The nature
of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight
of them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in
favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the English,
but Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never
varied.
"Ay," he would say, "ITS AN UNCO PLACE, THE BASS."
It is so I always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco
by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans,
and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually
in our ears. It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When the
waves were anyway great they roared about the rock like thunder and
the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to hear; and it was in the
calm days that a man could daunt himself with listening--not a
Highlandman only, as I several times experimented on myself, so
many still, hollow noises haunted and reverberated in the porches
of the rock.
This brings me to a story I heard, and a scene I took part in,
which quite changed our terms of living, and had a great effect on
my departure.
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