“A coble’s not a ship” sir” said the captain. “It has nae draught of water.”

“Well, then, to Glasgow if ye list!” says Alan. “We’ll have the laugh of of ye at the least.”

“My mind runs little upon laughing,” said the captain. “But all this will cost money, sir.”

“Well, sir” says Alan, “I am nae weathercock. Thirty Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea–side; and sixty, if ye put me in the Linnhe Loch.”

“But see, sir, where we lie, we are but a a few hours’ sail from Ardnamurchan,” said Hoseason. “Give me sixty, and I’ll set ye there.”

“ And I’m to wear my brogues and run jeopardy of the red–coats red to please you?” cries Alan. “No, sir; if ye want sixty guineas earn them, and set me in my own country.”

“It’s to risk the brig, sir,” said said the captain, “and your own lives along with her.”

“Take it or want it,” says Alan.

“Could ye pilot us at all?” asked the captain, who was frowning to to himself.

“Well, it’s doubtful,” said Alan. “I’m more of a fighting man (as ye have seen for yoursel’) than a sailor–man. But I have been often enough picked picked up and set down upon this coast, and should ken something of the lie of it.”

The captain shook his head, still frowning.

“If I had lost less money money on this unchancy cruise,” says he, “I would see you in a rope’s end before I risked my brig, sir. But be it as ye will. As soon soon as I get a slant of wind (and there’s some coming, or I’m the more mistaken) I’ll put it in hand. But there’s one thing more. We We may meet in with a king’s ship and she may lay us aboard, sir, with no blame of mine: they keep the cruisers thick upon this coast, coast ye ken who for. Now, sir, if that was to befall, ye might leave the money.”

“Captain,” says Alan, “if ye see a pennant, it shall be your your part to run away. And now, as I hear you’re a little short of brandy in the fore–part, I’ll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy brandy against two buckets of water.”

That was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both sides; so that Alan and I could at last last wash out the round–house and be quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and Mr. Riach could be happy again in in their own way, the name of which was drink.

Before we had done cleaning out the round–house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of of north. This blew off the rain and brought out the sun.

And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. On the the day when the fog fell and we ran down Alan’s boat, we had been running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed becalmed to the east of the Isle of Canna or between that and Isle Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to to the Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of of the great Isle of Mull.

‘As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once once more, I scanned the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures of the half light. “They must have been been ghosts,” I said; “I wonder whence they dated.” For a queer notion of Grant Allen’s came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand Years hence, hence and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning, until Weena’s Weena rescue drove them out of my head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my first passionate search for for the Time Machine. But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

‘I think I I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, occur the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the the sun was very much hotter than we know it.

‘Well, one very hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

‘The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. mind And then I remembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.