White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume IBlack, William
General
White Wings: A Yachting Romance, Volume I
Black, William
Yachting -- Fiction
That evening we pursued the innocent lithe again—our larder was becoming
terribly empty—and there was a fine take. But of more interest to some
of us than the big fish was the extraordinary wonder of colour in sea
and sky when the sun had gone down; and there was a wail on the part of
the Laird that Mary Avon had not her colours with her to put down some
jotting for further use. Or if on paper: might not she write down
something of what she saw; and experiment thereafter? Well, if any
artist can make head or tail of words in such a case as this, here they
are for him—as near as our combined forces of observation could go.
The vast plain of water around us a blaze of salmon-red—with the waves
(catching the reflection of the zenith) marked in horizontal lines of
blue. The great headland of Canna, between us and the western sky, a
mass of dark, intense olive-green. The sky over that a pale, clear
lemon-yellow. But the great feature of this evening scene was a mass of
cloud that stretched all across the heavens—a mass of flaming,
thunderous, orange-red cloud that began in the far pale mists in the
east, and came across the blue zenith overhead, burning with a splendid
glory there, and then stretched over to the west, where it narrowed down
and was lost in the calm, clear gold of the horizon. The splendour of
this great cloud was bewildering to the eyes; one turned gratefully to
the reflection of it in the sultry red of the sea below, broken by the
blue lines of waves. Our attention was not wholly given to the fishing
or the boat on this lambent evening; perhaps that was the reason we ran
on a rock, and with difficulty got off again.
Then back to the yacht again about eleven o’clock. What is this
terrible news from Master Fred, who was sent off with instructions to
hunt up any stray crofter he might find, and use such persuasions in the
shape of Gaelic friendliness and English money as would enable us to
replenish our larder? What! that he had walked two miles and seen
nothing eatable or purchasable but an old hen? Canna is a beautiful
place; but we begin to think it is time to be off.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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