"Dear me," said Mary Avon, "I never thought I should have had a chance. The Scotch are such good draught-players."
"But you play remarkably well," said he—and there was no blush of shame on his face.
Draughts and luncheon carry us on to the afternoon; and still the light breeze holds out; and we get nearer and nearer to the most northerly points of Skye. And as the evening draws on, we can now make out the hilly line of Ross-shire—a pale rose-colour in the far east; and nearer at hand is the Skye coast, with the warm sunlight touching on the ruins of Duntulme, where Donald Gorm Mor fed his imprisoned nephew on salt beef, and then lowered to him an empty cup—mocking him before he died; and then in the west the mountains of Harris, a dark purple against the clear lemon-golden glow. But as night draws on, behold! the wind dies away altogether; and we lie becalmed on a lilac-and-silver sea, with some rocky islands over there grown into a strange intense green in the clear twilight.
Down with the gig, then, John of Skye!—and hurry in all our rods, and lines, and the occult entrapping inventions of our patriarch of Denny-mains. We have no scruple about leaving the yacht in mid-ocean, in charge of the steward only. The clear twilight shines in the sky; there is not a ripple on the sea; only the long Atlantic swell that we can hear breaking far away on the rocks. And surely such calms are infrequent in the Minch; and surely these lonely rocks can have been visited but seldom by passing voyagers?
Yet the great rollers—as we near the forbidding shores—break with an ominous thunder on the projecting points and reefs. The Doctor insists on getting closer and closer—he knows where the big lithe are likely to be found—and the men, although they keep a watchful eye about them, obey. And then—it is Mary Avon who first calls out—and behold! her rod is suddenly dragged down—the point is hauled below the water—agony and alarm are on her face.
"Here—take it—take it!" she calls out. "The rod will be broken."
"Not a bit," the Doctor calls out. "Give him the butt hard! Never mind the rod! Haul away!"
And indeed by this time everybody was alternately calling and hauling; and John of Skye, attending to the rods of the two ladies, had scarcely time to disengage the big fish, and smooth the flies again; and the Laird was declaring that these lithe fight as hard as a twenty-pound salmon. What did we care about those needles and points of black rock that every two or three seconds showed their teeth through the breaking white surf?
"Keep her close in, boys!" Angus Sutherland cried. "We shall have a fine pickling to-morrow."
Then one fish, stronger or bigger than his fellows, pulls the rod clean out of Mary Avon's hands.