-looking motor boat, which was rising and falling
on the swish of unquiet waters, while the yacht--a small streak of
whiteness--was pointed out to us lying half a mile away. Besides Mr. and
Mrs. Noble, our party consisted of their two children, Miss Helen
Marhall, and myself. I had with me a Swiss servant; Mrs. Noble had a
French maid, together with her London butler, transformed for the time
into a mariner by gilt buttons and a nautical serge suit, and the cook
was an accomplished _chef_ who had once been in the service of the
fastidious Madame de Falbe. We were all of us good sailors, so for our
prospective comfort everything augured well. Our first few days were
spent on the calm waters of Loch Fyne. We then went southward, and,
doubling the Mull of Cantyre, had some taste of the turbulence of the
open sea. We then turned north, and, protected by the outer islands,
followed the mainland placidly until we approached Cape Wrath.

A large part of our time was spent in a succession of lochs. On our way
to Oban, and in its harbor, we saw several large yachts; but, except for
occasional fishing smacks, after Oban the sea became more and more
deserted. Entering one loch after another in the summer evenings, and
seeing no human habitations but crofters' cottages, which, except for
their wreaths of smoke, were hardly distinguishable from the heather,
and hearing no sound at nightfall, when our own engines were still,
except the distant dipping of some solitary pair of oars, we felt as
though we had reached the beginnings of civilization, or the ends of it.
This was specially true of Loch Laxford--the last of such inland
shelters lying south of Cape Wrath--Cape Wrath, the lightning of whose
lanterns and the boom of whose great foghorns send out warnings to those
on "seas full of wonder and peril," which Swinburne's verse
commemorates.

Of the peril of these seas our captain had often spoken, and when,
leaving the stillness of Loch Laxford, we renewed our northward journey,
we soon perceived that his language was not exaggerated. From the mouth
of Loch Laxford to Cape Wrath the whole coast might have represented to
Dante the scowling ramparts of hell. Of anything in the nature of a
beach no trace was discernible. The huge cliffs, rising sheer from the
sea, leaned not inward, but outward, and ceaseless waves were breaking
in spouts of foam against them. The yacht began to roll and pitch, so
that though none of us were sick exce