d damp. I remained ten days in the island, and went over all
my former ground, but succeeded in making no further discoveries.

On the morning of Wednesday, June 25th, we set sail for Isle Ornsay,
with a smart breeze from the north-west. The lower and upper sky was
tolerably clear, and the sun looked cheerily down on the deep blue of
the sea; but along the higher ridges of the land there lay long level
strata of what the meteorologists distinguish as parasitic clouds. When
every other patch of vapor in the landscape was in motion, scudding
shorewards from the Atlantic before the still-increasing gale, there
rested along both the Scuir of Eigg and the tall opposite ridge of the
island, and along the steep peaks of Rum, clouds that seemed as if
anchored, each on its own mountain-summit, and over which the gale
failed to exert any propelling power. They were stationary in the middle
of the rushing current, when all else was speeding before it. It has
been shown that these parasitic clouds are mere local condensations of
strata of damp air passing along the mountain-summits, and rendered
visible but to the extent in which the summits affect the temperature.
Instead of being stationary, they are ever-forming and ever-dissipating
clouds,--clouds that form a few yards in advance of the condensing hill,
and that dissipate a few yards after they have quitted it. I had nothing
to do on deck, for we had been joined at Eigg by John Stewart; and so,
after watching the appearance of the stationary clouds for some little
time, I went below, and, throwing myself into the minister's large
chair, took up a book. The gale meanwhile freshened, and freshened yet
more; and the Betsey leaned over till her lee chain-plate lay along in
the water. There was the usual combination of sounds beneath and around
me,--the mixture of guggle, clunk, and splash,--of low, continuous rush,
and bluff, loud blow, which forms in such circumstances the voyager's
concert. I soon became aware, however, of yet another species of sound,
which I did not like half so well,--a sound as of the washing of a
shallow current over a rough surface; and, on the minister coming below,
I asked him, tolerably well prepared for his answer, what it might
mean. "It means," he said, "that we have sprung a leak, and a rather bad
one; but we are only some six or eight miles from the Point of Sleat,
and must soon catch the land." He returned on deck, and I resumed my
book. Presently,