From Arisaig to Moidart is a land of sea lochs, shoals, rocks, sands that gleam like surf to distant eyes, hills, glens, and Jacobite history. But it would need, as the Arisaig yachtsman said, a special yacht to itself and most of a summer; while the land running out from Loch Moidart to Ardnamurchan Head—comparatively little known—has always had a special attraction for me.
But I resist the temptation of even touching on the history, with its ‘Pickle the Spy’ stories, or on such aspects of the country as I knew from previous contacts, for the Walshs had to be in Oban in two days, if they were to occupy their berths in the Glasgow-Dublin boat. It looked an impossible job for the Thistle, with the wind blowing, as we returned from Mallaig, and we gave up all hope of it. But in the morning there was a calm under heavy skies and I went ashore, roused them out of bed, and got them on board. With luck we would round Ardnamurchan that day and make Tobermory in Mull. We should see they got to Oban in two days somehow.
This was more like the thing! The previous evening Maurice and I had got the six splitpins and the two holding-down bolts where they should be. I swung the flywheel and off went all fourteen horses to a splendid start. Up the anchor and we were under way. Now I felt happy. And Toshan Walsh was a sound woman to have on board, for she looked round about her and saw the sea in all the subtle varieties of that colour which blind people call leaden, and saw the land with the still houses and the still trees, and us going away from them, and the mountains hazed to an insubstantial pageant, and the islands opening, until she grew silent at the wonder thereof. And even Maurice himself admitted, listening to the engine, ‘I like her beat.’
‘Like her beat! If the barbarians of Kerry saw us now they would think it was the grand Day of Judgment.’
‘They mightn’t be far wrong,’ said he, and touched some wood.
We had no difficulty at all coming out, except for one anxious moment—the tide was full and the whole look of the entrance altered—in picking up the last pole. I knew we had to stand in round the hump of land that projects on the port side, but the hunt for the pole gave everyone some excitement. Then we found it and in due course opened out the Small Isles and encountered the long slow roll of the open sea.
The yachtsman at Arisaig had suggested my keeping her on the island of Muck for a bit and then wearing round until we picked up the Bo Faskadale light—a red buoy, which we must comfortably clear to port. Soon the Ardnamurchan Head lighthouse raised its thin distant finger, and wearing off Muck we put her on what we took to be those rocks at the northern point of Coll, called the Cairns of Coll. But look and spy as we would, we could not pick up the Bo Faskadale red buoy. The hunt for it became a game with charts, land marks, field glasses, and compass. A real amateur’s hunt, and with an ear for the engine, I enjoyed it.
But when we had crossed the line of Moidart sands and Castle Island (Eigg), it was high time somebody was seeing something, and when we opened out Rum between Eigg and Muck, manifestly we should have the buoy abeam. On a direct course from Ruadh Arisaig to the Cairns of Coll one should almost run it down. When at last Maurice picked it up well inland, we all saw it. I had held on to Muck too long.
And now for Ardnamurchan, about the wildest spot on the whole West Coast, and notorious for its stormy seas; the one spot every amateur is warned against. And here we were heading for it on a long slow roll pleasant as slumber. An old-world sailing bark was rounding it under a full spread of canvas, and in the distance looked like a miniature craft that the keepers might be amusing themselves with. I was prepared, all the same, to give the Head a comfortable berth, but as at last we drew near I stood close in, for the Crew was wanting to experiment with her camera. We were gazing all eyes, the engine forgotten, when it missed a beat or two and was obviously going to peter out, but I dived quickly and opened the throttle, which staggered her a bit, until she resumed her beat again. Some drops of rain fell. A long black thundercloud lay out from Eigg. It was any sort of weather next, with the glass perceptibly falling. Southerly wind came freshening the water. Slowly that weather-worn headland with its grey-dark twisted strata fell astern. We could see no bird-life, except for an occasional gull floating like windblown thistledown against its immense southern wall. The scene at the height of a winter storm, passing into the dark of night, must be about as near to an inferno as the mind of man can conceive.
The Crew produced one of her celebrated light lunches, and we entered the Sound of Mull to the most plentiful bird life we had so far seen. Long lines of puffins, with their yellow parrot beaks, moved swiftly over the water, while guillemots came upon us like advance air columns of armies, low to the water, at a great speed, and in perfect formation. They were obviously fishing up Loch Sunart and carrying their catches—we could see what looked like herring fry laid crossways in their beaks—to their young, possibly on the Cairns of Coll or still farther away. Once more we saw a solitary gannet. It rose between us and that pleasant looking settlement of Kilhoan behind Ardnamurchan Head. ‘That’s our lucky bird,’ explained the Crew.
Loch Sunart penetrates so far inland that it comes within a few miles of making the land of Morven an island. We took an interest in finding the lie of the Red Rocks, the New Rocks, and the Stirk Rocks, that guard the southern entrance, and picked up the red buoy that marks their western reach; though by this time we were more concerned with the clear view of Runa Gall lighthouse, two or three miles beyond which should lie Tobermory.
We were soon abreast of Ardmore Point, where there used to be a tidy crofting hamlet, before it was cleared for sheep. This crofting area is interesting because, as I was later told in Tobermory, it was one of the last places where the ground was worked on the run-rig system and the whole farmed out on a communal basis. Each crofter was finally responsible for a single plot, after lots had been cast yearly over the subdivision of the common land. The system worked harmoniously over most of the Highland area, and if we may now think that the land was not put to the best use, we are judging from a standard of crop rotation and production that is universally quite modern. In these days rent was paid in kind and in labour. Even MacCrimmon’s fees for teaching the bagpipe were expressed in terms of cows, and that did not lessen the coveted value of the diploma which he sealed with his own seal after it had been won. Another thing I was told about Ardmore: that it is a very good example of land, once cultivated, going back to a wilder and ranker state of nature than before it was originally broken in. The sheep paid for ten years. Then they didn’t.
As we rounded Runa Gall lighthouse, glistening white and spick and span, the old anxiety over making a decent anchorage began to heave itself up. It was all very well struggling away in front of some crofters’ houses, but a famed yachting centre, with its piers and daily steamers and smart yachtsmen with their smarter women and still smarter craft—with little else to do, likely, but watch a poor devil, struggling with the malignant demon that inhabits a thrawn bit of machinery, and misunderstanding the situation with the interest that demands amusement anyhow—that was a different kettle of fish entirely. Not to mention a very natural desire to do the thing decently before our friends. There certainly was no need to put them to shame, too. If only she would repeat her behaviour before Arisaig, I, on my part, promised myself a quite professional performance. But already—wasn’t that a queer knock? There again. I refused to listen. The Arisaig yachtsman would certainly not have been able to open his mouth now! There it was again—a rat-tat-tat of metal. Let it rat!
For we were opening out the bay. I’d better try to reduce speed. I gave Maurice the helm and made to ease back the spark, but immediately got the impression that she would stop if I touched anything. Something was wrong—and pretty far wrong. We daren’t stop here. And when I pushed my head up, there, still, was the bay, but where were the piers, the houses, the yachts? I actually consulted the chart—as though the blessed engine had hallucinated us.
I was told a story later by an engineer in Tobermory of a certain man who had bought a motor boat from a landed proprietor of this part of the world and on coming at full speed to anchor for the first time, went to pull the lever into neutral at the appropriate moment and while still a considerable distance from shore. But the lever, to his amazement, wouldn’t budge. It is all too easy to imagine him tugging at it and tugging at it in an ever-mounting wrath while the smart craft sped on. Easier still to say afterwards that he might have done this or that. I, mercifully, had always closed the throttle. He forgot so simple an expedient, and his vessel charged up the distillery burn and became a total wreck. That he tried to get redress from the previous owner proves that he had a sanguine temperament. At least I could avoid the burn—and there it was (for Tobermory is tucked round a corner) with the distillery (now a wreck itself) beside it. And the houses along the front, and the two piers; but, by the grace of God, no yachts. A schooner lay at anchor off the inner or old pier and I made to pass outside her. Now for it! and I went to put the engine into neutral. At the third tug the lever came. And in the same moment it was as if a machine gun had gone mad in the cabin. The rat-tat-tatting at a terrific velocity was deafening. I shut her off. And she shut, and was quiet, and nothing more came from anywhere.
‘What’s gone wrong?’
‘The whole bag of tricks, by the sound of it.’
A fellow on the schooner was idly watching us. I shouted, asking him if we would do where we were. But he cried us to come in. I got into the dinghy, tied the end of a rope to the seat I sat on, while Maurice got a hold forward, and rowed away. She came like a penitent lamb. Not that that softened me. She had taken us here. She had never let us down. What if she had gone phut off Ardnamurchan? I was not interested. When the man on the schooner indicated that we were right, I got on board again and we let go the anchor. ‘You’re fine there,’ he shouted. ‘Thank you,’ I acknowledged, and dried my sweat. We had arrived once more.