Skye, Island of (Scotland) -- Description and travel
"I don't know how it was," went on the Father, holding his
newly-filled pipe between his forefinger and thumb; "but looking on
the black dots of boats, and hearing the sound of their oars, I
remembered that old Mirren, who lived in one of the turf huts yonder,
had the second sight; and so I thought I would go down and see her.
When I got to the hut, I met Mirren coming up from the shore with a
basket full of whelks, which she had been gathering for dinner. I
went into the hut along with her, and sat down. 'There's a sad
business in the bay to-day,' said I. 'A sad business,' said Mirren,
as she laid down her basket. 'Will they get the bodies?' Mirren
shook her head. 'The bodies are not there to get; they have floated
out past Rum to the main ocean.' 'How do you know?' 'Going out to
the shore about a month ago I heard a scream, and, looking up, saw a
boat off the point, with two men in it, caught in a squall, and going
down. When the boat sank the men still remained in it--the one
entangled in the fishing-net, the other in the ropes of the sails. I
saw them float out to the main sea between the two wines,'--that's a
literal translation," said the Father, parenthetically. "You have
seen two liquors in a glass--the one floating on the top of the
other? Very well; there are two currents in the sea, and when my
people wish to describe anything sinking down and floating between
these two currents, they use the image of two liquors in a
wine-glass. Oh, it's a fine language the Gaelic, and admirably
adapted for poetical purposes,--but to return. Mirren told me that
she saw the bodies float out to sea between the two wines, and that
the trawling boats might trawl for ever in the bay before they would
get what they wanted. When evening came, the boats returned home
without having found the bodies of the drowned M'Millans. Well," and
here the Father lighted his pipe, "six weeks after, a capsized boat
was thrown on the shore in Uist, with two corpses inside,--one
entangled in the fishing-net, the other in the ropes of the sails.
It was the M'Millans' boat, and it was the two brothers who were
inside. Their faces were all eaten away by the dog-fishes; but the
people who had done business with them in Uist identified them by
their clothes. This I know to be true," said the Father
emphatically, and shutting the door on all argument or hint of
scepticism. "And now, if you are not too tired, suppose we try our
luck in the copses down there? 'Twas a famous place for rabbits when
I was here last year."
_IN A SKYE BOTHY._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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