The Lyndsays were always glad when the homely meal was over, and they could escape once more to the deck, and enjoy the fine coast views, and the fresh invigorating sea breeze.
CHAPTER III.
THE LAST GLANCE OF SCOTLAND.
The weather for the next three days continued as fine as summer weather could be. With wind and tide in her favour, the Anne made a splendid run through the Moray Firth, passed the auld town of Aberdeen, and before sunset sailed close under the dreary Caithness coast.
Flora examined John o' Groat's house with some interest, and for the first time in her life discovered that the fantastic red rock which bears that name, was not a bonâ fide dwelling, which up to that moment she had imagined it to be.
A prospect more barren and desolate than that over which Caithness Castle rises preeminent, can scarcely be imagined. Flora turned from the contemplation of the stony waste with an inward thanksgiving, "That it was not her home." But when they rounded Duncansby Head, the scene before so tame and sterile, became more grand and picturesque every moment. They were now in the stormy Pentland Firth, threading their way with the aid of a pilot through its romantic labyrinth of islands, driven onward by a spanking wind.
The bold outline of the coast was so different in its character from that to which she had been accustomed from a child, that it made a powerful impression upon her mind, and quickly associated itself with all the legends of the wild and marvellous which she had ever heard or read. Those beetling crags, those ocean caves, into which the wild sea-waves rushed with such a fearful din, seemed fitting habitations for all the evil demons that abound in the Scandinavian mythology, once dreaded as stern realities in a darker stage of human progression.
How tame beside these awful sublimities, appeared the gentle sloping cliffs at ——, and her little cottage fronting the quiet bay—
"Green lie these thickly timbered shores,
Fair sloping to the sea."