"Bless me," said he, "if I could only inveigle Johnny Guthrie into an argument about that! I would give it him! I would give it him!"
This was a shocking revelation. What had come over the Laird's conscience that he actually proposed to inveigle a poor man into a controversy and then to hit him over the head with a sophistical argument? We could not have believed it. And here he was laughing and chuckling to himself over that shameful scheme.
Our attention, however, was at this moment suddenly drawn away from moral questions. The rapidly driving clouds just over the wild mountains of Loch Hourn parted, and the moon glared out on the tumbling waves. But what a curious moon it was!—pale and watery, with a white halo around it, and with another faintly-coloured halo outside that again whenever the slight and vapoury clouds crossed. John of Skye came aft.
"I not like the look of that moon," said John of Skye to the Doctor, but in an undertone, so that the women should not hear.
"Nor I either," said the other, in an equally low voice. "Do you think we are going to have the equinoctials, John?"
"Oh no, not yet. It is not the time for the equinoctials yet."
And as we crept on through the night, now and again from amid the wild and stormy clouds above Loch Hourn the wan moon still shone out; and then we saw something of the silent shores we were passing, and of the awful mountains overhead, stretching far into the darkness of the skies. Then preparations were made for coming to anchor; and by and by the White Dove was brought round to the wind. We were in a bay—if bay it could be called—just south of Kyle Rhea narrows. There was nothing visible along the pale moonlit shore.
"This is a very open place to anchor in, John," our young Doctor ventured to remark.
"But it is a good holding-ground; and we will be away early in the morning whatever."
And so, when the anchor was swung out, and quiet restored over the vessel, we proceeded to get below. There were a great many things to be handed down; and a careful search had to be made that nothing was forgotten—we did not want to find soaked shawls or books lying on the deck in the morning. But at length all this was settled too, and we were assembled once more in the saloon.