The king shrugged his shoulders.
“The man forgets that the sea also is eternal, and that it ultimately wears away the cliff. This appears to be an incitement towards war, then?”
“Oh, not so,” replied MacDonald. “The man is one of their poets, and he is reciting an epic he has written, doubtless in praise of Malcolm’s boat-building.”
“God save us!” cried the king. “Have we then poets in Skye?”
“The whole of the Highlands is a land of poetry, your majesty,” affirmed MacDonald drawing himself up proudly, “although the very poor judges of the art in Stirling may not be aware of the fact.”
The king laughed heartily at this.
“I must tell that to Davie Lyndsay,” he said. “But here we have another follower of the muse who has taken the place of the first. Surely nowhere else is the goddess served by votaries so unkempt. What is this one saying?”
“He says that beautiful is the western sky when the sun sinks beneath the wave, but more beautiful still is the cheek of the Rose of Skye, the daughter of their chieftain.”
“Ah, that is better and more reassuring. I think either of us, Jamie, would rather be within sight of the smiles of the Rose of Skye than within reach of the claymores of her kinsmen.”
By this time the assemblage on shore became aware that visitors were approaching, and the declamation ceased. Malcolm MacLeod himself came forward on the landing to greet the newcomers. He was a huge man of about fifty, tall and well proportioned, with an honest but masterful face, all in all a magnificent specimen of the race, destined by nature to be a leader of men. He received his visitors with dignified courtesy.