s, and
grate upon my ankles. We stagger and groan beneath the weight; but
at last our feet reach the slip, and we run down with a half-trot
like the pace of bare-footed children.

A yard from the sea we stop and lower the curagh to the right. It
must be brought down gently--a difficult task for our strained and
aching muscles--and sometimes as the gunnel reaches the slip I lose
my balance and roll in among the seats.

Yesterday we went out in the curagh that had been damaged on the day
of my visit to Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars the
freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip which was heated with the
sunshine. We carried up water in the bailer--the 'supeen,' a shallow
wooden vessel like a soup-plate--and with infinite pains we got free
and rode away. In a few minutes, however, I found the water spouting
up at my feet.

The patch had been misplaced, and this time we had no sacking.
Michael borrowed my pocket scissors, and with admirable rapidity cut
a square of flannel from the tail of his shirt and squeezed it into
the hole, making it fast with a splint which he hacked from one of
the oars.

During our excitement the tide had carried us to the brink of the
rocks, and I admired again the dexterity with which he got his oars
into the water and turned us out as we were mounting on a wave that
would have hurled us to destruction.

With the injury to our curagh we did not go far from the shore.
After a while I took a long spell at the oars, and gained a certain
dexterity, though they are not easy to manage. The handles overlap
by about six inches--in order to gain leverage, as the curagh is
narrow--and at first it was almost impossible to avoid striking the
upper oar against one's knuckles. The oars are rough and square,
except at the ends, so one cannot do so with impunity. Again, a
curagh with two light people in it floats on the water like a
nut-shell, and the slightest inequality in the stroke throws the
prow round at least a right angle from its course. In the first
half-hour I found myself more than once moving towards the point I
had come from, greatly to Michael's satisfaction.

This morning we were out again near the pier on the north side of
the island. As we paddled slowly with the tide, trolling for
pollock, several curaghs, weighed to the gunnel with kelp, passed us
on their way to Kilronan.

An old woman, rolled in red petticoats, was sitting on a ledge of
rock that runs into the sea at t