had taken me for a German spy I would have been out for his
blood, and it was no good explaining that he had given me grounds
for suspicion. He was as touchy about his blessed principles as an
old maid about her age. I was feeling rather extra buckish myself
and that didn't improve matters. His face was like a gargoyle as we
went down to the beach to bathe, so I held my tongue. He was
chewing the cud of his wounded pride.

But the salt water cleared out the dregs of his distemper. You
couldn't be peevish swimming in that jolly, shining sea. We raced
each other away beyond the inlet to the outer water, which a brisk
morning breeze was curling. Then back to a promontory of heather,
where the first beams of the sun coming over the Coolin dried our
skins. He sat hunched up staring at the mountains while I prospected
the rocks at the edge. Out in the Minch two destroyers were
hurrying southward, and I wondered where in that waste of blue
was the craft which had come here in the night watches.

I found the spoor of the man from the sea quite fresh on a patch
of gravel above the tide-mark.

'There's our friend of the night,' I said.

'I believe the whole thing was a whimsy,' said Wake, his eyes on
the chimneys of Sgurr Dearg. 'They were only two natives - poachers,
perhaps, or tinkers.'

'They don't speak German in these parts.'
'It was Gaelic probably.'