g parties in December, I verily believe,
hating as I do all superfluous baggage, I should have left my greatcoats
to the moth and fog of Old England.

But whew! from such _airs_ the Lord preserve me!--whilst at the tail of
our honest, grimy, grumbling steamer, cutting through the Mersey or
along the coast of Wales, we were, I admit, tolerably sunned and warm
enough, though not even here bedazzled or over-heated; but on the second
morning out, what a change!

I came on deck just before six A.M. to take my shower-bath; the wind was
about west by south, blowing a brisk gale, the ship under double-reefed
topsails, with top-gallant sails set over them, making all smoke
again--on one hand lay the Isle of Rathlin, with the north coast of
Ireland, bleak and bare; on the other, the Mull of Kyntyre, with a tide
of its own rushing by like a mill-race, and over it the cloudy crest of
Isla, looming through the flitting vapours, cold, dark, and
hard-visaged, as though no drop of whisky had ever been brewed therein.
One could not recognise the misty monster, thus grimly shadowed forth,
to be the parent of that glorious sunny spirit.

We had full time afforded to become well acquainted with the changing
aspects of these and the other localities hereabouts, for we had to
battle it with their ally the wind, and with their waters, for full
sixty hours; and although we at length fought our course seaward, it was
to feel that such another victory would be anything but serviceable to
the gallant ship.

Oh that infernal Rathlin! I shall not soon forget it; it is a spot I
always held in ill odour ever since Miss Porter's "Scottish Chiefs"
taught my unsophisticated youth to weep over the wrongs of Wallace
wight. Now, although I abominate the place more, I have learned to
compassionate her ill-starred hero less, since to have been carried
southward through "merrie England" from such a place of exile, albeit
the journey ended in hanging, was yet a deliverance especially to be
rejoiced in.

We had a near view of the natives too, one day, trying to catch us in a
whale-boat, whilst we were hugging the land sculking from the strength
of the tide of flood: but, thank Heaven! they missed taking us as we
went about on the opposite tack, the which I shall ever consider a
providential escape, although at the time, a heedless confidence in our
numbers led Captain Maxwell to throw them the end of a rope. They failed
to lay hold on it, however, and awa