He did not expect that his explanation would carry any weight with it; and the way he was looked at by his friends made him aware of the fact that, in giving them credit for more sense than to believe him, he was doing them no more than the merest justice.
No one who was present on his return placed the smallest amount of credence in his story. What many of them did believe was of no consequence.
THE boats were scattered like milestones--as was stated by Brian--through the sinuous length of Lough Suangorm. The cutter yacht _Acushla_ was leading the fleet out to the Atlantic, with two reefs in her mainsail, and although she towed a large punt, and was by no means a fast boat, she had no difficulty in maintaining her place, the fact being that the half-dozen boats that lumbered after her were mainly fishing craft hailing from the village of Cairndhu, and, as all the world knows, these are not built for speed but endurance. They are half-decked and each carries a lug sail. One of the legends of the coast is that when a lug sail is new its colour is brown, and as a new sail is never seen at Cairndhu there are no means of finding out if the story is true or false. The sails, as they exist, are kaleidoscopic in their patchwork. It is understood that anything will serve as a patch for a lug sail. Sometimes the centre-piece of an old coat has been used for this purpose; but if so, it is only fair to state that it is on record that the centre-piece of an old sail has been shaped into a jacket for the ordinary wearing of a lad.
The lug sail may yet find its way into a drawing room in Belgravia and repose side by side with the workhouse sheeting which occupies an honoured place in that apartment.
On through the even waves that roll from between the headlands at the entrance, to the little strand of pebbles at the end of the lough, the boats lumbered. The sea and sky were equally gray, but now and again a sudden gleam of sunshine would come from some unsuspected rift in the motionless clouds, and fly along the crests of the waves, revealing a green transparency for an instant, and then, flashing upon the sails, make apparent every patch in their expanse, just as a flash of lightning on a dark night reveals for a second every feature of a broad landscape.