The Green Ray Read Online

How often I have travelled over them with the great navigators! How often I have wandered into the great unknown, in imagination only, it is true, but I know nothing more enviable than the position of those heroes who have accomplished such grand discoveries.”

“Yes, Miss Campbell, in the history of all ages, what is there more worthy of admiration? Only to think of crossing the Atlantic for the first time with Columbus, the Pacific with Magellan, the polar seas with Parry, Franklin, and many others! I can never see a ship, man-of-war, trading-vessel, or even a simple fishing-smack, set out on any journey without my whole heart going with it. I think I was made for a sailor, and I regret, every day of my life, that it has not been my vocation.”

“At any rate, you have been a great deal on the sea, have you not?” asked Miss Campbell.

“As much as I could,” replied Oliver Sinclair. “I have been up the Mediterranean from the Straits of Gibraltar to the ports of the Levant, across the Atlantic to North America, and on the northern seas of Europe, and I know all the waters round England and Scotland—”

“And how magnificent they are, Mr. Sinclair!”

“Yes, indeed, I know of nothing to compare with these shores! We have here another archipelago; perhaps the sky is not so intensely blue as in the east, but the rugged rocks and hazy horizons make it much more romantic. The Grecian Archipelago gave birth to a whole company of gods and goddesses. That may be! but you may have remarked that they were very matter-of-fact divinities, very practical, and, moreover, endowed with corporeal life, doing business and reckoning up their accounts like any ordinary mortal. In my idea, Olympus appears like a great reception-room for rather common-place divinities. This is not the case with our Hebrides; they are the abode of supernatural beings! The ethereal Scandinavian deities are not in the least corporeal, but invisible beings, such as Odin, Ossian, Fingal, and the host of poetical phantoms, from the. pages of the Sagas. How enchanting are these imaginary forms, which our memories can invoke, in the midst of Arctic gloom, or across the snows of northern regions! Here is an Olympus far more divine than its Grecian namesake; there is nothing earthly about it, and if one had to search the wide world for a place worthy of such guests, it would be found in our Hebrides. Yes, Miss Campbell, this is where I should come to worship our divinities, and, like a true son of Caledonia, I would not change our archipelago with its two hundred isles, its grey skies, its tumultuous seas, influenced by the Gulf-stream, for all the archipelagos in the east.”

“And it is all our own, being true Highlanders!” said Miss Campbell, carried away by her companion’s enthusiastic words. “Ah! Mr. Sinclair, I am like you, passionately fond of our archipelago! it is magnificent, especially when lashed by the fury of tempests.”

“It is indeed sublime,” replied Oliver Sinclair. “There is nothing on the way to obstruct the violence of the gales which vent their force here after travelling three thousand miles! The American coast faces Scotland, and though great storms may rise there, it is the western coast of Europe which gets the first benefit of their fury! But what can they do against our Hebrides, which are not like that man of whom Livingstone speaks, who had no fear of lions, but was afraid of the sea? These isles, with their solid granite bases, can laugh to scorn the violence of wind and sea.”

“The sea! A chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen with two and a half per cent, of chloride of sodium! Indeed, nothing can be more sublime than the violent agitations of chloride of sodium!”

Miss Campbell and Oliver turned round on hearing these words, which were evidently meant for them, and intended as a reply to their enthusiastic eulogies.

Aristobulus Ursiclos was standing close behind them. The troublesome fellow could not resist the desire to leave Oban at the same time as Miss Campbell, knowing that Oliver Sinclair was accompanying her to Iona. Having come on board before them, he had remained in the saloon till just as they were within sight of the island.

The workings of chloride of sodium indeed! what a blow to their romantic visions!

CHAPTER XIV
LIFE AT IONA

Meanwhile Iona—its ancient name being Isle of the Waves—rearing its cathedral hill about four hundred feet above the level of the sea, gradually grew more distinct as the steamer rapidly approached it.

About midday, the Pioneer came alongside a little jetty, made of roughly hewn rock, green with the constant wash of water. The passengers disembarked, some to return to Oban an hour later by the Straits of Mull, others—our friends being of that number—with the intention of remaining on the island.

Iona has no harbour properly speaking; a stone quay protects one of its creeks against the open sea, and that is all. Here, in fine weather, a few pleasure-boats, or fishing-smacks, lie at anchor.

Leaving the tourists to the mercy of a programme which obliged them to see the island in an hour, Miss Campbell and her companions went in search of suitable lodgings.

It was not to be expected, that they would find any of the comforts of an ordinary seaside place at Iona; in fact the island is not more than three miles long, and one mile broad, and can scarcely count five hundred inhabitants. The Duke of Argyll, to whom it belongs, only draws from it a revenue of a few hundred pounds. There is no town, hamlet, nor even village here; nothing but a few scattered houses, for the most part mere ruins, picturesque if you like, but very primitive, almost all windowless, lighted only by the doorways, with a hole in the roof for a chimney, the walls made of mud and pebbles, and a few huts of reeds and briars bound together with great withies of seaweed.

Who would believe that Iona was the cradle of the religion of the Druids, from the earliest ages of Scandinavian history? Who would have imagined that it was here St. Columba—the patron saint of Ireland, whose name it also bears—in the sixth century founded the first monastery in all Scotland for the preaching of Christianity, and that here the monks of Cluny lived up to the time of the Reformation! Where will one now find the great buildings which were, in a way, the seminaries of the bishops and great abbots of the United Kingdom? Where, amidst all the débris, shall one look for the library, rich in archives of the past, in manuscripts of Roman history, and in which the learned of the day came to study? No; at the present time, there is nothing but ruins, here where the civilization which so greatly changed all the northern states of Europe had its birth. Of the St. Columba of olden times, there now remains nothing but the island of Iona, with a few ignorant peasants, who can, with difficulty, get a crop of barley, wheat, and potatoes off its sandy soil, and a few fishermen who live on the fish-abounding waters of the Hebrides!

“Miss Campbell,” said Aristobulus, in a contemptuous tone, “on first impressions, do you think this comes up to Oban?”

“It is much better,” replied Miss Campbell, although no doubt she thought that there would be one inhabitant too many on the island.

Meanwhile, in lack of better accommodation, the brothers had discovered a very passable kind of inn, where tourists generally stayed who were not content with the short time the steamer allowed them for visiting the Druidical and Christian ruins. They were thus able to take up their abode at the Duncan Arms the same day, whilst Oliver Sinclair and Aristobulus Ursiclos, found lodgings in different fishermen’s huts.

But such was Miss Campbell’s frame of mind that she was as comfortable in her room, with its window looking towards the west, as on the terrace of the high tower at Helensburgh, certainly more so than in the drawing-room of the Caledonian Hotel. From here the horizon lay before her eyes, without a single islet to break its circular line, and, with a little stretch of imagination, she might have been able to see, three thousand miles distant, the American coast on the other side of the Atlantic. Truly the sun had here a fine expanse in which to set in all its splendour.

The every-day living was simply and easily arranged; the meals were partaken of together in the one long room, Dame Bess and Partridge sitting at the same table according to the old custom.

Perhaps Aristobulus showed some surprise at this, but Oliver Sinclair had nothing to say against it; he had taken a great liking to these two servants, who warmly returned the feeling.

Here our friends led the old Scotch life in all its simplicity. After walks on the island, after conversation on bygone times, in which Aristobulus Ursiclos always chimed in most inopportunely with his modern remarks, they all met at the midday dinner and eight o’clock supper. Then as for the sunset, Miss Campbell never failed to watch it were the weather fine or cloudy! Who could tell? There might be some rift in the clouds, a cleft or tiny gap through which the last ray could be seen.

And what meals they had! The most Scotch of Walter Scott’s guests at a dinner at Fergus MacIvor’s or a supper at the Antiquary Oldbuck’s, would have found nothing to complain of in the dishes served according to the old-fashioned customs. Dame Bess and Partridge, carried a century back, felt as happy as if they had lived in the time of their ancestors. The brothers were evidently pleased to see culinary preparations such as they could remember of old in the Melville family.

And this is something like the conversation during meal-time, in the long room, transformed into a dining-room.

“Take a few of these oatmeal cakes, they are very different from the sweet things they sell at Glasgow!”

“Do have some sowens; the mountaineers of the Highlands still eat this old-fashioned dish!”

“Some more ‘haggis,’ which our great poet Burns worthily celebrated in his verses, as the first, best, and most national of Scotch dishes.”

“A little of this ‘cockyleeky.’ If the cock is a little tough, the leeks it is dressed with are excellent.”

“And another helping of this hotch-potch, which beats any soup we get at Helensburgh!”

Ah! They fed well at the Duncan Arms, stocked with provision every two days by steamers going round the Hebrides! and they drank well also!

It was a sight worth seeing to look at the brothers talking together over their huge mugs, which held at least two quarts, and in which foamed the “usquebaugh,” the national beverage, par excellence, or “hummok,” better still, which was brewed especially for them! And the whisky made from barley which seemed to go on fermenting after it had been drunk! And if there was no strong beer, were they not content with the simple “mum” distilled from wheat, were it but the “twopenny” which can always be improved by a little gin! With such drinks they scarcely missed their port and sherry.

And if Aristobulus Ursiclos, accustomed to his modern comforts, was never tired of complaining, no one troubled to listen to him.

If he found the time pass very slowly on the island, it went quickly enough for the others, and Miss Campbell made no more protest against the mists which clouded the horizon every evening.

Certainly Iona was not a very large place, but does any one, who is fond of walking, want such extensive grounds? Cannot the whole of a royal park be contained in the end of a garden? They took long walks, and here and there Oliver Sinclair made sketches, Miss Campbell would watch him painting, and thus the time went on.

The 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th, of August, followed each other without one moment of ennui. This wild life was in keeping with the wild island, against whose great desolate rocks the sea broke with a continuous roar.