The days wore on. The work and long hours were beginning to tell their tale, but the entire crew kept grimly to it. Their nerves were in good order too. Even when, on the morning of the sixteenth day, as they groped their way through a streaming wet fog, a great ghostly monster of a liner suddenly loomed out of the wrack, and, as she shouldered her way past them, actually scraped the starboard counter with her stern, while the look-out on her forward deck yelled frantically, and a frightened man up aloft on the bridge flung his wheel over with great rattling of steam steering-gear to avoid a collision, the sole occupant of the Orinoco's deck--it was Goble: he was steering while Hughie and Walsh took their turn in the stokehold and Allerton slept--did not deem the occasion sufficiently important to merit a report until he was relieved from duty two hours later. But this encounter provided that pawky philosopher with a valuable clue as to their whereabouts. "She was a Ben liner," he intimated to Hughie in describing the event. "I saw the twa bit stripes roond her funnel, and her name, Ben Cruachan, on her stern. They're Glasgow boats, and sail every other Thursday tae Buenos Ayres, calling at Moville on Lough Foyle tae tak' up Irish passengers. It's no' near Cape Clear we are, anyway. We're somewhere off the north coast o' Ireland, sir. I kenned fine we were near land: this is a ground swell that's throwin' us aboot noo. Aiblins we'll be gettin' a dunt against the Giant's Causeway if we're no' canny." There was something in Goble's conclusions, for after they had steamed dead slow all night the rising sun licked up the fog; and there, ten miles to the south of them, lay a long green seacoast; and straight before them uprose what looked like a rocky island, with a homely-looking white lighthouse perched half-way up its rugged face. "If that land to the right is Ireland," said Hughie, "we can't be very far from Scotland. I wonder what that great rock ahead of us can be. Lucky we didn't reach it a couple of hours ago!" "Don't you think," suggested Allerton, putting his head out of the engine-room hatchway, "that as we have a _pukka_ Scot on board, we had better rouse him up and see if he can identify his native land?" It was Goble's turn for sleep, but Allerton's suggestion was adopted, and he was haled on deck. "Do you happen to recognise that island straight ahead, Mr. Goble?" inquired Hughie. Goble surveyed the rock and the lighthouse, and though his countenance remained unmoved, his eye lit up with proprietary pride. "Island? Yon's no' an island," he replied. "'Tis Scotland hersel'. Sir, 'tis the Mull o' Kintyre! It rins straight awa' back tae Argyllshire. We're at the varra mouth o' the Clyde. We micht hae been drawed there across the Atlantic by a bit string! God presairve us, it's a miracle!" "The Clyde?" shouted Hughie. It seemed too utterly good to be true. "Are you sure, Goble? Is that really the Mull?"