Again speech trembled on Pat’s lips.
‘Yes,’ said Grant, ‘do come. You can help to bale.’
‘Bale?’ said the saviour of Scotland, blenching.
‘Yes. Her seams are not too good. She makes a lot of water.’
On second thoughts Archie decided that perhaps after all it was time that he was wending his way (Archie never went anywhere, he always wended his way) towards Moymore. The post would be in, and there would be his mail to deal with. And then, lest it might cross their minds that he was unused to boats, he told them how good he was in a boat. It was thanks only to his skill in a boat that he and four others had reached a Hebridean beach alive last summer. He told the tale with a growing verve that gave rise to a base suspicion that he was making it up as he went along, and having finished he switched hastily from the subject, as if afraid of questions, and asked if Grant knew the islands.
Grant, locking up the bothy and pocketing the key, said that he did not. Whereupon Archie made him free of them with a proprietor’s generosity. The herring fleets of Lewis, the cliffs of Mingulay, the songs of Barra, the hills of Harris, the wild flowers of Benbecula, and the sands, the endless wonderful white sand, of Berneray.
‘The sands don’t sing, I suppose,’ Grant said, putting bounds to the boasting. He stepped into the boat, and pushed off.
‘No,’ said Wee Archie, ‘no. They’re in Cladda.’
‘What are?’ asked Grant, startled.
‘The singing sands. Well, good fishing to you, but it’s not a day for fishing, you know. Much too bright.’