The rough road from the shore kept gently mounting and I soon stood high
enough to get a very good general idea of the island of Ransay. It was a
green, low-lying, undulating fragment of the world, set that morning in
a sea of sapphire blue, open to the horizon on the one hand and strewn
with sister isles on the other. The Scollay's house stood near the
northwest end, and beyond it there seemed to be little save sea-turf and
rocks, but in the direction I was walking one small green farm followed
another for what I guessed to be four or five miles, and from side to
side perhaps a couple of miles or less. There was only one rise in the
land that could be called a hill, and that only by courtesy; elsewhere
nothing but green undulations with a small reedy loch or two tucked away
in their gentle folds.

Far to the southward, on other isles, higher hills, brown and blue, broke
the horizon, but apart from these one saw nothing but a green and blue
plain lying beneath an immensity of white and blue sky. With sea birds
hovering and crying and larks mounting and singing over this, and the sun
shining, and a northwest breeze that tasted like dry champagne, and
myriads of wild flowers, yellow, blue, white, red, pink, and purple,
underfoot, I felt almost too light-hearted. In fact I actually started
singing, and only stopped when I bethought me that it was a trifle
inconsistent with the character of a man slinking about in fear of his
life, looking for a fellow miscreant to befriend him.

But it was quite impossible not to feel elated. Now that I realised the
limited size of the place and its open surface, it was obvious that no
man could lurk there unknown to the inhabitants. He must live in a house
and pass for one of themselves. It seemed then impossible to believe
(especially with an ally in prospect) that a spy whom I had actually seen
and talked with (and knew moreover to have a foreign accent) could escape