"The best way in the world; and the snarling puppy had no one to blame but himself. My dog Oscar is d----d ugly, but he's the most sagacious beast in the world. He can tell an honest man at a glance, and he hates rogues. Oscar sat on his haunches eyeing the little man, with no very amiable squint, during the row; every now and then uttering a significant growl, and making a preparatory snap at Mr. Lootie's legs, as if he longed to take the quarrel under his own especial management. In the heat of anger, Mr. Lootie kept raising his hands and shaking them at me in a threatening manner. Oscar let it pass for what it was worth the first time, but the moment the fist was raised a second time, he dashed into the little brute with tooth and claw, and pulling him to the ground, he gave him such a touzling that the distiller was fain to roar aloud for mercy, and I proved just then very deaf, and he got enough of it, I can tell you." "He was rightly served," said Flora; "I expect he will afford us some amusement during the voyage. Captain, where did you procure this cod-fish? I never tasted anything so delicious in the fish way in my life." "Ah, I thought you'd find that a treat. Those fish were alive under the blue waters of the Firth an hour ago. Talk of the fine flavour of the Newfoundland cod! they are not comparable to the fish caught in these rapid waters." Flora was on deck by sunrise the next morning. The sky was still cloudless, but the breeze had freshened and the sea was coveted with short rolling billows, which recalled to her mind a beautiful line in Ossian, where the old bard compares these white-crested, short waves to a flock of sheep coming tumbling over one another from the hills; and in another place he terms the wind that moves them-- "The shepherdess of the sea driving her flocks on shore." A tall, dark man, that was at the wheel, and bore the very appropriate name of Bob _Motion_, whether real or assumed, it would be hard to say; called this short chopping sea, "The white mice being out." Flora found it no easy matter to keep her feet on the deck while the vessel was going sideways through the water, but she hung on to the bulwarks, and was rewarded by the sight of the wild Sutherland coast on the left, its brown heath-covered hills, and fantastic rocks, conjuring up the form of the Norna of the fitful Head-- "And of every wild shore that the northern winds knew."