Toward evening, becoming not only coherent but frightfully emphatic, they released McKay.
"What's this damn place?" he shouted.
"Strathlone Firth," they said.
"That's my country!" he raged. "I want to go ashore!"
They were quite ready to be rid of the cracked Yankee, and told him so.
"And the boats? How about them?" he demanded.
"All in the Firth, sir."
"Any women lost?"
"None, sir."
At that, struggling into his clothes, he began to shed gold sovereigns from his ripped money-belt all over the cabin. Weatherbeaten fingers groped to restore the money to him. But it was quite evident that the young man was mad. He wouldn't take it. And in his crazy way he seemed very happy, telling them what fine lads they were and that not only Scotland but the world ought to be proud of them, and that he was about to begin to live the most wonderful life that any man had ever lived as soon as he got ashore.