In the end of March and the beginning of April, when the isles rise brown from a steel-gray, wind-ruffled sea, their bare unloveliness is veiled by pale blue smoke-drifts, which cast over the low, sloping shores a certain charm of remoteness and of mystery. Later in the year, when the summer seas are only less blue than the skies above them, and every island shines like an emerald, white jets and spirals as from many altars rise round all the shores. For spring and summer are the kelper’s seasons, and long, dry days, which scorch and wither the young crops, are welcome to the crofter who has secured a good stock of “tangles” in winter and a big share in a “brook of ware,” now that “burning weather” has come. Until recently no kelp was burned after Lammas—that is, August 2—but of late years, when the season has been dry, the fires have been burned even so late as October. The kelper’s year may be reckoned from mid-November. Then he is paid for his work in the year that is ended. Then the gales sweep up from north or west, tearing from its deep sea-bed the red-ware, of which the long supple stems are known to the islesmen as “tangles.” Should the wind freshen to a gale during the night, the diligent kelper is up and out before the first glimmer of dawn. Buffeted by the wind and lashed by the stinging spray, he peers through the darkness, watching for those shadows against the white surf of the breaking waves which he knows to be rolling masses of seaweed and wrack. He is armed with a “pick,” an implement resembling a very strong hayfork, but with the prongs set, like those of a rake, at right angles to the handle. With this pick, struggling often mid-thigh deep in the rushing waters, he grapples the tumbling seaweed and drags it up the beach, out of reach of the waves. For the wind may change, and the “brook,” as he calls a drift of weed, if not secured at once, may be carried out to sea again, or even worse, to some other strand where it will be lost to him. Of course, the winds and waves often do this work alone, and pile the tangles in huge, glittering rolls along the beaches. When the brook is fairly on the strand, the work of the kelper is only begun. He has to carry the tangles from the beach to the seabanks above, in carts where that is possible, and where no carts can pass, then laboriously on hand-barrows. I know of one strand on which the great gale of November 1893 landed a brook of tangles which kept the kelpers busy for three months. Once on the banks, the tangles are stacked in great heaps on “steiths,” or foundations built of sea-rounded stones arranged in such fashion as to give free ingress to the air. There they lie till spring, when by the action of wind and sun they have become hard, dry, and wrinkled—brands ready for the burning. [Illustration: _Some “Big Hooses.”—II._ 1. Trumbland, Rousay. 2. Graemeshall, Holm. 3. Melsetter. 4. Balfour Castle. 5. Smoogro, Orphir.]