Magnus_. We were, however, informed that the weather was too misty for
our boat to leave, so we returned to our lodgings, ordered a fire, and
were just making ourselves comfortable and secretly hoping our departure
might be delayed until morning, when Mrs. Sinclair, our landlady, came
to tell us that the bell, which was the signal for the _St. Magnus_ to
leave, had just rung. We hurried to the quay, only to find that the boat
which conveyed passengers and mails to our ship had disappeared. We were
in a state of consternation, but a group of sailors, who were standing
by, advised us to hire a special boat, and one was brought up
immediately, by which, after a lot of shouting and whistling--for we
could scarcely see anything in the fog--we were safely landed on the
steamboat. We had only just got beyond the harbour, however, when the
fog became so dense that we suddenly came to a standstill, and had to
remain in the bay for a considerable time. When at last we moved slowly
outwards, the hoarse whistle of the _St. Magnus_ was sounded at short
intervals, to avoid collision with any other craft. It had a strangely
mournful sound, suggestive of a funeral or some great calamity, and we
should almost have preferred being in a storm, when we could have seen
the danger, rather than creeping along in the fog and darkness, with a
constant dread of colliding with some other boat or with one of the
dangerous rocks which we knew were in the vicinity. Sleep was out of the
question until later, when the fog began to clear a little, and, in the
meantime, we found ourselves in the company of a group of young men who
told us they were going to Aberdeen.

One of them related a rather sorrowful story. He and his mates had come
from one of the Shetland Islands from which the inhabitants were being
expelled by the factor, so that he could convert the whole of the island
into a sheep farm for his own personal advantage. Their ancestors had
lived there from time immemorial, but their parents had all received