A third night dragged by, and Neva began to be anxious to get into port. She knew that Lord Towyn must be looking for a letter from her, and she desired to inform him of Mrs. Black’s change of plan of travel, and of her own whereabouts.
Upon the fourth day after leaving London, the graceful little yacht stood in for the land. Mrs. Black and Neva, as usual, spent the day on deck. About noon the Arrow sped into Moray Frith, in the wake of a steamer bound for Inverness and the Caledonian canal, and followed by one or two sailing vessels which were allowed to pass the swifter yacht.
“Do we go into Inverness?” asked Neva, as she looked at the chart which Craven Black was exhibiting to her and his wife.
“No,” answered Black. “Look at the chart, Miss Wynde. Do you see those narrow straits that connect Moray Frith with Cromarty Frith? We thread those straits, and a not very pleasant excursion it is either. Once safe in Cromarty Frith, we have plain sailing. I expect to sleep at Wilderness to-night.”
The yacht in good time threaded the straits, and came out into the calmer waters of the loch-like Cromarty Frith, sailing up a portion of its distance, and then obeying the skillful hand at the helm, it shot into a deep stream or river, and went on into the very shadow and heart of the wild mountain region.
It seemed to Neva, as she looked around her in wonder, awe and delight, that the chaos of the primeval creation yet reigned here. She saw no villages, no hamlets, no houses, no signs of habitation—nothing but grim mountain peaks and ranges, frowning cliffs, and inaccessible rocks. The very vegetation was sparse and stunted, the few trees wildly clinging to niches in the bare rocks, being dwarfed and sickly. Upon higher peaks in the distance, Neva saw glittering crowns of snow, but nearer all was deadness, desolation, chaos.
“It looks as if this part of the earth had been abandoned by God and shunned by man,” she thought. “The utter dreariness is oppressive and terrible.”
The Arrow felt her way on up the river, the banks growing steeper and narrower, the rocks and cliffs more frowning, and the waters blacker. Mrs. Black began to look nervous, and to express a fear that the vessel would presently be caught in the narrowing throat of rocks, but her husband smiled reassuringly, and a little later the yacht shot into a little placid mountain loch, shut in by towering mountains, the waters looking black with the everlasting shadows of the hills bending above them.
Both the ladies breathed freer at this unlooked for termination to their voyage. Half way up the loch the yacht came to anchor, and a boat was lowered to convey the passengers ashore.
“But, Craven,” said Mrs. Black wonderingly, “I see no house.”