Then there is another cry; what is this cloud ahead, or waterspout resting on the calm bosom of the sea? Glasses again in request, amid many exclamations, reveal to us that this is a dense cloud of birds; a flock so vast that towards the water it seems black; can it be the dead body of a whale that has collected this world of wings from all the Northern seas? Hurry on, _White Dove_; for the floating cloud with the black base is moving and seething—in fantastic white fumes, as it were—in the loveliness of this summer day. And now, as we draw nearer, we can descry that there is no dead body of a whale causing that blackness; but only the density of the mass of seafowl. And nearer and nearer as we draw, behold! the great gannets swooping down in such numbers that the sea is covered with a mist of waterspouts; and the air is filled with innumerable cries; and we do not know what to make of this bewildering, fluttering, swimming, screaming mass of terns, guillemots, skarts, kittiwakes, razorbills, puffins, and gulls. But they draw away again. The herring-shoal is moving northward. The murmur of cries becomes more remote, and the seething cloud of the sea-birds is slowly dispersing. When the _White Dove_ sails up to the spot at which this phenomenon was first seen, there is nothing visible but a scattered assemblage of guillemots—_kurroo! kurroo!_ answered by _pe-yoo-it! pe-yoo-it!_—and great gannets—"as big as a sheep," says John of Skye—apparently so gorged that they lie on the water within stone’s-throw of the yacht, before spreading out their long, snow-white, black-tipped wings to bear them away over the sea. And now, as we are altering our course to the west—far away to our right stand the vast Coolins of Skye—we sail along the northern shores of Rum. There is no trace of any habitation visible; nothing but the precipitous cliffs, and the sandy bays, and the outstanding rocks dotted with rows of shining black skarts. When Mary Avon asks why those sandy bays should be so red, and why a certain ruddy warmth of colour should shine through even the patches of grass, our F.R.S. begins to speak of powdered basalt rubbed down from the rocks above. He would have her begin another sketch, but she is too proud of her newly acquired knowledge to forsake the tiller. The wind is now almost dead aft, and we have a good deal of gybing. Other people might think that all this gybing was an evidence of bad steering on the part of our new skipper; but Angus Sutherland—and we cannot contradict an F.R.S.—assures Miss Avon that she is doing remarkably well; and, as he stands by to lay hold of the main sheet when the boom swings over, we are not in much danger of carrying away either port or starboard davits. "Do you know," says he lightly, "I sometimes think I ought to apply for the post of surgeon on board a man-of-war? That would just suit me——"