Merry Men

The book relates the strange events which took place during the narrator’s last visit to his uncle on a remote island off the coast of Scotland. Gordon Darnaway, the uncle, lives in a two storey house on a storm battered island known as Aros. Periodically, the island is connected to a promontory of the mainland by a narrow isthmus: at low tide, a spit of sand is exposed and the island may be reached on foot; at high tide, Gordon’s servant, Rorie, ferries visitors across in a skiff. Beyond this little stretch of water, however, the place is a roiling deathtrap for sailors owing to huge waves that break over the unchartered reefs and pitch against the granite coast. Such is the din raised by the sea that the locals, reminded of a band of drunken travellers, have named these breakers, “the Merry Men. ”.