There was a message for me that Dr Robertson was busy, but he hoped I would join him for dinner, and would I like to borrow the car for a bit of a spin round the island? It was by the surgery and the keys were in it. Having come all this way, it certainly seemed a good idea to explore. The Land Rover was pretty battered but in good working order, and I was soon retracing my route of the night before, southwards out of Port Chalmers towards Pitchroich. At first the landscape, viewed through rain and the stroboscope of the wipers, was open moorland, but at the bridge over the Pitchroich burn it began to get higher. I stopped at the burn and, pulling my waterproofs round me, jumped out to look at the stream. It was in high spate, peaty brown and roaring, just the sort of torrent to bring the sea trout up. As I watched, a fish of about three pounds jumped clear of the water below me. There is nothing like the sight of a good fish to stir an angler's heart and I thought again of Tom Chalmers' offer of fishing.

But, with the rain lashing my face, this was no day to hang about watching fish.

Past Pitchroich farm, in the storm's gloom, I could only sense the mountains rising to my right. The road climbed too and I realised the sea was a hundred feet below me. A few scattered crofts appeared to be uninhabited apart from collies that barked damply at me. As I rounded the southern end of the island the full fury of the southwesterly hit me and I could feel the vehicle lurching in the gale. The sea below me was an angry, boiling mass of white, and spume reached even up the hundred feet to the road. I stopped the Land Rover and found Squarebottle's much used map, and could see I had reached the southern tip of the island and was looking over the skerries of Ranneach Bay, with the island of Sgarbh an Sgumain to my left.

Today it was a wild scene and it enthralled me. I longed to see it on a clear day in spring when the cliffs would be thronged with breeding seabirds. Perhaps there would be golden eagles in the towering walls that I saw disappearing upwards into the murk; there might even be sea eagles here and a few peregrines as well. Then I came to, suddenly remembering that I had an interview soon for a prestigious job in London, which might be the opening of the door to my long cherished ambition of a surgical career. It was beginning to look as though I would not get back in time. I stared into the storm marvelling at the sheer wildness of the place and wondered if I really wanted to go back to the rat race of the teaching hospitals of the south. In an agony of indecision, I turned back the way I had come. The map showed a side turning just after Pitchroich which crossed to the west of the island. I turned into this, driving slowly through worsening rain, which the wipers barely kept up with. Suddenly a speeding Jaguar filled the narrow road. It braked, skidded on the wet road and was in the ditch.

I stopped the car and ran to help the driver. He was unhurt, but very angry.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he shouted, 'Look what you've done to my car!'

Keeping my temper with this man, whose own driving had been entirely responsible for his plight, I enquired if he was all right. But he was still angry and demanded the details of my insurance company. I suggested that there was little point in standing in the rain and, since his car was not movable, could I take him anywhere?

'Yes, drive me to the castle.' And he pointed the way he had come.

I began to feel I had met an islander I liked even less than Old Squarebottle. It transpired that he owned Tom Bacadh Castle. In the hallway to the gloomy old castle, I explained that the car I was driving was not mine but belonged to Dr Robertson. In chilly formality I learned that the other driver was Major Thistlethwaite, who noted my full name and address. Here at any rate was one person in the island who did not know who I was.

Fortunately the borrowed Land Rover was undamaged, and I returned to the surgery. Doctor Hamish was home, and I told him of the mishap.