a truss of tow (adminiculo cujusdam stupae), till the boat of Portevin picked up him and two others.[28] When, in 1385, the crew of an English vessel (quidam filii Belial) sacrilegiously robbed the island, and tried to burn the church, St. Columba, in answer to the earnest prayers of those who, on the neighbouring shore, saw the danger of the sacred edifice, suddenly shifted round the wind and quenched the flames, while the chief of the incendiaries was, within a few hours afterwards, struck with madness, and forty of his comrades drowned.[29] When, in 1335, an English fleet ravaged the shores of the Forth, and one of their largest ships was carrying off from Inchcolm an image of Columba[30] and a store of ecclesiastical plunder, there sprung up such a furious tempest around the vessel immediately after she set sail, that she drifted helplessly and hopelessly towards the neighbouring island of Inchkeith, and was threatened with destruction on the rocks there till the crew implored pardon of Columba, vowed to him restitution of their spoils, and a suitable offering of gold and silver, and then they instantly and unexpectedly were lodged safe in port (et statim in tranquillo portu insperate ducebantur).[31] When, in 1336, some English pirates robbed the church at Dollar--which had been some time previously repaired and richly decorated by an Abbot of Aemonia--and while they were, with their sacrilegious booty, sailing triumphantly, and with music on board, down the Forth, under a favouring and gentle west wind, in the twinkling of an eye (non solum subito sed in ictu oculi), and exactly opposite the abbey of Inchcolm, the ship sank to the bottom like a stone. Hence, adds the writer of this miracle in the _Scotichronicon_,--and no doubt that writer was the Abbot Walter Bower,--in consequence of these marked retaliating propensities of St. Columba, his vengeance against all who trespassed against him became proverbial in England; and instead of calling him, as his name seems to have been usually pronounced at the time, St. Callum or St. Colam, he was commonly known among them as _St. Quhalme_ ("et ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos vulgariter _Sanct Quhalme_ nuncupatur"[32]). But without dwelling on these and other well-known facts and fictions in the history of Inchcolm, let me state,--for the statement has, as we shall afterwards see, some bearing upon the more immediate object of this notice,--that this island is one of the few spots in the vicinity of Edinburgh that has been rendered classical by the pen of Shakspeare. In the second scene of the opening act of the tragedy of Macbeth, the Thane of Ross comes as a hurried messenger from the field of battle to King Duncan, and reports that Duncan's own rebellious subjects and the invading Scandinavians had both been so completely defeated by his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, that the Norwegians craved for peace:--