Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/199

Rh As we neared the tiny fishing-village on the sands we met a fishwife brave in her short skirt and eight petticoats, the basket with its two hundred pound weight on her head, and the auld wife herself knitting placidly as she walked along. They look superbly strong, these women; but, to be sure, the "weak anes dee," as one of them told me.

There was an air of bustle about the little quay,— That joyfu' din when the boats come in, When the boats come in sae early; When the lift is blue an' the herring-nets fu', And the sun glints in a' things rarely."

The silvery shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the "draive" was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the shining myriads of the deep.

We climbed the shoulder of a great green cliff until we could sit on the rugged rocks at the top and overlook the sea. The bluff is well named Nirly Scaur, and a wild, desolate spot it is, with gray lichen-clad boulders and stunted heather on its summit. In a storm here, the wind buffets and slashes and scourges one like invisible whips, and below, the sea churns itself into foaming waves, driving its "infinite squadrons of wild white horses" eternally toward the shore. It