A westerly wind was blowing gently over Tobermory, but the sky looked stormy. A yachtsman of a ten tonner assured us that the west of Mull would be ‘uncomfortable’ for our boat; and, as it turned out, he was right. However, we wanted to be off, for we had now been a good week in Tobermory, and though we had enjoyed its variety very well, we felt we could do with a more secluded anchorage.
Not until we had rounded Ardmore Point and put her on the Caliach, did we feel the real sea. Here the white caps were racing over a vivid deep sparkling blue, and with the forward plunge—for the wind was about sou’west and head on —the passage was alive with exhilarating movement. And now I could enjoy it in the proper holiday mood, for my brother (whom the Crew dubbed the Mate) was used to heavy seas in a small boat, and I suppose responsibility does account for some leakage of vitality over a long run. Soon we opened out Ardnamurchan and the full length of our old friend, the Scuir of Eigg, with dents in its upturned keel. Then Rum, Canna, low to the sea, and, beyond, the hills of Skye. Westward, the Cairns of Coll, Coll itself, with a dull glitter on its bare rocks as they ran into Tiree. If, when we came abreast of Caliach Point, we should find a beam sea too uncomfortable for us, we had made up our minds to keep heading into it until we fetched Loch nan Eathar in Coll, where there is a good anchorage in a westerly wind.
But Mull had been playing tricks with the wind, and soon we found it blowing from about sou’sou’west. As the sun came out strongly, the breeze seemed to freshen, but the glass was going up and we could read the sky well enough to have no great fears. Yet we could see the Mate was restless, for he was working out in his mathematical head what would happen should the engine, of which he had heard things, decide to break down. This high boat, with its comparatively shallow draught, would certainly be uncomfortable if left broadside on and helpless. As we passed Loch Cuan in Mull, the rocks at its entrance threw white streamers which were wonderfully beautiful but not perhaps inspiring. And a long drift would provide an excellent close-up of the rocks of Ardnamurchan, which would be merciless enough to-day. But I liked the beat of the engine. It had never been so assured.
However, a trapeze act had to be performed to the forecastle and the sails brought forth, and in the cockpit they were carefully gone over until the Mate had the hang of their lacings and sheets. ‘A light little gaff and simple traveller that you could run up in a second would suit me better,’ was his comment. I defended; and we argued rigs until we found ourselves standing more closely for the Caliach than I had intended, for according to our Directions a tide rip extends outward from the Point for a distance of about two miles. As we were now on a tide ebbing strongly against the wind, there should be a nice jabble; but it was a trifle too late for a two mile detour, so we kept our eyes open and passed the Caliach about half a mile out in a short piled-up sea. But it was never more than thoroughly uncomfortable, and I was pleased to see the Mate gain some respect for the sea-going qualities of our craft.
As we bore south we brought the wind a few points to starboard, and though we continued to be tossed about a bit, there was never any danger. And the seas were really alive, a vivid pulsing blue. In the bright sun and flying cloud, the freshness was entrancing.
Calgary Bay looked inviting with its sands and woods, and south of it the terraced formation of the land was very striking. The terraces rose one behind the other in perfect parallels, as if they had been artificially made. The same old basaltic formation as we had met in Skye, of course, only very much bolder and more clearly defined. Each terrace represented an outpouring of lava, and when, as in the mountain of Ben Mor, which we could now see, the total depth of the terraces is about 3,000 feet, and when we recognised that such a depth—or height—must have extended across the area over which we were now sailing, the mind grew a bit dizzy at thought of the magnitude of the denudation that had gone on in what is spoken of as recent geological time. For manifestly flowing lava would not build itself up in neat terraces and ignore the gaping void below! It would naturally have searched for hollows to flow into, and these high terraces that now rise over the sea tell their own tale. They are green, and, as Ben Mor stood out clearly before us, we were very impressed. The cloud shadows lay on its vast bulk like sky starfish. The green became a sombre sage green, and over its immensities, unbroken by tree or jagged rock, was that imponderable air of the immemorial.
But the sea does not permit indulgence in land reveries, not for very long, for Treshnish Point was falling astern, and we had to make up our minds what we were going to do. The Treshnish Isles, opening out to starboard in their flat rectangular rock formations, low to the sea, were a continuous and ever varying attraction. The Dutchman’s Cap, from an easterly aspect, is ultra-modern in the severity of its lines, compared with the island north of it (Lunga) in which the Crew from one point found a remarkable resemblance to Napoleon’s hat.
But the Mate had discovered low on the horizon what he believed from the chart to be Staffa, while I wondered about a boss of rock obviously much farther away and a little to the west. It could not be Dubh Artach lighthouse, for that was much too far distant to be seen. Nor apparently was it the end of the Ross of Mull, judging from the configuration of the land. It did not look like an island but like a rock coming up out of the sea, and we could not find a likely rock anywhere on our chart. Every now and again this mysterious rock drew our attention—as it must have drawn the attention of Vikings and Gaels, pirates and pilgrims, throughout the centuries.
As the day went on we opened out Loch Tuadh, got Ulva Island on our port beam, and the Mate was showing a considerable degree of confidence in our general position. I watched him working out the game of chances.
‘You see’, he explained, ‘if anything happened now, we could make one or two sheltered anchorages in the north of Ulva Island. I could sail her into them easily.’
‘Fine.’
‘And just round the southern point of the island, there’s a good anchorage we could run into, called—called—’
‘Gometra,’ I said.
The Crew smiled. ‘It’s an old game now,’ she explained. ‘He always has a few anchorages up his sleeve.’
The Mate laughed, delighted.
I suggested that in fact I shouldn’t mind landing on Ulva, as it afforded a quite outstanding spectacle of social devastation, consequent upon land clearances, and said that Dr. Johnson and his Scotch satellite had been there and also in the neighbouring island of Inch Kenneth, where the Doctor was astonished to discover civilisation in quite shapely forms.
‘So long as we know,’ said the Mate, holding a steady southerly course. And they both laughed.
‘Aren’t you impressed by Johnson’s visit?’
‘Not particularly, at the moment. In fact the only thing that impressed me in the whole affair was the old boy’s philosophic behaviour in dirty weather. Remember the night they made Coll? By heavens, it was a filthy night. And the old lad lay like a log, sick as a dog, and abused no one. Full marks.’
‘And he really hated the whole show. How he hated it! It was somewhere hereabouts, wasn’t it, that he confided in Boswell his real opinion. He would not wish not to be disgusted in the Highlands, he said, for that would be to lose the power of distinguishing, and a man might then lie down in the middle of them. He wished only, he said, to conceal his disgust.’
Somehow it sounded good, and we laughed merrily; for it was a self-portrait to the life.
A few months before, two English travellers, following in Johnson’s footsteps through the Highlands, had told me how astonished they were to find little knowledge of Johnson’s visit, and even less concern about it, in any part of Scotland.
In the modern phrase, Johnson had failed to register. His dislike of the Scots was made obvious enough, yet it never raised any real opposition. No legend of antipathy to the man has been created. Whether this is evidence of a complacency even greater than Johnson’s own, or whether his prejudices were so strong that they became idiosyncratic and amusing, it is difficult to say. He would not wish not to be disgusted! One thinks of him hanging on to it—and the laugh is out spontaneously.
The unfortunate weather was another matter, for when at last we drew abreast of Staffa we found that we could not land. Our disappointment was keen, but as we watched the seas heave from under us and rush on the rocks we realised there was no help for it. Had we known our ground intimately, we might have risked dropping anchor somewhere and then tried to have stolen ashore in the dinghy, and with this thought in mind we did keep tossing about the island for fully half an hour, but in our ignorance clearly the proceeding would be beyond a reasonable risk. In fact, once or twice I got my heart in my mouth, when I felt what I thought was the ground-swing of the water, for the Crew was anxious for a photograph and we all wanted to see what we could. The photographs turned out to be failures, apparently from over-exposure. They were all taken at 1/100th of a second, but presumably the lens should have been closed more, for the amount of light about was really extraordinary. The sea was dancing alive with it; the broken tops of the waves dazzled the eyes with their whiteness; and heaving into the caves went billows of green fire.
Usually the show places of a country are disappointing, but I must say Staffa was arresting. We had never seen anything quite like its pillared rock formation, for at first glance it struck in us an incredulous note, as if the southern rock face had been artificially carved into high-relief columns and then the whole erection given a slight tilt. It certainly did not look like a piece of work by haphazard nature. The economy, the precision, the regularity seemed altogether too human, and, from the sea, rocks rarely appear very large or massive, in the way, say, a cathedral appears from a pavement, or the rocks themselves from their crests. Staffa is not at all spectacular in the grand manner. It comes upon one with an air of surprise and wonder, like a work of genius in a picture frame. And what I regretted missing most of all was not a close view of the perfect symmetry of the columns, but the colours of them and of the seaweed and of the water in Fingal’s Cave, with movement in the colours and in the underwater light. We could hear the modulated note of the booming wave, and remembered the old Gaelic name, Uaimh Bhinn, ‘the melodious cavern’.
We had a look at the entrance to the Clam-shell Cave, with its twisted pillars, the Boat Cave, and McKinnon’s, but when we finally put her about off the rocks on the western side and saw what seas were breaking there, we bade farewell to Staffa, for it was not the wind that bothered us but the sliding treacherous swell, on which, however, we had managed a few exciting moments—particularly the Crew. Perhaps the circumstances had been a trifle more dramatic than those that attend the usual visitors, and the wind and brilliant sun and flashing seas had given the rocks a glittering and memorable beauty.
So we consoled ourselves, anyhow, as we held south—and perceived at last, beyond doubt, that the mysterious rock which had guided us since we had rounded the Caliach was no other than the round hill of Dun-I in Iona.
At the back of all our possible landfalls on this day, Iona had been waiting, and now here at last it was, only an hour or two away.
‘What about it?’ asked the Mate.
But I couldn’t see how we could make it. From what I had read, I knew that the swell must be coming right up the narrow sound between Iona and the Ross of Mull. There would be a tide too, and on the Iona side there seemed to be very little in the way of shelter. We had had enough movement and adventure for the day, and on the sheltered north coast of the Ross there was one obvious anchorage, where we could go to sleep in a quiet calm. I asked him to look up Loch Lathaich.
Agreement was unanimous. From Loch Lathaich, too, we could find out about the Sound. With our minds made up and the old engine plugging away stolidly, we felt in very good spirits.
It was at that moment that the Crew saw the cloud over Iona, on whose northern rocks and pale sands the sea broke white.
It was quite a small cloud, not much bigger than a good puff from a railway train, at no great height, and the colour of pipe tobacco smoke. It was the only low cloud of its kind far as our eyes could travel, for high in the heavens were cirrus and blue fields, and where it could have come from we had no idea, for it was a real cloud and its tenuous blue was irradiated with light. The Crew said it was a sign.
‘A good sign?’
‘It’s a sign,’ she said, with an enigmatic smile and a nod to herself.
Here was evidence of the curious superstition that grows in one against naming certain things at sea, and we laughed and said she was frightened to say yes or no lest she might ‘alter it’. But she would not be drawn. Along the Moray Firth coasts there used to be many words that a fisherman would never mention at sea, such as clergyman, salmon, rabbit, and for these there were special words. The rabbit, for example, was ‘clever feet’ or ‘clever feeties’. When a member of the crew took God’s name in vain there was a cry of ‘cold iron’, and each held on to the nearest bit of iron until the danger passed. I can just remember, as a very small boy, the strange shock I got on learning that the skipper of a certain boat had turned back one morning on his way to sea because he met an old woman who was reputed to be a witch. I knew her by sight well. She always wore a black skirt, a closely wound black shawl that came up over her head and framed her wrinkled face, and she was bent.
Now I have never been much influenced by such superstitions or taboos, unless indeed in a sort of inverse fashion, so that by passing under a ladder or taking the number thirteen or spilling the salt, I actually hope to attract luck. Haeckel and Huxley did have an effect on our early teens, and to this day I can repeat the lengthy advice to the seeker after truth to beware of the Idols of the Tribe, meaning thereby. . . .
To-day the advice tends to come from the philosophic economist, like Marx, and youth finds, possibly, a greater thrill in conning and remembering it, because of the revolutionary impulse that demands action.
Yet here, at sea, the mind slips momentarily. The certainties of our industrial civilisation are not always in evidence. Neither the Douglas Theorem nor the Marxian Dialectic would help us if the engine broke down. So we fall into the habit of using if. ‘If we manage round into the Sound to-morrow, we should with any luck be able to . . . ’ When someone says, ‘I know it is going to be a good morning,’ we look as if we hadn’t heard. We all inwardly believe, from the signs, that at long last it is going to be a good morning, but why say it? Why risk saying it? Why permit the boast of our knowledge to be, as it were, overheard? Very foolish, and indeed, in bad taste. To these old fishermen, beating west to Castlebay in their small part-decked sailing boats, the nearest of all the gods, the omnipresent, the incalculable, the terribly swift, was Death.
Before setting out each of us had written on a sheet of paper what we hoped would pass for wills (for unwitnessed holograph wills are good enough in Scotland). Instinctively, I suppose, we felt it was as well to give the Old One respectful recognition.
So the Crew refused to say anything about the cloud over Iona, as we headed for the white beacon that marks the east point of a group of islets lying in the entrance to Loch Lathaich. We could pass this group on either hand, and decided on the eastern passage, so that the loch, which is one and a half miles long, could be opened up. In this game of approaching unknown anchorages, we had become firm believers in the wisdom of opening out the maximum that can be seen, before proceeding to a decision or final action. In this way it is astonishing how what had appeared rather alarming in the Directions, or impossible in the small-scale chart, lays its problem open for an obvious and even easy solution.
It was while we were on this course that we got a first view of that massive headland between Loch na Keal and Loch Scridain that rises in terraced grandeur to Ben Mor. It is a whole peninsula rather than a headland, and during the days we spent in Loch Lathaich, waiting sea weather, it impressed us in its ever-varying atmospheric effects more profoundly than any other place we saw. It came and went, loomed gigantic or withdrew in mists and twilights, primordial and everlasting.
We gave the beacon on Eilean Lathanach a fairly wide berth, and, being warned that the east side of the loch is very foul, crossed towards the west but not too close. We now discerned the two islands, Goat Island and White Island, towards the head of the loch and knew we could stand in behind the latter for an anchorage in two and a half fathoms. But when we had opened out this anchorage we also opened out a short arm of the sea, called Loch Caol, running westward, and saw a motor boat of about our own size or somewhat larger well within what seemed ideal shelter. Our Directions did mention Loch Caol, but with the instruction to anchor in the mouth of it. We were going one better than that! So I slowed down all I could, while the Mate steered ahead, intending to drop anchor well short of the other boat. But within a minute the Crew was crying, ‘Look at the weeds!’
It was an extraordinary display of the weed chorda filum. I could feel the cords gathering round the shaft, choking the blades, and slowing us up, so I promptly stopped the engine. Though we were in about two fathoms, the upper parts of the weed streamed along the surface, combed by the tide. We estimated the length of some of them at thirty feet, yet two or three dozen of them, hauled from the bottom, could be found adhering to a single pebble not much bigger than a pigeon’s egg. They were about the thickness of boot laces, brown, tapering finely at each end, and tough. Many a time in the days and anchorages to follow did a minnow give a tug for the fisherman to observe laconically, ‘Chorda filum.’
We could not see the propellors in their brown nest, so getting into the dinghy the Mate towed us back a little way, and we dropped anchor. The boat hook cleared the shaft in a short time, and, in any case, we decided the weed was slimy enough to act as grease! Moreover, we had had a great sea day and—we had arrived.