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and my dark cat’s glasses were bought in Miami. I wore a little scent by Patou, and on my right hand was a large uncut emerald.
    As I descended the stairs, the noise abated; and Johnson, stepping forward, escorted me into breakfast in a silence almost complete. The bifocals shone with the most profound admiration. “The soft kill. Delicious,” he said, “and you’re not to worry. There’s some Thawpit on board.”
    I was not worried, although a little surprised to find after breakfast that instead of Rupert, the girl Victoria had been detailed to row me to
Dolly
. She was, of course, the sole shipmate and crew of Cecil Ogden, the lugubrious remittance-man of yesterday’s encounter at the bar.
    We were introduced, Victoria and I, on the jetty. I looked for a hockey player and I found one: a centre-forward, small, bony, and agile. The central zone of the face, revealed by the inner selvedges of long, hanging, mud-coloured hair, displayed large cow-like eyes under thick eyebrows, and a mouth much too big. She wore denims and a faded striped sweater and talked in a high, clear cordon bleu voice about the last thing I did for Stokowski. But she did not, at least, ask for my autograph.
    Seawolf
’s dinghy I did not altogether appreciate. It was a light wooden, flat-bowed shell, known as a pram; and I, for one, was no baby. Victoria all too clearly knew I was about to get wet: she tucked oilskins, still talking, over my trouser suit as soon as I was seated, cast off, and took up the oars. Her arms were bare, and so were her feet. A little water at the bottom of the pram slopped over one of my kid boots. Between tugs, “Thank God there’ll be someone on
Dolly
with the glands to stand up to Johnson,” she said vaguely. “He’s done you an epic scene already, I bet, about the right clothes to take.”
    “He has. I had a selected caseful of warm waterproof things fixed to go on board first thing this morning.” I paused. The strip of face between the almost united curtains of hair was mildly expectant. “However, to be on the safe side, I bribed the Club porter to row out three more cases before Mr. Johnson was up.”
    I was rewarded by a large toothy smile. “I knew you’d be super,” said Victoria. “I adore Johnson: he’s so slow and so frightfully switched on; he gets his own way with everything, and of course Rupert worships him and now Lenny the Crew: if you visit
Dolly
it’s like coping with the Memphis Jug Band… The
épater la bourgeoisie
thing is marvellous, if you can bear to go on with it. But anyway you’ll love every second. They all do. The racing bit doesn’t matter much, although some of them make rather a thing of it. But the islands are absolute heaven. Do you know the Hebrides?”
    I did not. I was prepared to suffer the Hebrides until I came to the one that was called Rum. The others might sink, plop, as of that moment. I shook my head.
    “Oh, but how super! You’ll adore them. I like them when it’s
very, very
wet. It is, often. I walk about in my bare feet and the mud goes squidge. Do you know we’re going to pass Staffa?”
    I knew. Staffa, which has an underground sea cavern and a rock formation superior to the Giant’s Causeway: I knew. I was sick of Staffa. It was beside Iona, the third call; that was all I was interested in. Then Barra and Rodel in the Outer Hebrides. Then the island of Skye; and then Rum. After Rum,
Dolly
could sink; assuming my portrait was finished. As Victoria prattled on about Staffa, I looked round.
    The sea sparkled. On either side of the Gare Loch the hills were green, and above, the sky was a filmy, spacious pale blue. Just ahead of us, as Victoria, twisting round, picked her way towards the lanes between moorings, were the first of the yachts. Some were quiet, with bare poles, but most were bustling with people. There was chat, and the noise of generators and engines turning over, and the grating sound of ropes in pulley-blocks as sails were hoisted;