A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves
rolled up, and one with a boathook, kept her with difficulty to her
moorings for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little way
off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be superior
in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at first I did
not understand, but a second after I had made it out--they were taking
bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet
of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying features in a
map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, polling among the rocks
and peering over the edge into the water. While I was still watching
them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly yet able to work
on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly stooped and summoned
his companions with a cry so loud that it reached my ears upon the hill.
The others ran to him, even dropping the compass in their hurry, and I
could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from hand to hand, causing
the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and interest. Just then I
could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and saw them point westward
to that cloud continent which was ever the more rapidly unfurling its
blackness over heaven. The others seemed to consult; but the danger was
too pressing to be braved, and they bundled into the boat carrying my
relies with them, and set forth out of the bay with all speed of oars.

I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.
Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly informed.
It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent of the
Jacobites; and may be Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to detest, was
one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock. Yet as I ran,
leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely in my mind, this
theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason. The compass,
the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and the conduct of that one
among the strangers who had looked so often below him in the water, all
seemed to point to a different explanation of their presence on that
outlying, obscure islet of the western sea. The Madrid historian, the
search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the bearded stranger with the rings,
my own fruitless search that very morning in the deep water of Sandag
Bay, ran together, piece by piece, in my memo