tween fifty and sixty miles from Rathlin," the fisherman said.
"It was eight o'clock when we started, ten when the squall struck
us, it will be dark by four, and fast as we are running we shall
scarcely be in time to catch the last gleam of day. Come, boys,"
he said to his sons, "give her a little more canvas still, for it
is life and death to reach Colonsay before nightfall, for if we
miss it we shall be dashed on to the Mull long before morning."

A little more sail was accordingly shown, and the boat tore through
the water at what seemed to Archie to be tremendous speed; but she
was shipping but little water now, for though the great waves as
they neared her stern seemed over and over again to Archie as if
they would break upon her and send her instantly to the bottom,
the stout boat always lifted lightly upon them until he at length
felt free from apprehension on that score. Presently the fisherman
pointed out a dark mass over their other bow.

"That is Jura," he said; "we are fair for the channel, lads, but
you must take in the sail again to the smallest rag, for the wind
will blow through the gap between the islands with a force fit to
tear the mast out of her."

Through the rest of his life Archie Forbes regarded that passage
between Islay and Jura as the most tremendous peril he had ever
encountered. Strong as the wind had been before, it was as nothing
to the force with which it swept down the strait--the height of
the waves was prodigious, and the boat, as it passed over the crest
of a wave, seemed to plunge down a very abyss. The old fisherman
crouched low in the boat, holding the helm, while the other three
lay on the planks in the bottom. Speech was impossible, for the
loudest shouts would have been drowned in the fury of the storm. In
half an hour the worst was over. They were through the straits and
out in the open sea again, but Islay now made a lee for them, and
the sea, high as it was, was yet calm in comparison to the tremendous
waves in the Strait of Jura. More sail was hoisted again, and in
an hour the fisherman said, "Thank God, there are the islands."
The day was already fading, and Archie could with difficulty make
out the slightly dark mass to which the helm pointed.

"Is that Colonsay?" he asked.

"It is Oronsay," the fisherman said. "The islands are close together
and seem as if they had once been one, but have been cleft asunder
by the arm of a giant. The strait between them is very nar