They had left behind them Loch nan Uamh, where Charlie had arrived so long ago and, later, cut loose as well in an open boat, bound for the Hebrides himself. From Loch nan Uamh as well he had departed, never to return again : and after him, those others, cast from their own inheritance and dispossessed. The dolorous wail of the gulls was like the dirge or corranach that must have accompanied the exiles as they pulled away from shore. Wild little coastline of sombre farewells.

And beyond the backwash of the boat, being left behind, she could make out helicopters heading north - frenzied activity inland and fraught invasion. But as for them, they were crossing the waters : barely a fleck on the face of the ageless ocean, they were crossing the waters now and embracing their dreams. It was like a commitment with their destinies at stake : given over to the deeps and lost from the other world and yet, within that baptism, such a release as well. Now that they'd left the land behind, she felt a sense of unleashed resolution, of letting go and accepting it all, and felt relaxed and true to herself.

'There is something about the ocean,' she said to her brother, gazing round at the wide and open horizons. 'Something about the waves. When you're embarked on trackless seas, crossing the loose and rolling waters, leaving the rest of the world behind...'

'Dad used to say, it was like breaking free from a dark prison, with no-one to stop you going where you pleased.'

'He loves the sea' she answered softly.

She looked to the Minch, and in the distant west the weather seemed hazier and almost threatening to break. Indeed that morning had felt quite humid and close, yet as the bows sliced delicately through the calm waters, the afternoon had grown fresher again.

'There's a weather-front on its way, alright,' Murdo explained to Douglas, 'but it seems to be holding off the now.' He looked into space. 'I'm thinking the evening might be fine.'

'Couldn't be better' Douglas replied.

They were heading for Loch Skavaig in the desolate heart of the Cuillin, from where the pinnacle could be approached round the end of Cornusk in perfect isolation. And the waters for their crossing seemed almost still and rested in the dappled calm : the day serene.

Murdo looked out across the familiar sea-scape, his eyes agaze. His face bore the sign of returning seasons : the ruddy cheeks of spring and tan of summer; the worn lines scoured by autumn gales, and thick white hair swept back across his head by the dark winters of many years, of countless ever-turning tides. He had spent a lifetime in touch with the elements in all their subtle varying moods... a tangible, sensual experience as a seaman that had left him in balance, attuned to the temper of the waters. And as he now conversed with the wind-tanned American by his side, he seemed relaxed and affable, like the summer sea.

Down below him, Wiggy was pulling on his jacket as he talked to Gordon, though the sunlight remained pleasantly warm even out across the open water. Indeed the afternoon was idyllic : the music of the gulls in their wheeling motion in the lee of the boat; the saltire of Scotland occasionally stirring then resting again in the dreamy lull; a taste of salt; and the gentle dip and pull of 'The Isle of Eriskay' in the quiet rock and rhythm of the sea, as she headed for Skye, with Rhum to port and Eigg astern - and little islands glistening in the light.

'They bring to mind those little island cells of the early missionaries' Gordon remarked 'and the early Celtic Church of fourteen centuries ago.'

Wiggy laughed. 'And we think we've got away from it all! They must have been on the outskirts of everything, perched out here on the edge of the world.'

'Perhaps that was part of their inspiration,' Gordon reflected. 'The hermit, the charismatist : they lived a little outside the patriarchal systems and control; they could celebrate the presence of God in Nature a little more freely perhaps... in harmony and attunement with eternity; closely aware of the stirrings in nature, perennial, returning, like the Salmon of Wisdom each year, and all the ancient cycles of the people...'

'Then the distinctive feature of the Celtic Church was its link with nature?' Wiggy enquired.

'Not just nature,' said Gordon. 'With people as well. Cut off from the centre, Celtic Christianity could not avoid the insights that had already moulded its early converts. Theirs was a more organic, evolving religion I think : not something so different and super-imposed. An organic, collective religious mind, grown from the landscape and rooted in the subconscious of all its people. Not just 'implanted' like some of those crass fundamentalist groups, out of tune with cultures that have evolved for centuries before.'

'Quite a thesis, coming from a sceptic like you!'

'Just because I'm so uncertain' Gordon said diffidently, 'doesn't mean I close my mind to the spiritual search of other people...'

'I do wish missionaries would pay more attention' Wiggy concurred 'to the inherited sensitivities of those cultures. It's just as you say : I don't doubt the deep insights of Christianity; but it should contribute to the awareness of the people, not seek to crush and over-rule them. Religion is surely not something external that arrives as a package on a plane with a tele-evangelist. It springs from deep within all people and, if they seek it, it's already there - in the collective consciousness of the community and the special insights of individuals.'

'And another thing' said Gordon, knowing that it would goad his friend. 'Celtic Christianity, springing from the spiritual impulse in nature, could not avoid the Feminine or dismiss it : because she had always been there before, near the heart of all things, in the heart of all things.'

'You mean Mary?' he said.

'I mean the earth-goddess in her various forms : Mary, Brigit, or the goddesses of war. Intuitively the Celts seemed to sense a need for the female. I sense it myself. If I ever became religious, it would have to be broad, inclusive and all-embracing. It would have to account for my mother, my sister, at the heart of it all.' He laughed at himself. 'It would have to account for me. I suppose, what I object to, what I resist, is a system imposed from outside that does not acknowledge my heart.'

'I suspect that when Columba landed at Iona, he envisaged something a little more orthodox than your agnosticism.'

'Perhaps. But he founded a church rooted not on organisation, but on the appeal of the charismatist to the hearts of men and women. He knew, too, that kingdoms like churches are maintained by the hearts of men. Excuse me, the hearts of women as well. His style was itinerant and charismatic, and his achievement was to fire the imagination of ordinary people. I can believe in that.'

Wiggy looked back across the quiet waters and thought. Kingdoms maintained in people's hearts. The need for a flame, for a renewed fire. Yet where were Columba's people now? The shore seemed deserted, the people departed... just derelict dreams...

'That's the island of Eigg' Gordon pointed astern.'Over the years it's endured the bizarre whims imposed on it by owners from abroad. Power and money impacting with an older way of life.'

He swung west. 'And there's Rhum. A case-study in colonialism.'

'I thought it was a deer-sanctuary?' Wiggy said gently.

'It is now. But it used to be home to one hundred Gaelic-speaking families. Then the island was cleared, and almost all of the houses razed : only one of the families was allowed to stay. The island was purchased by an English industrialist and he imported a handful of English retainers, who were obliged to wear kilts, as he lived out his Victorian fantasies in a Gothic castle.'

Wiggy felt the hushed and tremulous sob of his conscience : these highlands, these islands seemed to have endured such violation and loss; seemed still to echo a numbed bewilderment and the riven scream of human tragedy.

Alasdair was tapping cheerfully on the window of the bridge, waving boyishly, and pointing to Murdo - who had raised a bottle of whisky in his hand and was asking them up. They ascended the steps.

On the starboard side they were approaching Elgol and the Strathaird peninsula.

'Aye' grinned the skipper. 'In my childhood there were several illicit stills along this coast, ye ken.'

They peered across at the wild outline of the headland and the empty expanses of Strathaird beyond. Their view was becoming more obscure : a low soft mist, advancing upon the surface of the water, had crept and drifted around the coasts on the sea-sway.

'Elgol' Gordon was pointing out to Alasdair. 'When Bonnie Prince Charlie had tramped through the Cuillins this is where he arrived at the edge of the sea. The Mackinnons lived here, and he found shelter at the house of John Mackinnon. He and the clan-chief rowed him to safety up Loch Nevis and did a good job for him. In return for their loyalty, the legend goes, he gave them the secret recipe for Drambuie...'

'An exquisite drink,' winked Murdo, 'taken in moderation of course.'

Alasdair was listening, passively.

'Ach!' said Murdo to the boy. 'They used to talk of Charlie when I was young.' He sighed. 'I remember my youth as if it was yesterday...' Then he roughed up Alasdair's hair with his worn hand, and the boy looked up and smiled as the sailor, to their surprise, burst into song:

'Sing me a song of a lad that is gone

Say could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day,

Over the sea to Skye...'

Murdo lifted the bottle to his lips. 'Aye, aye. Many's the time Iain Mackinnon and I have made this journey over the years. Iain's a real Mackinnon, ye ken, and each summer we spend a weekend skulking about at the end o' the loch. Aye, he's one o' the survivors from a' they times. There's no many left like him o' Cherlie's folk.'

Gordon scanned the lonely coast and the sense of disappearance was intense. He bemoaned the violation of Strathaird.

'And hwat like for?' Murdo asked him. 'Succumbing tae a civilisation as has grown toxic tae the whole puir planet!'

All along the shores of Strathaird there was a loneliness and ruination. The teacher returned to his conversation with Wiggy, a gritted smile on his face.

'Here as well! Five hundred people were evicted with the complicity of the government. Two companies of soldiers were requested as a threat against resistance. Two companies of Prince Albert's Own Regiment -' Wiggy raised his eyebrows - 'and the young, the old, mothers with babes : all cast out of their homes into the snow, and left in the open until Emigration Ships could carry them away.'

Murdo scratched his hair and shook his head; and Gordon seemed unusually animated.

'What a shameful, unacceptable disgrace' he murmured. 'An unacknowledged outrage, repeated again and again all over the north : the hidden atrocities and barbarism, that took place even in the Victorian era. The iniquitous 'necessities' that lay behind the Highland idylls of the Queen.'

Wiggy caught a glimmer of gentle mischief in Gordon's eye, and had grown accustomed to the way in which he teased and challenged him. Yet the teacher was filled with genuine feeling and Wiggy himself was not unmoved. They passed the disconsolate coastline... its domestic heart ripped out... along the shores of sad farewell...

'That's why I say' Gordon concluded 'that Scotland deserves the right of self-determination.'

'Do you let your pupils determine your lessons?' Wiggy replied.

'As far as possible, yes. I try to let them decide things for themselves... my power should be used to facilitate that...' he looked straight at his friend... 'people achieve so much more if the motivation comes from within their own desires and self-assertion; when they shake off uncertainty, self-loathing or guilt, and other people's goals; and shape their own, rejoice in themselves, and embrace autonomy.'

Wiggy was silent for a moment.

'I won't say you're wrong' he said and stared aside, brooding over the emptiness and sadness of the land, and his own self-doubt.

'Would ye care to take your friend a nip?' Murdo enquired.

Gordon found Douglas reading in the cabin. A book on the shelf had aroused his curiosity.

'Just furthering my education a bit, mo bhalach.'

'Looks a bit cheap and tawdry' the teacher jibed.

'Perhaps not suitable for ten-year-olds or teachers' he drawled in answer.

'Yes, well your tastes are somewhat eclectic, aren't they?'

Douglas laughed at this friendly denigration.

'Ha! Well, there's more to this little book than meets the eye!'

'And what's the title...?'

All of a sudden, the ship choked and shuddered, and the engines fell quiet. Around them the sea was almost becalmed, scarcely a whisper or a breath of wind : just the rock of the waves on the boat in gentle motion - a rocking, a cradling in the resumed silence - and in the renewed encounter of timelessness and peace, a sense of two worlds, two universes, converging.

'What's up?' Alasdair and Roberta, shouting separately.

And Harry - who with the skipper's hat had assumed the rôle of unofficial bo'sun - clambered up the steps and piped 'What's all the trouble?'

Murdo was whistling.

'Ach! I should soon be able tae sort it oot. Once the engines have aye cooled doon, I'll tak' a look.' Then turning to Wiggy and wiping his hands - 'Well,' he declared. 'So here we are again. I think I'll jist gae doon an' mak' a brew...'

Wiggy raised his eyebrows...

'Of tea, mind' Murdo continued. 'Of tea!'

He laughed good-humouredly : the party cut adrift, transmitter still not working, all contact lost with the outside world. Under the circumstances, an agreeable shambles.

'What d'ye say, bo'sun?' he chuckled. 'Will ye put the kettle on?'

'Aye, aye, captain.'

Harry leapt to it. 'Brew for the skipper! Brew for the skipper!' he called, as he jumped down the rattling stairway that led to the cabin. A while later, Murdo came bearing a tray along the deck : shambolic, congenial, and calm as the mild and slumbering waters. He passed the men ship's tea in mugs, laced with whisky, then sent the three children off for what he called 'pop'. He pulled a half-bottle somewhat surreptitiously from his pocket and stared at it. 'Uisge Beatha!' he sighed, with a sparkle in his eyes.

'It's been a gie lang time' he said to Wiggy.

'And here we are once more, adrift at sea!'

Douglas and Gordon looked at each other wryly.

Murdo shook his head. 'My, how the years fly by! I remember' he reminisced with Wiggy 'I had the hold crammed full wi' a hundred boxes!'

'And I suggested you threw them overboard!' Wiggy laughed. 'You'd rather sink, you said.'

Murdo wiped his eye and shrugged.

'It was a precious cargo' he exclaimed.

'It was' Wiggy agreed and stared.

'Have you ever ventured on the Cuillin Ridge?' Andrew enquired, breaking a silence.

Murdo's countenance changed.

'I used to do a bit o' climbing' he said, an understatement.

'The Pinnacle?' the American asked.

He nodded.

'Would you fancy coming along with us tomorrow?' Wiggy proposed.

Murdo drew them close with his broad arms and shook his head.

'See all these mountains. When I was young I climbed on every one from Lomond to Ben Klibreck. We knew the warm crags in summer, and the snow-shifted gullies in the dark o' deepest winter. In those days we walked the ridges o' high adventure, and the land was oors. We were free tae roam and wander where we pleased. My, and where have the years flown by...'

He frowned, as if recalling memories long-suppressed, of lost intensity and vanished joy.

'But I hufnae climbed these forty years gone past. There was an accident in the rough bounds, ye see, and I blamed myself for it. Those hills in winter!' He shook his head, and seemed to be called away. 'I found the man myself, half-buried in the snow. His eyes stared vacant up at me.'

Murdo looked aside, across the waters.

'Nah, nah,' he concluded briskly and abruptly. 'I'll never climb again.'

The day was mild and lovely all around them, breaking in and dispelling his unresolved dismay, with its charm and pure contentment. The past rocked with the present, as if both were oscillating along some single frequency, both strung along the same and single thread : the party held - held in the rock and sway of some deeper present; sustained on the surface of the softly rolling waters.

The sunlight, of a sudden, was coruscating along a thousand wave-tops, glinting over the laughing summer sea.

'Ha!' breathed Douglas. 'I imagine this is what Aeschylus must have meant by "the multitudinous laughter of the waves." '

Gordon raised his eyebrows. 'I wonder if he ever sailed the Minch in a winter storm?' Yet now the sea was as meek and passive as a sleeping child.

Further along the side of the boat the children had returned, and Roberta was looking over the bows at the passing weed and jelly-fish : staring down vaguely into the lurking deeps. She was well away from the others, and dreaming, not present : receptive to the shadowy undertones, her subconscious loose and roaming in another world, under the dream-like influence of a summer-spell. For a while she was Flora on a journey and quest...

'Crossing the waters, she must keep the Prince safe. Ferry him over the waves to the Island of Glass. Let him find rest and recovery. Carry him through...'

'Speed bonnie boat' her brother intoned by her side, inhabiting a more dashing world of gallantry, adjacent and sympathetic to her own. 'The noble Prince, aided by young Flora, made for the shore. He escaped the dreaded redcoats and broke free!' The second boy looked on silently from the edge, grinning and happy, although not involved himself.

Yet privately, in her more personal adventure, Roberta harboured the brave Glenaladale. She had committed herself to him : they would go there together, to the Island of Glass. She could feel his attractive presence breaking upon her, shining from beyond the veils of the passing day : a suffused light, playing on the water; the sun casting strange haloes on the mist, and then receding. Time seemed to hold them in its sway.

She watched overhead a wandering sea-gull - and longed to be borne up with it on the wing... longed for a greater lightness of being... floating, floating... she seemed to be called away by its cry...

Murdo cocked his head and listened, as she stood there dreaming aloud to herself, her boat breaking loose and crossing the sea, 'the waves my horses, riding over a plain of flowers, a plain of delights... like riding over the top of a wood, a wood with blossom and newly-budded leaves : to the land of the living, the land of the young... where crowds of flowers blossom and shine like the heather when it blows in the August sun... I ride there with joy to the islands of light!'

'Angels of mercy!' Murdo murmured aside. 'It's the blessed isles she's seeing, so it is...'

'What do you mean?' asked Gordon acutely. The old man rubbed his mouth on his sleeve and stared with wonder, like a joyful child.

'Why the blessed isles, the land of the living!' He smiled remotely and seemed... away, almost : not drunk, but fey and wondering wild.

'Do you mean the Otherworld?' Gordon persisted.

'Ha! As the Celts ever saw it, along the fringes of their world, and the winding boundaries o' their lives!'

Gordon screwed his brow and struggled, but Andrew Douglas interposed.

'Well what is it like? This Otherworld?' he asked. 'Is it some kind of a spirit realm? Murdo, still separate, shook his head and answered.

'It's no just a land of shadows, mind, but a place filled wi' enchanting music, and birdsong in swaying branches, and sleep and dreams. Where souls continue to inhabit their bodies, but more fully, younger. That's why it's called "The Land o' the Living".' He nodded at the girl, still absent and murmuring. 'It's a land of innocence and the pure of heart, where love is delight untainted by guilt. And women more present and part of all things - dignified and free and beautiful and strong.'

He pulled from his bottle, and they followed his gaze across the waters and over the sea. The boat rocked gently and the sunlight lurked, broke through and danced on the rippling waves.

'The Celtic Otherworld' Douglas repeated, drinking his tea.

'On a day like this,' Wiggy began, 'you can almost feel its presence, can't you...'

'Those who return tell tales of exquisite food and drink,' Murdo responded, 'and magic vessels of plenty that never run out.' He raised his bottle. 'Banquet and revelry, my friends! Feasting and plenty!' Then suddenly gentle, 'Sometimes it's pictured as an island of brilliant light, as the lassie described it, or a glassy dome shedding coloured fragments of beauty. Aye, a bonnie land through all the ages of the world... a wondrous land, where youth does not give way to sad decay. A place of rest and healing, dreams and sleep, or being dreamed of...' The water lapped and plucked against the bows. 'Aye, aye.'

A silence.

'Is it real?' piped Alasdair.

Murdo's face looked down, almost ghastly in its distant fey withdrawal. But he placed a kindly hand on the boy's shoulder.

'The better question's this : Is our world real? As for the Otherworld, do we dream it, or does it dream us? Which is more real? Maybe to them, we are the ones who seem incorporeal.' He paused and seemed to almost shiver. 'Sometimes out here, alone, on the waters... I have seen things, heard things...' He peered across the waves, more distant still. 'Insight, I suppose ye might call it.'

'But where is it?' Alasdair pressed.

Murdo let go, and laughed.

'Beyond the sea,' he smiled. 'Over the hill.'

Wiggy was still attending, feeling his way towards a quiet awareness :

'It's as if two worlds were neighbours, contiguous with one another along the margins. This Celtic Otherworld : I feel it could be so close, adjacent to us all, and yet - somehow - closer than that, an extension of our world itself.'

Murdo had resorted to a gulping flow of whisky, and wheezed with gentle laughter.

'It's like huntin' fae haddocks' eyes in the heather... ye see the glisten an' gleam alright...'

The boys ran off, distracted, and Roberta followed.

'The girl's a sensitive,' he said aside to Wiggy. 'She sees things others don't. I knew a woman once like her.'

'But I can't make sense of it at all,' Gordon complained. 'These feelings and these glimpses defy all understanding...'

'As an old dominie said to me...' Murdo recalled 'reason alone can ne'er interpret heaven. Feelings are the very utterance that proceeds from oot that place, and understanding begins and ends wi' them. It's as loose as that...' he looked to the lee... 'like the flow and tide o' the open sea. Ye can feel it, it can carry you; but it's always up in motion. If ye catch it, ye've lost it. If ye chase it, then ye find it, find ye're with it and it takes ye, and ye feel it in your heart.'

His face crinkled in a smile, and his eyes narrowed.

'Look!' cried Harry urgently. 'Seals!' He ran up to Wiggy, free and relaxed, and pointed 'There!' Three small black heads were bobbing in the water, enquiring at their presence but not afraid. 'This is a great trip!' he volunteered, punching Wiggy affectionately as if the man was his father, then running off.

'And see!' said Roberta returning. 'There's a wee seal on the rock over there! Do you see her, Wiggy, on the edge of that skerry?'

On the other side of the boat, Alasdair peered to shore.

'More seals?' he asked uncertain. Wiggy strode across and lifted the telescope to his eye.

'No, otters! Sea-otters! There's a pair of them!'

'Aye,' nodded Murdo. 'Not many people know about they beauties.'

'They're always too busy passing from A to B' Gordon remarked to Douglas. 'I suppose there are advantages to breaking down.'

'It's a pity more people don't break down sometimes. Just stop and pause a little along the way.'

'There's so much concentration in our culture,' Gordon agreed. 'So much urgency. People obsessed with C.V.'s and performance, too fiercely intent on getting on. It's just so wonderful being able to lapse out... to get off the juggernaut, and listen in the stillness, and realise it's alright and the world still turns...'

'Do you ever see whales?' Roberta asked dreamily.

'I have,' said Murdo, 'but it's terrible what we're daein' tae them. I mean, hunting them tae the verge of extinction. What's the point in that? Such beautiful creatures.'

'Is it true they sing to each other in the deep?'

Murdo looked wryly and nodded.

'But maybe one day they will just have disappeared : all for the sake o' man...'

'Men!' she complained again. He gave a kindly smile, and went to attend to the engine.

When - to the untold surprise of Gordon at least - the boat came to life once more, they all gave a cheer, and their hearts felt a common thrill as they neared the mountains and their adventure grew wild and real.

Approaching the head of Loch Skavaig, with diffused light breaking and retreating through the shallow surface mist, they sailed on into the lonely heart of the Cuillin - into the shattered caldera of an extinct volcano : all around, its rim of teetering ridges, looming up, reaching down, and still the boat advanced into the heart of them all.

In the drifting greyness, they were entering into their own mysterious kingdom now, quite separate from the rest of the world.

'I see why they call it the Island of Mist' said Gordon.

'Yes' replied Douglas. 'It reminds me of that scene in King Kong, where they're approaching the island through a sinister mist, and you feel as if they're entering another world, with no going back and the unknown waiting ahead.'

'Perhaps' replied Gordon, with a sceptical smile.

And the boat continued its journey onwards, through the veil of mist hung over the face of the sea : the deep throb of the engines beating, the deeper rhythm of the sea drawing in around them, and all of them daring to enter, to approach the heart.

They could feel the tingling adrenalin in little surges, the murmuring 'here we are, here we are' in their pulse, and could feel it together : the boat, the people, the island all held by the sea, in its motion and sway. Looking from one to another, this was the realisation of adventure, the 'becoming real' of their romance, a release and a flow : something more delicate, more mysterious breaking like reticent sunlight into their lives and holding them there... in a hope.

As they pulled to shore in the deserted cove, they could see the little climbers' hut on the rise beyond - locked and uninhabited. The sun had slipped quietly beneath the skyline and the mist was beginning to disperse along the coast. The children leapt from the boat with youthful excitement, the ground still rocking underfoot as they stepped ashore : and all of them helped to ferry food and rucksacks in the failing light.

'Perhaps the bairns would like a camp?' Murdo suggested thoughtfully. 'I've a canvas tent I sometimes use on the islands.'

'Yes!' the children called. 'A camp! A camp!'

'As fer the hut,' he continued, 'it's a fair wee howff. I ken well where the key is hidden.'

'You've stayed before?' Douglas enquired.

'Once a year Mackinnon and I come here, in the summer...'

Gordon sat watching benevolently, as the children tried to pitch the skipper's frayed and ancient tent, on the grassy platform above the sheltered cove. The evening weather, fragrant and mild, was suited to their purposes : and Douglas helped in his unhurried way, gentle and strong.

Harry was alert and on the prowl, tangling in guy-ropes, finding old pegs, and gathering rocks to hold down the tent.

'Look! Here's an old ice-axe!' he shouted hoarsely. 'Rusty, or what?' And he skipped about gaily.

Once the camp was set up, Andrew Douglas helped Alasdair and Roberta to collect driftwood in the quiet gloaming. Harry, meanwhile, wandered a little further on around the shadowy head of Loch Skavaig : fox-like, exploring, as around him the little waves licked gently at the rocks. He peered over boulders, dodged behind corners, and slipped out of sight of the friends by the shore.

Then he made a discovery that left him astonished.

Standing, arms akimbo, he stared before him in the dark recess that he'd clambered up. He scratched his fair hair and blinked in surprise. He had stumbled across to a secluded nook, beyond a passage of rock and : there were boxes. A hoard.

He scrambled through the lair, and breathlessly pushed aside four damp and empty cardboard boxes. Then, to his wonderment, he found : gold! The liquid gold of Uisge Beatha. For in the next box, were five dusty bottles of whisky, with four empty spaces where others had formerly been. Beneath a rusted hurricane lamp, were four more boxes, that at first glance appeared untouched : nine bottles in each. On closer inspection, his sweating fingers found one box with eight : forty bottles in all.

'Sugar!' he gasped.

'Well, ye're a canny lad.' A voice behind him and, turning, a figure blocking the light from the entrance. It was Murdo : the extended features of his face, monstrous, changed, in the darkness and shadow. 'Ye'd find the back passage intae the underworld, y'sharp wee tyke!'

He lit a match, and the lamp shed light which glowed among the bottles the boy pulled out.

'What's all this, skipper?' Harry demanded.

'Let us say, we're smugglers, laddie!' the man growled grimly. 'And ye've jist found the contraband.'

'You mean it's yours?'

'Can ye keep a secret?'

'Honest.'

'Then I'll invite ye tae join the inner circle! Dinnae tell a soul what ye've seen tonight, on smuggler's honour.'

'I won't, skipper.'

'Then ye're one o' us, Harry, as long as ye live!'

'Is it yours?' the boy repeated.

'It used tae belong tae the Crown, so to speak. The excise-men stole it off honest folk and were sending it south, but... it went astray. One of oor gang, Donald MacFarlane, he worked for the excise part o' the time. Three of us hatched a wee plot around Cluanie, and the whisky went missing, in Knoydart, ye ken?'

'Did they catch your friend?'

'I found him dead alright...' the sailor's eyes glinted in the subdued light... 'but I'll tell ye something else : beside him in the snow there lay a single bottle of unopened malt.'

Harry's eyes shone wide and credulous.

'That's what happens tae people who talk' he leered.

The skipper plucked some whisky from the opened box, and pulled another bottle from beneath a makeshift table.

'Will ye help me tak' these up tae the hut?'

'Aye, aye. What happens if we get caught?' The man loomed closer.

'We tak' oor secret tae the grave, agreed? We dinnae tell a soul aboot this place...' Murdo nodded his head askance... 'not even them.'

They struggled back across the rocks, talking as they went.

'Maybe we'll find those lost doubloons o' yours!' the skipper laughed.

But he didn't mean it.

When they rejoined the living, Wiggy was asking if anyone wanted to go with him and spy out the land for the following day. He was eager to round the craggy rocks that separated Skavaig from the fresh-water of Loch Cornusk. Along the inland loch he'd catch a glimpse of where they would be heading the next day. But only Harry agreed to go.

'We're passing there tomorrow anyway,' Alasdair sighed. And Roberta was in one of her offhand moods.

So Wiggy set off with the boy.

The day was growing fainter and dimmer, a glimmering along the line of the ancient hills, as they reached the edge of Cornusk at twilight; two small figures in the echoing stillness and silence. 'It's so quiet up here,' Wiggy murmured. Harry nodded, looking in his eyes.

They sat on a rock in the last violet light. An oyster catcher called out of the solitude : then the isolated plash and drop of a fish breaking the surface and returning to the depths once again.

By the soft light over Cornusk at dusk, by its low murmuring dreams and stillness, Harry looked up.

'Wiggy? Do you think people should go to prison if they are bad?'

'It's better not to be bad at all,' sniffed Wiggy, still listening, still scanning the hills. 'I look at it like this. Always try to be kind, Harry.' Kindness - an unfashionable virtue, because perceived as weak... 'Then you won't go to prison, and maybe you'll be able to help those people who might.'

He looked about him. There it was again, in the dwindling light : the haunting rhythm and vibration he had felt before, almost abducting him with its soft beguiling beauty and allure.

'I mean,' continued Harry, edging closer, 'if your parents did something bad to you' his voice was trembling 'wouldn't you feel that they should go to prison?'

'Like what?' asked Wiggy, openly and more attentive.

'Like just leaving you, because they don't love you anymore?' The boy hurled pebbles into the water and there was a sudden sadness in the empty dusk. Harry was leaning back on Wiggy now.

'Sometimes, Harry, grown-ups do things they wish they didn't have to...'

There was a pause.

'But you wouldn't do that, would you Wiggy?' To the boy, Wiggy had become a model of what a father could be. 'I mean, you just wouldn't, would you? I know you wouldn't.'

The man felt his voice tripping.

'No, Harry. No, Harry. I wouldn't. Ever.'

He put his arm around the young boy's shoulder, kindly... and the child looked up, his shining face reflecting the remains of the light, and suddenly startled : like a beautiful changeling - perhaps the world was full of them.

'Come on Wiggy! Let's get back' he said at length, resignedly. The man seemed reluctant to turn and go, awed and stilled by the moment around him. There was a sense of timelessness, of the numinous other : the breaking in upon his consciousness of stillness and reality, and himself receptive.

Finally, he stirred and followed the boy, both growing indefinite in the last of the light, against the heather and rock and heath. Their figures lurked away in the hushed darkness : dusk and the wilderness assimilating them.

Back in the little climbers' hut, they entered an atmosphere of cooking, and candles, and laughter, all laced with the cheerful fumes of whisky. The party of friends were in high good-spirits, Gordon sipping his drink from a mug as he passed plates of food from Murdo at the stove.

'Ha!' he cried. 'You're just in time. This place is a palace. Look!' He tapped the post beside him. 'It's even got bunks!'

'And running water...' said Douglas with pleasure.

Steam billowed out from Murdo's pots, the captain's shirt unbuttoned, the whole place sultry and warm. Murdo himself presided over the unruly crew and their revelry, like the host of a faerie banquet in the otherworld. They ate by candlelight, their joy and laughter echoing in the rafters, the prospect of the day to come like a great adventure awaiting each of them.

Wiggy felt a glow - not the candles or the whisky - a glow of friendship and physical warmth that sprang, it seemed to him, from shared experience and hardship borne together. And as they ate, and Murdo passed the bottle, these shared simplicities of life - food, drink, and thankfulness - were a sacrament, almost... an affirmation.

The children and Gordon, who seemed released, were joking together about school life, interacting fondly and with respect... with - affection : all systems and formality dispensed with. Then Harry, mimicking adults he had seen in films, rose and proclaimed, 'A toast to Gordy!'

'To Gordy!' everyone said, raising their plastic mugs to the teacher, whose eyes beamed through his smeared glasses.

'And a toast to the Poachers!' Alasdair chimed. Successive toasts then flowed.

'To the Nudies!' said Harry.

'The Nudies!' they laughed.

'To Mr Wilskit' Wiggy proposed.

'And to Prince Charlie' Gordon added.

The men turned to Wiggy, who raised his mug.

'To Prince Charlie' they all agreed.

'And I propose,' said Douglas rising, 'a toast to the Captain!'

Everyone cheered.

Then Roberta rose, and hushed them all.

'And lastly,' she said theatrically, 'tomorrow we commit our lives together, and mount the Cuillin ridge and reach the peak. Tomorrow we shall give our all. To the Inaccessible Pinnacle!'

'The Pinnacle!' they cried, but almost in awe. Each felt the appetite for adventure and a bold endeavour, whetted by danger and sweetened by romance.

Roberta stood behind Wiggy, to whom she had been quite distant earlier on, and draped her arms around his shoulders.

'Tomorrow, we'll go up the Pinnacle together. And you kept your promise. You dared to do it.'

'We're not up there yet' he murmured gently.

They felt, as Mallory and Irving no doubt felt, the night before their bold ascent of Everest; as Douglas recalled feeling, the night before he and Gribbon went up The Prow; as Murdo remembered now his excitement would rise on winter nights upon the Ben, or in the Hornli Hut so many years ago.

And all of it crowned with friendship.

'Pour out some more!' he charged. 'This is a royal occasion!'

'Where did you get all this moonshine from, Murdo?' Andrew enquired.

'If you want to know...' Harry began...

...'Whisht! Ye'll need tae hunt deep in the hills' Murdo cut in, tapping his nose with his finger, and pouring a splash of whisky in Harry's mug.

'No, but...' said Harry, moving his mug toward Murdo, who cursed him affectionately under his breath.

'Too wise you are,' he whispered to the lad, 'Too wise you be! I see you are too wise for me!' He was drunk and slurring his speech. Douglas stared at him intently. Then he changed the subject.

'Fortune favours the brave!' declared Murdo. 'Ye've got a window in the weather at the moment, and it might chist hold. It might chist hold.'

'But what about you, Murdo?' Alasdair appealed. 'Won't you come too?'

'Nah, laddie, nah! I hope ye climb your mountain in the morn. I'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting by the boat.'

'Will you not come with us?' asked Gordon. 'Just part of the way?'

The captain's eyes turned cooler and clouded over.

'I'll never climb again' he said, yet he seemed to feel regret and loss, and the re-awakened pang of wasted years.

'Let's go and light the bonfire' Harry suddenly suggested.

The fire was built of driftwood down by the sea, not far from where the tent was pitched. They went out into the tender and darkening night, and the evening seemed benign : the little harbour, the boat at rest, the fire that soon caught light and rose, and the group of friends - enclosed and undisturbed in the secure peace.

Douglas helped the children get it going and then he passed them sausages to cook : he'd thought of that. Harry soon stripped to the waist, and the light of the flames danced across his naked torso, as he lurked like a sprite and stared into the fire.

Woodsmoke and the smell of the sea merged, as it cracked and spat sparks... sparking defiantly... sparks spiralling up into the starry dark : above them, the jagged black outline of the Ridge, and wreaths of mist.

'Arseholes!' the children shouted from some primeval sense of time and place. Murdo laughed.

'Arseholes' Gordon echoed, and turning to Wiggy, reasoned 'There's no-one within ten miles of here. The nearest human life to us is the colony of tourists camped over the ridge and far off in Glenbrittle.'

'Arseholes!' they all cried out again.

And later, Roberta was talking about the Pinnacle, fiddling with her friendship bracelet around her wrist, and dreaming of her appointed tryst with the good Glenaladale. She would meet him there, and keep their promise. She dreamed and swore her faithfulness to him, down all those turbulent years; and felt his presence pressing near, whispering to her, declaring his love. And others, murmuring close in the dark. And still, a rocking, a hush, as she lay on the earth... the present seeming to drop, to drop away... the waves smacking softly against the rocks. Almost resting... resting in calm perpetual movement... lulled toward quiet ataraxy.

'It looks auspicious for the morning,' Andrew observed.

'We'll see, we'll see' said Murdo absently.

At length, Gordon looked round.

'Where's Alasdair?' he asked.

Wiggy got up and stretched his arms. 'I'll go and see.'

He found the boy, on the rocks above the hut, crying to himself. As Wiggy approached him gently, he could make out tears still trickling down his shadowed cheeks.

'Alasdair?' he whispered.

'Go away, please.'

'Do you want to talk?' the kind man asked.

'No. You think I'm silly, crying...'

Wiggy winced.

'It's alright for a man to cry, you know.'

Alasdair swept his palm across his face and looked away.

'My dad doesn't think so...'

'Neither does mine' sighed Wiggy. 'But they're wrong.'

There was a pause. The murmur and quiet laughter of the others by the fire, drifted up across the hillside.

'And your father?' Wiggy asked softly. 'Is that why you're crying?'

The boy nodded, his back still turned, but confided in trembling -

'Sometimes, when mum and dad row, you know - I bury my head in my pillow to shut out the noise. I just can't stand it.'

'You're so sensitive, aren't you?' Wiggy whispered gently.

Alasdair sobbed.

'I wish that mum and dad would live apart.'

Wiggy tried to refute what he had said. 'You don't mean that.'

'No, really Wiggy. I'd rather they didn't live together anymore, because they're not happy.'

The boy turned and looked up. To his bewilderment and surprise, he found that Wiggy was weeping compassionately. The man held his hands in one of his own and, with the other, brushed the boy's tears and swept his hair.

'I have a son like you, who's sensitive, kind...' he began.

'I know' replied Alasdair, wide-eyed and open.

Wiggy stared.

'You know who I am?' He sounded bemused.

'Oh yes, we know, Wiggy' Alasdair answered. 'At least, I mean, Roberta always knew : and she told us when the time was right.'

'Then why...'

'The good thing about being children, you see, is you can still pretend, can still believe. We didn't want it all to end. We didn't want you to change back into 'him'. So we just believed.'

Wiggy smiled.

'Do you think he's different, then?'

'Perhaps he has to be in front of others...'

A figure was lumbering up the starlit hill.

'Listen!' Wiggy implored. 'You must never stop believing. Believing in Charlie. Believing in dreams. You must never stop believing in your parents either. Whatever it seems, however it hurts, believe in their love and believe that they're good.'

They both shivered.

'Are you going to be alright?'

'Yes Wiggy - and you?'

He looked around him at the silent bay.

'Alright!' he sighed. 'Oh yes, I feel alright.'

The stars were winking joyfully, the fire subdued.

'Ho!' called Douglas, in the dreamy lull.

Alasdair ran down to the tent.

'Is the kid alright?' Douglas enquired.

'Just hurting inside for his parents' sake.'

Douglas grimaced.

'Who'd be a child in the middle of it?' And it caused him pain and consternation.

But soon, the children - resilient and brave - were chattering in their torchlit tent about the task that loomed in front of them : like an act of initiation that lay ahead, and delighted, thrilled, appalled... yet drew them on. While, back in the hut, Wiggy was still reflecting on them all.

'Poor kids' he was saying to Gordon. 'What do we do to them?'

Douglas looked thoughtful. Murdo lay under a bunk, drinking and dreaming.

'Sometimes, perhaps,' said Gordon, 'it's nobody's fault... it's not morality : it's the marriage itself that is the problem. Deal with that, and things can begin to settle down less cruelly...'

'But I'm not so sure divorce is quite as simple,' Douglas objected, 'where children are involved. Surely there must be moral issues somewhere?'

'I see it this way,' the teacher replied. 'Marriage can become a harsh ideal, when it holds together people who need to be apart. It's too rigid, too imbued with guilt by external moral arbiters; when what you're dealing with is private human needs.'

'Then you don't believe in marriage?'

Gordon felt exposed.

'The reason two people should live together is because they want to : not because they're married. That doesn't come into it : it was a statement made in the past; but if it's not flexible, not provisional, then it's inhuman and cruelly idealistic.'

'And morals? The children?' Douglas asked, dimly perturbed.

Murdo passed the bottle to Wiggy.

'I wish that we would measure people' Gordon continued, struggling to express himself 'not by morals but by needs; not by failure but by aspiration; not by the one thing they do wrong, but by the ninety-nine things that they do right - to affirm the good intent and purposes of people struggling in a harsh and difficult life.' Murdo nodded. 'A little less certainty and judgement, on the part of those who see themselves as righteous : a little more warmth and kindness towards those who fail but mostly try to do their best...'

'There you are again : what I've been saying!' Wiggy felt a glow and conviction inside. 'The restoration of the ruins! The restoration of the broken heart.'

'I suppose so' Douglas murmured.

'And besides, so much morality pre-supposes saintliness, but under-estimates - fails to accommodate - the hidden savagery in us all.'

'What do you mean?'

Wiggy tried to explain.

'There is an underlying savagery, an underlying wildness in us all, which it's impossible for us to deny; which it's unrealistic for us to ignore. I think,' he said, 'I think this savagery or wildness - it's not immoral, it's amoral largely... but how we co-exist with it determines, maybe, our morality. To deny it, is to anaesthetize our sensitivity, to sanitize in an artificial way the people that we are, to suspend the lives we're meant to live...'

'But if you're right' the American argued 'then at least we need to guarantee that our kindness, friendship, gentle better being, can co-exist and be preserved in the midst of all that wilderness.'

'I agree. Only don't let's impose a harsh and unnatural idealism on ourselves! That's the trouble if we live with too much moral intensity : we are cut adrift from our easy natural being. If we want to handle our passion aright, we need to stay in touch with a calmer reality within ourselves, beyond ourselves, that's quieter, better and less intense than all our moral fervour. We need to stay in touch, I say.'

'Excuse me,' said Andrew Douglas, 'but I've lost the children in all of this.'

'That boy' said Wiggy, pointing outside 'he simply wants his parents to be happy.'

'Maybe sometimes separation and divorce are the doorways to new life' added Gordon 'that brings more scope for happiness for the children.'

'Well' sighed Douglas 'Stevenson said that there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy ourselves...'

He felt himself being convinced, but pulled away from simple acquiescence.

'Who can measure the loss though? The empty places left in the heart? The distance and separation from former joy and trust?'

Murdo climbed off the bed, and went to the passage. When he returned, clutching a bottle of Drambuie, he came and sat at the table with the other three men, only the stuttering candlelight between them.

'Strange, isn't it?' he wheezed, pulling out the stopper. 'Some nights the stars seem so close you feel you could almost reach and pluck them down. But distance can be just across the table-top, just across the table-top...' Wiggy looked down, ostensibly at his empty mug. 'Ha ha!' laughed the sailor. 'Here mo bhalach, take a bit of this!' His left hand grasping Wiggy's...

Murdo poured out the liqueur and handed the bottle around : passing it round the circle had become - like an unexpressed covenant between them... 'Slainte Mhath!'

The four men gazed at the drink and talked, their physical closeness acknowledged and wholly comfortable : part of their physical closeness with the table, the mountains, the ocean, and everything else. As they laughed and talked on, Andrew Douglas raised the cup to his mouth, and the scent of the Drambuie liqueur was sweet and exquisite. He found himself slipping aside from one sense of the present to another, as he encountered again the sunlit afternoon of his youth, as if he was there - which of course, for ever, he was.

The evocative taste and the smell of the drink had triggered his memory, and unlocked lost feelings. Caroline! He remembered where he'd drunk it with her, and the carolling birds overhead, and the lovely glen. Caroline! It came flooding back to him now. Dang! He felt choked by the beauty they'd found, by the sweetness like liquor, and their precious embrace. As Caroline's sinuous body swung round, and she gave herself softly, they were there! and the rest of the world seemed just a reflection, and they knew only each with each other, and they felt so relaxed in the beautiful sunlit heather.

He'd felt set free. They both had. In the abandonment of restraint.

All those years ago : and he pictured it now. He remembered the place, and he felt himself there. Once again, with her loving, in a place of such peace, and the joyful wind-swept hills all round, blue skies opening overhead. The memory was lucid and insistent : the feeling, raw. It was something he knew that was true. Something for ever. He put down his cup with a private frown, and attempted to clear out the clutter from his mind.

'Where does it come from?' he finally asked, breaking back with a jar to the people around him.

'Ach!' laughed Murdo. 'Mackinnon and I laid a wee supply aside, shall we say! It was the Prince's recipe to his ancestors, after all, for services rendered.'

'Before he sailed away for ever,' added Gordon, 'leaving his followers to face the reprisals. The end of romance...'

'No - here's to the King over the Water!' Andrew proposed. 'Romance never ends. Time just moves on.'

They drank, and mused on the separation of friends : Lochiel and Cluny and the Prince and how, when the farewell came, Cluny remained behind.

'What made him stay when the others left?'

'Hope that one day the Prince would return - but he never did!'

And they imagined Cluny, left in the bleak fastnesses of the winter mountains, skulking and waiting : while the rest of Prince Charlie's life was a falling away. The dream had passed into another world, and something precious was stolen and lost.

Murdo coughed and breathed ponderously.

'Why, d'ye mind, he never returned?'

'Reason and practicality prevailed' Gordon replied. 'Fear leads us all too often to compromise, to do what is only sensible and predictable, instead of daring to live by the heart.'

'Security' said Douglas. 'As the witches say in Macbeth - "You must know security is mortal's chiefest enemy..." '

They felt a bond together over the reeking perfume of the sweet Drambuie; a bond which closed and heightened with this talk and quiet awareness of separation.

'So much fear!' complained Wiggy. 'And it stifles our lives. I sense such a need to soften hearts : a nation longing to draw close, to be gentle, to touch... but alarmed at its hurt, and backing off. Yet we've known this friendship in a lonely land - a land abused, a land dismayed. We will probably depart and go our ways, and the snows will come again in these derelict places : but you've offered me the hand of friendship here, and a little fellow-feeling in the wilds... and how I value it in my heart...'

Douglas felt the uncomfortable exposure of Wiggy's speech.

'Well then,' he said, 'let's enjoy our passing company, whatever follows after.'

Gordon shifted on his seat.

'So what's been the purpose of this journey,' he asked, 'beyond the children themselves of course?'

Wiggy replied.

'To restore health, to recover vigour, to reclaim hope...'

'To look for a beautiful land?' Douglas added. 'Ha! The beautiful land! On the road to Arisaig, Wilskit told me he had a dream one night. In his dream he arrived, after a difficult and dangerous journey, in a wonderful land of beauty and light. He said it felt as if all the burdens had been lifted from his back - all the worries and fears of his life.' The American stared distantly. 'What struck him about this land was its perfect rest, its strong peace, and enduring stillness. The tears were in his eyes as he told me, one or two rolling down across his cheek. He said that, when he awoke to the world that we know, it seemed like a strange and insubstantial shadow of what he'd found; seemed, somehow, less physical, less complete, less real.' Douglas paused. 'I remember, he called it the Beautiful Land.'

'Aye,' said Murdo. 'That would be it.'

'Strange really - he didn't look at all religious...'

'There's more to some people than meets the eye' Wiggy murmured. 'A delightful inheritance! Perhaps we are all inheritors. Maybe we under-estimate the measure and whole dimension of it all... I've felt it there in wonderful music and art. I mean who hasn't had that sudden experience of truth reverberating through a picture, without knowing the reason why?'

Gordon frowned.

'Hughie would have said, that's what we are : reverberations from a higher realm.'

'Hughie? Who?' asked Andrew.

'The poacher.'

'Oh.'

'Listen' said Murdo, filling his mug. 'It's what we keep on looking for. I searched, wide-eyed, through the sunshine of my childhood; and through the broad sweep of the wind-blown middle years. I search still along the grey shores of old age. But what am I looking for? What am I looking for? The heart's desire - that's what I seek. I am looking for treasure.'

"Land of Heart's Desire" recalled the American, staring into his empty cup... "Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song..."

'What's that?' asked Gordon, aghast at the casual and inexhaustible erudition of his friend.

'Yeats' he replied.

'When I was out there on my own,' Wiggy reflected at a tangent, 'totally on my own, outside the whole of the rest of the world... I lost myself... and found... such peace! Like a deeper resonance by-passing all cerebral checks and controls.'

Murdo's face wrinkled around his old eyes.

'That's it! That's it!' he cried, with quavering laughter.

'The greatest treasures in life, ye ken, are nae for owning or acquiring. They're for seeking, and partaking, and surrendering up again. It's all pursuit and feeling. It's all pursuit and feeling. We surrender up our youth, and we surrender up our life, and the autumn turns to winter - but we've lived, my boys, we've lived. If ye only can let go, then ye can join in wi' the chase.'

'Pursuit and feeling?' asked Gordon. 'I suppose I see. Like Charlie in the Highlands? His life was all a flight, and everything most precious belonged to oblivion, and passed by in a moment.'

'Ye cannae hold on tae yoursel' at a'! What really counts of you : it flows frae somewhere else, an' it goes tae somewhere else again. But that's the thing : the real you.'

'Just letting yourself go out' said Wiggy 'in the free flow of feeling from the heart. So being is in becoming!'

'All movement, all restlessness, then' murmured Douglas 'like the woods in autumn. Giving yourself over to an adventure... beyond the point of no return. Then you throw caution and weariness aside, and let the wind blow free in your hair!'

Murdo lay down on the bunk once again, gently intoxicated and glowing, rocking. He took off his shirt : his body still muscular, fit, for all his years. And his thick white hair seemed shocked, like a man so taken by surprise, or just awoken. He was muttering from The Tempest now : 'such stuff as dreams... We are such stuff as dreams are made on' he recounted 'and oor little life... is rounded wi' a sleep.' He drew once again from the bottle, then whimpered with laughter in a high-pitched wheeze. 'Tell me this boys! Tell me this if you can : Am I an old man who dreams he is a youth on an enchanted island? Or a youth dreaming he is an old man wandering the face o' the grey seas?' He chuckled to himself. 'Will ye be telling me which I am?'

He let out a belch, and in moments lay asleep, dreaming of delightful isles, rocking in the sunlit sea, and caressing inshore winds, amorous and ardent... beautiful. Enchanted isles, everlasting, ever-present : more real than eye could see or mind conceive... ancient and youthful, now, there now, there now...

And later, in the dark, by the lap-lap-lap of the water, the bonfire smouldered and refused to die, as the three men listened.

'What the hell after this?' asked Gordon, eventually.

'I thought we understood. We live one day at a time!'

'The best way of all' Douglas intoned.

'Aye well - I guess we burnt our boats way back.' Gordon reclining on the shore.

And the children asleep in the land of their dreams, and a low-throbbing rock and beat which all of them felt... The slumber and slack of the quiet sea : the same cadence over the centuries.

Ah-ho - the rock and lull - the swell and sigh - the hush-roar-sway of the sea.

* * *