Skye, Island of (Scotland) -- Description and travel
I climbed up to my berth and fell comfortably asleep. I must have
been asleep for several hours, although of the lapse of time I was of
course unconscious, when gradually the horror of nightmare fell upon
me. This horror was vague and formless at first, but gradually it
assumed a definite shape. I was Mazeppa, they had bound me on the
back of the desert-born, and the mighty brute, maddened with pain and
terror, was tearing along the wilderness, crashing through forests,
plunging into streams, with the howling of wolves close behind and
coming ever nearer. At last, when the animal cleared a ravine at a
bound, I burst the bondage of my dream. For a moment I could not
understand where I was. The sleeping apartment seemed to have fallen
on one side, then it righted itself, but only to fall over on the
other, then it made a wild plunge forward as if it were a living
thing and had received a lash. The ship was labouring heavily, I
heard the voices of the sailors flying in the wind, I felt the shock
of solid, and the swish of broken seas. In such circumstances sleep,
for me at least, was impossible, so I slipped out of bed, and,
steadying myself for a favourable moment, made a grab at my clothes.
With much difficulty I dressed, with greater difficulty I got into my
boots, and then I staggered on deck. Holding on by the first
support, I was almost blinded by the glare of broken seas. From a
high coast against which the great waves rushed came the steady glare
of a lighthouse, and by that token I knew we were "on" the Mull of
Cantyre. The ship was fuming through a mighty battle of tides.
Shadowy figures of steerage passengers were to be seen clinging here
and there. One--a young woman going to Glasgow as a housemaid, as
she afterwards told me--was in great distress, was under the
impression that we were all going to the bottom, and came to me for
comfort. I quieted her as best I could, and procured her a seat.
Once when the ship made a wild lurch, and a cloud of spray came
flying over the deck, she exclaimed to a sailor who was shuffling
past wearing a sou'-wester and canvas overalls, "O sailor, is't ever
sae bad as this?" "As bad as this," said the worthy, poising himself
on the unsteady deck, "as bad as this! Lod, ye sud jist a seen oor
last vi'age. There was only three besides mysel o' the ship's crew
able to haud on by a rape." Delivering himself of this scrap of
dubious comfort, the sailor shuffled onward. Happily the turmoil was
not of long duration. In an hour we had rounded the formidable Mull,
had reached comparatively smooth water, and with the lights of
Campbelton behind the pallid glare of furnaces seen afar on the
Ayrshire coast, and the morning beginning to pencil softly the east,
I went below again, and slept till we reached Greenock.
_GLASGOW._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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