day, “we haven’t had such a tossing all the cruise. I declare to you, boys, that every bone of my body aches from top to toe.” McBain laughed.
“You ought to go out,” he said, “for a few nights with the herring boats.”
“Is it rougher,” queried Ralph, “than what we have already gone through?”