lower and upper sky was tolerably clear, and the sun looked cheerily down on the deep blue of the sea; but along the higher ridges of the land there lay long level strata of what the meteorologists distinguish as parasitic clouds. When every other patch of vapor in the landscape was in motion, scudding shorewards from the Atlantic before the stillincreasing gale, there rested along both the Scuir of Eigg and the tall opposite ridge of the island, and along the steep peaks of Rum, clouds that seemed as if anchored, each on its own mountain-summit, and over which the gale failed to exert any propelling power. They were stationary in the middle of the rushing current, when all else was speeding before it. It has been shown that these parasitic clouds are mere local condensations of strata of damp air passing along the mountain-summits, and rendered visible but to the extent in which the summits affect the temperature. Instead of being stationary, they are ever-forming and ever-dissipating clouds, — clouds that form a few yards in advance of the condensing hill, and that dissipate a few yards after they have quitted it. I had nothing to do on deck, for we had been joined at Eigg by John Stewart; and so, after watching the appearance of the stationary clouds for some little time, I went below, and, throwing myself into the minister's large chair, took up a book. The gale meanwhile freshened, and freshened yet more; and the Betsey leaned over till her lee chain-plate lay along in the water. There was the usual combination of sounds beneath and around me, - the mixture of guggle, clunk, and splash,- of low, continuous rush, and bluff, loud blow, which forms in such circumstances the voyager's concert. I soon became aware, however, of yet another species of sound, which I did not like half so well, a sound as of the washing of a shallow current over a rough surface; and, on the minister coming below, I asked him, tolerably well prepared for his answer, what it might

mean.

"It means," he said, "that we have sprung a leak, and a rather bad one; but we are only some six or eight miles from the Point of Sleat, and must soon catch the land.” He returned on deck, and I resumed my book. Presently, however, the rush became greatly louder; some other weak patch in the Betsey's upper works had given way, and anon the water came washing up from the lee side along the edge of the cabin floor. I got upon deck to see how matters stood with us; and the minister, easing off the vessel for a few points, gave instant orders to shorten sail, in the hope of getting her upper works out of the water, and then to unship the companion ladder, beneath which a hatch communicated with the low strip of hold under the cabin, and to bring aft the pails. We lowered our foresail; furled up the mainsail half-mast high; John Stewart took his station at the pump; old Alister and I, furnished with pails, took ours, the one at the foot, the other at the head, of the companion, to hand up and throw over; a young girl, a passenger from Eigg to the mainland, lent her assistance, and got wofully drenched in the work; while the minister, retaining his station at the helm, steered right on. But the gale had so increased, that, notwithstanding our diminished breadth of sail, the Betsey, straining hard in the rough sea, still lay in to the gunwale; and the water, pouring in through a hundred opening chinks in her upper works, rose, despite of our exertions, high over plank, and beam, and cabin-floor, and went dashing against beds and lockers. She was evidently filling, and bade fair to terminate all her voyagings by a short trip to the bottom. Old Alister, a seaman of thirty years' standing, whose station at the bottom of the cabin stairs enabled him to see how fast the water was gaining on the Betsey, but not how the Betsey was gaining on the land, was by no means the least anxious among us. Twenty years previous he had seen a vessel go down in

exactly similar circumstances, and in nearly the same place, and the reminiscence, in the circumstances, seemed rather an uncomfortable one. It had been a bad evening, he said, and the vessel he sailed in, and a sloop, her companion, were pressing hard to gain the land. The sloop had sprung a leak, and was straining, as if for life and death, under a press of canvas. He saw her outsail the vessel to which he belonged, but, when a few shots a-head she gave a sudden lurch, and disappeared from the surface instantaneously as a vanishing spectre, and neither sloop nor crew were ever more heard of.

There are, I am convinced, few deaths less painful than some of those untimely and violent ones at which we are most disposed to shudder. We wrought so hard at pail and pump, the occasion, too, was one of so much excitement, and tended so thoroughly to awaken our energies, that I was conscious, during the whole time, of an exhilaration of spirits rather pleasurable than otherwise. My fancy was active, and active, strange as the fact may seem, chiefly with ludicrous objects. Sailors tell regarding the flying Dutchman, that he was a hard-headed captain of Amsterdam, who, in a bad night and head wind, when all the other vessels of his fleet were falling back on the port they had recently quitted, obstinately swore that, rather than follow their example, he would keep beating about till the day of judgment. And the Dutch captain, says the story, was just taken at his word, and is beating about still. When matters were at the worst with us, we got under the lea of the point of Sleat. The promontory interposed between us and the roll of the sea; the wind gradually took off; and, after having seen the water gaining fast and steadily on us for considerably more than an hour, we, in turn, began to gain on the water. It came ebbing out of drawers and beds, and sunk downwards along pannels and table-legs, -a sec

ond retiring deluge; and we entered Isle Ornsay with the cabin-floor all visible, and less than two feet water in the hold. On the following morning, taking leave of my friend the minister, I set off, on my return homewards, by the Skye steamer, and reached Edinburgh on the evening of Saturday.