"Then perhaps you could tell me, when you start on this fine expedition, how you are going to have the yacht taken to London? The lads of Mull are very clever, Hamish, I know; but do you think that any one of them can steer the Umpire all the way from Loch-na-Keal to the river Thames?"
"Is it the river Thames?" said Hamish, with great contempt. "And is that all—the river Thames? Do you know this, Sir Keith, that my cousin Colin Laing, that has a whiskey-shop now in Greenock, has been all over the world, and at China and other places; and he was the mate of many a big vessel; and do you think he could not take the Umpire from Loch-na-Keal to London? And I would only have to send a line to him and say, 'Colin, it is Sir Keith Macleod himself that will want you to do this;' and then he will leave twenty or thirty shops, ay, fifty and a hundred shops, and think no more of them at all. Oh yes, it is very true what you say Sir Keith. There is no one knows better than I the soundings in Loch Scridain and Loch Tua; and you have said yourself that there is not a bank or a rock about the islands that I do not know; but I have not been to London—no, I have not been to London. But is there any great trouble in getting to London? No, none at all, when we have Colin Laing on board."
Macleod was apparently making a gay joke of the matter; but there was an anxious, intense look in his eyes all the same—even when he was staring absently at the table before him.
"Oh yes, Hamish," he said, laughing in a constrained manner, "that would be a fine story to tell. And you would become very famous—just as if you were working for fame in a theatre; and all the people would be talking about you. And when you got to London, how would you get through the London streets?"
"It is my cousin who would show me the way: has he not been to London more times than I have been to Stornoway?"
"But the streets of London—they would cover all the ground between here and Loch Scridain; and how would you carry the young lady through them?"
"We would carry her," said Hamish, curtly.
"With the bagpipes to drown her screams?"
"I would drown her screams myself," said Hamish, with a sudden savageness; and he added something that Macleod did not hear.
"Do you know that I am a magistrate, Hamish?"