to be hereafter mentioned. "The steam-launch goes,"
Fleeming wrote. "I wish you had been present to describe two scenes of
which she has been the occasion already: one during which the population
of Ullapool, to a baby, was harnessed to her hurrahing--and the other in
which the same population sat with its legs over a little pier, watching
Frewen and Bernie getting up steam for the first time." The _Purgle_ was
got with educational intent; and it served its purpose so well, and the
boys knew their business so practically, that when the summer was at an
end, Fleeming, Mrs. Jenkin, Frewen the engineer, Bernard the stoker, and
Kenneth Robertson, a Highland seaman, set forth in her to make the
passage south. The first morning they got from Loch Broom into Gruinard
Bay, where they lunched upon an island; but the wind blowing up in the
afternoon, with sheets of rain, it was found impossible to beat to sea;
and very much in the situation of castaways upon an unknown coast, the
party landed at the mouth of Gruinard river. A shooting-lodge was spied
among the trees; there Fleeming went; and though the master, Mr. Murray,
was from home, though the two Jenkin boys were of course as black as
colliers, and all the castaways so wetted through that, as they stood in
the passage, pools formed about their feet and ran before them into the
house, yet Mrs. Murray kindly entertained them for the night. On the
morrow, however, visitors were to arrive; there would be no room and, in
so out-of-the-way a spot, most probably no food for the crew of the
_Purgle_; and on the morrow about noon, with the bay white with
spindrift and the wind so strong that one could scarcely stand against
it, they got up steam and skulked under the land as far as Sanda Bay.
Here they crept into a seaside cave, and cooked some food; but the
weather now freshening to a gale, it was plain they must moor the launch
where she was, and find their way overland to some place of shelter.
Even to get their baggage from on board was no light business; for the
dingy was blown so far to leeward every trip, that they must carry her
back by hand along the beach. But this once managed, and a cart procured
in the neighbourhood, they were able to spend the night in a pot-house
at Ault Bea. Next day, the sea was unapproachable; but the next they had
a pleasant passage to Poolewe, hugging the cliffs, the falling swell
bursting close by them in the gullies, and the black scarts that sat