White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume III. William Black
been madness to have risked our all on a random shot at sea. Hit or miss, the chances were about equal we should not get the seal; so we quietly retired again behind the ridge, and sate down. We could see the gig and its occupants. It seemed to one of us at least that Queen Titania was still amused.
A dead silence: while we idly regard the washed-up stores of sea-shells around us, and patiently await the return of the seals to the rocks. Then a sudden noise that makes one's heart jump: a couple of terns have discovered us, and the irate birds go wheeling and shrieking overhead with screams that would have aroused the Sleeping Beauty and all her household. In their fright and wrath they come nearer and nearer; at times they remain motionless overhead; but ever continues the shrill and piercing shriek. The face of the Youth is awful to see. Again and again he puts up his rifle; and there is no doubt that, if he were to fire, he might accomplish that feat which is more frequently heard of in novels than elsewhere – shooting a bird on the wing with a rifle. But then he is loth to throw away his last chance. With a gesture of despair, he lowers his weapon, and glances towards the gig. Queen Titania has caught his eye, and he hers. She is laughing.
At length we venture to hazard everything. Furtively each rifle is protruded over the ledge of rock; and furtively each head creeps up by the stock, the hand on the trigger-guard. The caution is unnecessary. There is not a sign of any living thing all around the shores. Even the two sea-swallows, alarmed by our moving, have wheeled away into the distance; we are left in undisturbed possession of the island. Then the Youth clambers up to the top of the rocks and looks around. A skart, perched on a far ledge, immediately takes flight – striking the water with his heavy wings before he can get well on his way: thereafter a dead silence.
"It was the tern that did that," says the Youth, moodily, as we return to the gig. "The seals must have known well enough."
"They generally do contrive to know somehow," is the answer of one who is not much disappointed, and who is still less surprised.
But this wicked woman all a-laughing, when we return to the gig!
"Come, children," says she, "we shall barely be back in time for lunch; and we shall be all the longer that Angus is not here to sing his 'Ho, ro, clansmen!' But the quicker the sooner, as the Highlandman said. Jump in!"
"It was all owing to those sea-swallows," remarks the Youth, gloomily.
"Never mind," says she, with great equanimity. "Mary and I knew you would not shoot anything, or we should not have come. Let us hasten back to see what Fred has shot for us, with his silver sixpences."
And so we tumble into the gig; and push away, and have a long swinging pull back to the White Dove.
There is still some measure of justice meted out upon the earth. The face of this fiend who has been laughing at us all the morning becomes a trifle more anxious when she draws near the yacht. For there is Master Fred idling up at the bow, instead of being below looking after the vast stores he has got on board; and moreover as we draw near, and as he comes along to the gangway, any one can perceive that our good Frederick d'or is not in a facetious frame of mind.
"Well, Fred, have you got a good supply at last?" she cries, taking hold of the rope, and putting her foot on the step.
Fred mumbles something in reply.
"What have you got?" she says, when she is on deck. "Any game?"
"No, mem."
"Oh, never mind; the fowls will do very well."
Fred is rather silent, until he explains that he could not get any fowls.
"No fowls? What butcher's meat, then?" says she, somewhat indignantly.
"None? Nothing?" says she; and a low titter begins to prevail among the assembled crowd. "Have you not got a joint of any sort?"
Fred is almost unwilling to confess – he is ashamed, angry, disconcerted. At last he blurts out —
"I could get nothing at all, mem, but fower loaves."
At this there was a roar of laughter. What had become of all her fresh milk, and butter, and eggs; her mutton, and fowls, and cutlets; her grouse, and snipe, and hares? We did not care for our privation; we only rejoiced in her discomfiture.
"That is just like a Scotch village," says she, savagely; "spending all its money on a church bell, and not able to keep a decent shop open! Do you mean to say you could not get a carrot, or a cabbage, or a pennyworth of milk?"
"No, mem."
"John," she says, in a domineering way, "why don't you get the sails up? What is the use of staying in a place like this?"
John comes forward timidly, and stroking his great beard: he half believes in these furious rages of hers.
"Oh, yes, mem, if ye please, mem, I will get the sail set – but – but the tide will be turning soon, mem, and the wind, she will be against us as soon as we get out of the loch; and it will be a long, long time before we get to Crinan. I not well aquent with this place, mem: if we were up in our own part of the Highlands, do you think the people would let the White Dove be so long without the fresh cabbage and the milk? No; I not think that, mem."
"But we are not in our own part of the Highlands," says she, querulously; "and do you think we are going to starve? However, I suppose Fred can give us a biscuit. Let us go below."
Our lunch was, in truth, simple enough; but perhaps it was this indirect appeal to Fred that determined that worthy to surprise us at dinner that evening. First of all, after we had returned from another ineffectual seal-hunt, we found he had decorated the dinner-table in an elaborate manner. There was a clean cloth, shining with the starch in it. There was a great dish of scarlet rowans in the middle of the table; and the rowans had a border of white heather – fathered at Loch-na-Chill: the rowans were for lovely colour, the heather was for luck. Then, not content with that, he had put all our available silver on the table, including the candlesticks and the snuffer-tray, though the sun had not yet sunk behind the Jura hills. But the banquet defies description. The vast basin of steaming kidney soup, the boiled lithe, the fried mackerel, the round of tongue, the corned beef, the tomatoes, the pickles, the sardines, the convolutions of pudding and apricot jam: what Fishmonger or Drysalter or Gunmaker could have wanted more? Nor was there any Apemantus at the feast; there was the smiling and benign countenance of the Laird, who again and again made facetious remarks about the kirk bell of Clachan. Then he said more formally —
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