of foliage, coral bushes – pink, and white, and even black – rocks covered with medusae of the most brilliant colours an artist could imagine, and patches of white sand, strewn with living shells, each one more lovely to look upon than another. And every bush and shrub and flower is all a-quiver with a strange, indescribable motion, which greatly heightens their magical beauty; and why? Because every bush and shrub and flower is composed of a thousand living things. But the larger creatures that creep and crawl, or glide through this submarine garden are fantastic in the extreme. Monster crabs and crayfish, horny, abhorrent, and so strange in shape one cannot help thinking they were made to frighten each other; long transparent fishes, partly grayling partly eel; flat fishes that swim in all kinds of ridiculous ways; some fishes that seem all tail together, and others that are nothing but head. And among all the others a curious flat fish that swims on an even keel, and, by the very brilliancy of his colours and gorgeous array, seems to quite take the shine out of all the others. Both sides of this fish are painted alike; both sides of him are divided into five or six equal parts, and each part is of a different colour – one is a marigold yellow, another green, another brightest crimson, another steel grey, and so on. Him I dubbed the harlequin flounder. Yes, Ralph, Shakespeare was right when he said there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy, and he might have added there are more things in ocean’s depths, and stranger things, than any naturalist ever could imagine.’
“You see,” said Ralph, folding Rory’s funny letter, and handing it to McBain, “that our friends are enjoying themselves; but you won’t fail to notice Rory’s closing sentence, in which he says that, in the very midst of all the brightness and beauty so lavishly spread around him, he is ofttimes longing to visit once more the strange, mysterious regions around the Pole.”
“And you have never written a word to him about our new ship and our purposed voyage?” inquired McBain.
“Never a word,” cried Ralph, laughing. “You see, I want to keep that a secret till the very last. Oh, fancy, McBain, how wild with glee both Rory and Allan will be when they find that the splendid ship is built and ready, and that we but wait for the return of spring to carry us once more away to the far north again.”
“I’d like to see Rory’s face,” said McBain, smiling, “when you break the news to him.”
Just six weeks after this quiet little tête-à-tête dinner on the bank of the Highland lake, a very important-looking and fussy little tug-boat come puff-puffing up the Clyde from seaward, towing in a large and pretty yacht; her sails were clewed, and her yards squared, and everything looked trig and trim, not only about her, but on board of her. The blue ensign floated proudly from her staff; her crew were dressed in true yachting rig, and her decks were white as the driven snow.
An elderly lady with snow-white hair paced slowly up and down the quarter-deck, leaning lightly on the arm of a tall and gentlemanly man of mature age. In a lounge chair right aft, and abreast of the binnacle, a fair young girl was reclining, book in lap, but not reading; she was engaged in pleasant conversation with a youth who sat on a camp-stool not far off, while another who leant upon the taffrail gazing shorewards frequently turned towards them, to put in his oar with a word or two. He was taller than the former and apparently a year or two older. He was probably more manly in appearance and build, but certainly not better-looking. Both were tanned with the tropical sun, and both were dressed alike in a kind of sailor uniform of navy blue.
“Yes, Rory,” the girl was saying, “I must confess that I do feel glad to get back again to Scotland, much though I have enjoyed our cruise and all our strange adventures around that wild and beautiful coast. Oh! I do not wonder at your being fond of the sea. If I were a man I feel sure I would be a sailor.”
“And here we are,” replied Rory, with pleasure beaming from his bright, laughing eyes, “within three miles of Glasgow. And, you know, Ralph is here; how delighted he will be to meet us all again! I really wonder he did not come with us.”
But Ralph was very much nearer to them at that moment than they had any idea of.
“Helen Edith,” cried Allan at that moment, “and you, Rory, do come and have a look at this beautiful steam barque on the stocks.”
Both Helen and Rory were by his side in a moment.
“She is a beauty indeed,” said Rory, enthusiastically. “There are lines for you! There is shape! Fancy that craft in the water! Look at the beautiful rake that even her funnel has! But is she a man-o’-war, I wonder?”
“More like a despatch boat, I should say,” said Allan. “Look, she is pierced for guns.”
Allan was right about the guns, for just as he spoke a balloon-shaped cloud of white smoke rose slowly up from her side, and almost simultaneously the roar of a big gun came over the water and died away in a hundred echoes among the rocks and hills. Another and another followed in slow and measured succession, until they had counted fourteen.
“It is saluting they are,” said Allan; “but they surely cannot be saluting us; and yet there is no other craft of any consequence coming up the water.”
“But I feel sure,” said Helen, “it is some one bidding us welcome. And see, they dip the flag.”
The yacht’s flag was now dipped in return, but still the mystery remained unravelled.
But it does not remain so long.
For see, the yacht is now almost abreast of the new ship, and the decks of the latter are crowded with wildly cheering men. Ay, and yonder, beside the flagstaff, is Ralph himself, with McBain by his side, waving their hats in the air.
The good people on the yacht are for a minute rendered dumb with astonishment, but only for a minute; then the air is rent with their shouts as they give back cheer for cheer.
“Och! deed in troth,” cried Rory, losing all control of his English accent, “it’s myself that is bothered entoirely. Is it my head or my heels that I’m standing on? for never a morsel of me knows! Is it dreaming I am? Allan, boy, can’t you tell me? Just look at the name on the stern of the beautiful craft.”
Allan himself was dumb with astonishment to behold, in broad letters of gold the words, “The Arrandoon.”
Chapter Three.
Retrospection – Ralph’s Home in England – A Hearty if not Poetic Welcome
Many of my readers have met with the heroes of this tale before (in the “Cruise of the Snowbird,” by the same Author and Publishers), but doubtless some have not; and as it is always well to know at least a little of the dramatis personae of a story beforehand, the many must in the present instance give place to the few. They must either, therefore, listen politely to a little epitomised repetition, or sit quietly aside with their fingers in their ears for the space of five minutes. But, levity apart, I shall be as brief as brevity itself.
Which of our heroes shall we start with first? Allan? Yes, simply because his initial letter stands first on the alphabetic list.
Allan McGregor is a worthy Scot.
We met him for the first time several years prior to the date of this tale; met him in the company of his foster-father, met him in a wildly picturesque Highland glen, called Glentruim, at the castle of Arrandoon. It was midwinter; the young man’s southern friends, Ralph Leigh and Rory Elphinston, were coming to see him and live with him for a time, and right welcomely were they received, all the more in that they had narrowly escaped losing their lives in the snow.
Allan was – and so remains – the chieftain of his clan, his father having died years before, sword in hand, on a bloodstained redoubt in India, leaving to his only son’s care an encumbered estate, a mother and one daughter, Edith, or Helen Edith.
The young chief was poor and proud, but he dearly loved his widowed mother, his beautiful sister, the romantic old castle, and the glen that had reared him from his boyhood; and how he wished and longed to be able to better the position of the former and the condition of the latter, none but he could tell or say. Allan was brave – his clan is proverbially so; his soul was deeply imbued with the spirit of religion, and, it must be added, just