Now blow, breezes, blow! What is the great headland that appears, striking out into the wide Atlantic?
Ahead she goes! the land she knows!
Behold! the snowy shores of Canna!
Ho, ro, clansmen!
A long, strong pull together,
Ho, ro, clansmen!
"Tom Galbraith," the Laird is saying solemnly to his hostess, "has assured me that Rum is the most picturesque island on the whole of the western coast of Scotland. That is his deleeberate opinion. And indeed I would not go so far as to say he was wrong. Arran! They talk about Arran! Just look at those splendid mountains coming sheer down to the sea; and the light of the sun on them! Eh me, what a sunset there will be this night!"
"Canna?" says Dr. Sutherland, to his interlocutor, who seems very anxious to be instructed. "Oh, I don't know. Canna in Gaelic is simply a can; but then Cana is a whale; and the island in the distance looks long and flat on the water. Or it may be from canach—that is, the moss-cotton; or from cannach—that is, the sweet-gale. You see, Miss Avon, ignorant people have an ample choice."
Blow! breezes blow! as the yellow light of the afternoon shines over the broad Atlantic. Here are the eastern shores of Canna, high and rugged, and dark with caves; and there the western shores of Rum, the mighty mountains aglow in the evening light. And this remote and solitary little bay, with its green headlands, and its awkward rocks at the mouth, and the one house presiding over it amongst that shining wilderness of shrubs and flowers? Here is fair shelter for the night.
After dinner, in the lambent twilight, we set out with the gig; and there was much preparation of elaborate contrivances for the entrapping of fish. But the Laird's occult and intricate tackle—the spinning minnows, and spoons, and india-rubber sand-eels—proved no competitor for the couple of big white flies that Angus Sutherland had busked. And of course Mary Avon had that rod; and when some huge lithe dragged the end of the rod fairly under water, and when she cried aloud, "Oh! oh! I can't hold it; he'll break the rod!" then arose our Doctor's word of command:—