continue his journey more expeditiously ashore. A gale immediately
followed, and the _Elizabeth_ was driven back to Orkney and lost with
all hands. The second escape I have been in the habit of hearing related
by an eye-witness, my own father, from the earliest days of childhood.
On a September night, the _Regent_ lay in the Pentland Firth in a fog
and a violent and windless swell. It was still dark, when they were
alarmed by the sound of breakers, and an anchor was immediately let go.
The peep of dawn discovered them swinging in desperate proximity to the
Isle of Swona[10] and the surf bursting close under their stern. There
was in this place a hamlet of the inhabitants, fisher-folk and wreckers;
their huts stood close about the head of the beach. All slept; the doors
were closed, and there was no smoke, and the anxious watchers on board
ship seemed to contemplate a village of the dead. It was thought
possible to launch a boat and tow the _Regent_ from her place of danger;
and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a
red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door
after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after
fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap
on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should
rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation,
it scarce seemed any interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously
awaited the harvest of the sea, and their children stood by their side
and waited also. To the end of his life, my father remembered that
amphitheatre of placid spectators on the beach, and with a special and
natural animosity, the boys of his own age. But presently a light air
sprang up, and filled the sails, and fainted, and filled them again; and
little by little the _Regent_ fetched way against the swell, and clawed
off shore into the turbulent firth.

The purpose of these voyages was to effect a landing on open beaches or
among shelving rocks, not for persons only, but for coals and food, and
the fragile furniture of light-rooms. It was often impossible. In 1831 I
find my grandfather "hovering for a week" about the Pentland Skerries
for a chance to land; and it was almost always difficult. Much knack and
enterprise were early developed among the seamen of the service; their
management of boats is to this day a matter of admiration; and I find my
gra