"Oh, Angus!" his hostess cries to him, "you will shake hands with us all afterwards. We are in a dreadful strait. Never mind us—help John if you can."
Meanwhile Captain John has again put the nose of the White Dove at these perilous narrows; and the young Doctor—perhaps glad enough to escape embarrassment among all this clamour—has thrown his coat off to help; and the men have got plenty of anchor-chain on deck, to let go the anchor if necessary; and then again begins that manoeuvring between the shallows and the rocks. What is this new sense of completeness—of added life—of briskness and gladness? Why do the men seem more alert? and why this cheeriness in Captain John's shouted commands? The women are no longer afraid of either banks or shoals; they rather enjoy the danger; when John seems determined to run the yacht through a mass of conglomerate, they know that with the precision of clock-work she will be off on the other tack; and they are laughing at these narrow escapes. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that only one of them laughs. Mary Avon is somewhat silent, and she holds her friend's hand tight.
Tide or no tide, we get through the narrow channel at last; and every one breathes more freely when we are in the open. But we are still far from being out of Loch Hourn; and now the mountains in the south, too—one of them apparently an extinct volcano—have grown black as night; and the wind that comes down from them in jerks and squalls threatens to plunge our bulwarks under water. How the White Dove flees away from this gathering gloom! Once or twice we hear behind us a roar, and turning we can see a specially heavy squall tearing across the loch; but here with us the wind continues to keep a little more steady, and we go bowling along at a whirling pace. Angus Sutherland comes aft, puts on his coat, and makes his formal entry into our society.
"You have just got out in time," says he, laughing somewhat nervously, to his hostess. "There will be a wild night in Loch Hourn to-night."
"And the beautiful calm we have had in there!" she says. "We were beginning to think that Loch Hourn was Fairyland."
"Look!" he said.
And indeed the spectacle behind us was of a nature to make us thankful that we had slipped out of the lion's jaws. The waters of the loch were being torn into spindrift by the squalls; and the black clouds overhead were being dragged into shreds as if by invisible hands; and in the hollows below appeared a darkness as if night had come on prematurely. And still the White Dove flew and flew, as if she knew of the danger behind her; and by and by we were plunging and racing across the Sound of Sleat. We had seen the last of Loch Hourn.
The clear golden ray of Isle Ornsay lighthouse was shining through the dusk as we made in for the sheltered harbour. We had ran the dozen miles or so in a little over the hour; and now dinner-time had arrived; and we were not sorry to be in comparatively smooth water. The men were sent ashore with some telegram—the sending off of which was the main object of our running in here; and then Master Fred's bell summoned us below from the wild and windy night.
How rich and warm and cheerful was this friendly glow of the candles, and how compact the table seemed now, with the vacant space filled at last! And every one appeared to be talking hard, in order to show that Angus Sutherland's return was a quite ordinary and familiar thing; and the Laird was making his jokes; and the young Doctor telling his hostess how he had been sending telegrams here and there until he had learned of the White Dove having been seen going in to Loch Hourn. Even Miss Avon, though she said but little, shared in this general excitement and pleasure. We could hear her soft laughter from time to time. But her eyes were kept away from the corner where Angus Sutherland sate.
"Well, you are lucky people," said he. "If you had missed getting out of that hole by half an hour, you might have been shut up in it a fortnight. I believe a regular gale from the south has begun."