on the coast, where a breakwater was being built. There he had his first
opportunity of seeing some of the practical side of engineering. It was
rough work, but he enjoyed it. Later he spent three weeks on Earraid
Island, off Mull, a place which left a strong impression on his mind and
figured afterward as the spot where David Balfour was shipwrecked.

Among the experiences at that time which pleased him most was a chance
to descend in a diver's dress to the foundation of the harbor they were
building. In his essays, "Random Memories," he tells of the "dizzy
muddleheaded joy" he had in his surroundings, swaying like a reed, and
grabbing at the fish which darted past him.

In writing afterward of these years he says: "What I gleaned I am sure I
do not know, but indeed I had already my own private determination to be
an author ... though I haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the
place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash
of the waves on the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets
far below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only
industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with a
certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner
was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and proceeded to pour
forth literature.

"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an engineer. It takes
a man into the open air; keeps him hanging about harbor sides, the
richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a
taste of the genial danger of the sea ... and when it has done so it
carries him back and shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and
the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and
with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining