“Hamish,” said Macleod, abruptly, after reading one of these letters, “come, now, we will go and overhaul the Umpire, for you know she is to be made very smart this summer; for we have people coming all the way from London to Dare, and they must not think we do not know in Mull how to keep a yacht in shipshape.”

“Ay, sir,” said Hamish; “and if we do not know that in Mull, where will they be likely to know that?”

“And you will get the cushions in the saloon covered again; and we will have a new mirror for the ladies’ cabin, and Miss Macleod, if you ask her, will put a piece of lace round the top of that, to make it look like a lady’s room.  And then, you know, Hamish, you can show the little boy Johnny Wickes how to polish the brass; and he will polish the brass in the ladies’ cabin until it is as white as silver.  Because, you know, Hamish, they have very fine yachts in the South.  They are like hotels on the water.  We must try to be as smart as we can.”

“I do not know about the hotels,” said Hamish, scornfully.  “And perhaps it is a fine thing to hef a hotel; and Mr. M’Arthur they say he is a ferry rich man, and he has ferry fine pictures too; but I was thinking that if I will be off the Barra Head on a bad night—­between the Sgriobh bhan and the Barra Head on a bad night—­it is not any hotel I will be wishing that I wass in, but a good boat.  And the Umpire she is a good boat; and I hef no fear of going anywhere in the world with her—­to London or to Inverary, ay, or the Queen’s own castle on the island—­and she will go there safe, and she will come back safe; and if she is not a hotel—­well, perhaps she will not be a hotel; but she is a fine good boat, and she has swinging lamps whatever.”

But even the presence of the swinging-lamps, which Hamish regarded as the highest conceivable point of luxury, did little to lessen the dolorousness of the appearance of the poor old Umpire.  As Macleod, seated in the stern of the gig, approached her, she looked like some dingy old hulk relegated to the duty of keeping stores.  Her top-mast and bowsprit removed; not a stitch of cord on her; only the black iron shrouds remaining of all her rigging; her skylights and companion-hatch covered with waterproof—­it was a sorry spectacle.  And then when they went below, even the swinging-lamps were blue-moulded and stiff.  There was an odor of damp straw throughout.  All the cushions and carpets had been removed; there was nothing but the bare wood of the floor and the couches and the table; with a match-box saturated with wet, an empty wine-bottle, a newspaper five months old, a rusty corkscrew, a patch of dirty water—­the leakage from the skylight overhead.

That was what Hamish saw.