"He understands your clever sailing, John: is that it?"
"He knows more about a yat as any chentleman I will ever see, mem. And we will try to get a good breeze for him this time, mem—and not to have the calm weather."
This is not likely to be a day of calm weather, at all events. Tide and wind together take us away swiftly from the little harbour behind the granite rocks. And is Iona over there all asleep; or are there some friends in the small village watching the White Dove bearing away to the south? We wave our handkerchiefs on chance. We take a last look at the gabled ruins over the sea; at the green corn-fields; and the scattered houses; and the beaches of silver sand. Good-bye—good-bye! It is a last look for this summer at least; perhaps it is a last look for ever. But Iona too—as well as Ulva—remains in the memory a vision of sunlight, and smooth seas, and summer days.
Harder and harder blows this fresh breeze from the north; and we are racing down the Sound with the driven waves. But for the rope round the tiller, Miss Avon, who is steering, would find it difficult to keep her feet; and her hair is blown all about her face. The salt water comes swishing down the scuppers; the churned foam goes hissing and boiling away from the sides of the vessel; the broad Atlantic widens out. And that small grey thing at the horizon? Can that speck be a mass of masonry a hundred and fifty feet in height, wedged into the lonely rock?
"No, no," says our gentle Queen Titania with an involuntary shudder, "not for worlds would I climb up that iron ladder, with the sea and the rocks right below me. I should never get half-way up."
"They will put a rope round your waist, if you like," it is pointed out to her.
"When we go out, then," says this coward. "I will see how Mary gets on. If she does not die of fright, I may venture."
"Oh, but I don't think I shall be with you," remarks the young lady quite simply.
At this there is a general stare.
"I don't know what you mean," says her hostess, with an ominous curtness.