It was a fine solan goose.  He was quite dead when we reached him, for I had shot him under the right wing.

My good fortune excited Robbie to such a degree that he would not be satisfied without again trying a shot.  So we loaded the gun once more, and about half a mile further up the glen he had the luck to knock over a small rabbit.  This was the extent of our sport.

To climb up this wild and desolate glen was no easy matter, for I must tell you that St. John’s Head, the summit of which we had to cross before getting back to our boat (for the tide would not allow of our return by the beach), stood above the sea to a height considerably over a thousand feet.  The goose and our climbing ropes were also tiring burdens, and we had many times to take rest beside the stream and quench our thirst in its cool water.  Some distance above the sea the ground became smoother, and broken rocks gave place to short heather, which was softer for our bare feet.

When at last we reached the top of the Head, and our trouble was over, we sat down on the breezy front of the hill and looked far away across the restless water, where the sea line melted into the blue haze of the Scotch coast.  Nearer to us the water itself was blue, then pale green with bands of purple above beds of weed, and over all the white waves curled into foaming crests, silent to us as snow.  Southward, along the cliffs, a high steeple rock—­the Old Man of Hoy—­stood like a sentinel guarding the coast, his head on a level with the cliff behind him; and rounding Rora Head were the brown sails of a few fishing craft making for Stromness.

“Come, Robbie,” I said, when we had feasted our eyes on this scene.  “Come, we must be getting home.  The tide has turned this long while past, and we’ll be hungry before we’re back to Stromness.”

We were, indeed, already somewhat hungry, and regretted we had not brought food with us instead of the climbing ropes, which had not so far been required.  To think of getting anything to eat where we were was needless, for we were on the most desolate part of the Hoy island, and not a house was there for miles away.

The walk back along the ridge of the cliffs was easy, the ground sloping downward in our favour.  About a mile further on we came to the cliffs below which our boat was moored.  But, alas! we had been sadly out in our reckoning.  The boat was afloat, deep down there, tugging desperately at her rope and grinding her sides against a rock.  To get down to her was now a problem.  From our high position we could see how the tide had risen well above the rocks by which we had climbed from one bay to the other, and our only course was to descend by the steep precipice surrounding the creek wherein the boat was moored.  There was no possible way down except by the use of the ropes, and this was an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking, for the cliffs rose fully three hundred feet in height, and our lines, of which we had two, would scarcely, when joined together, measure more than half that length.  For we used them for the cliffs of Pomona, which are not in any place so high as those of Hoy.