The Canoe Boys

by Alastair Dunnett

  The next morning showed no change in the weather, and we could not go on. We spent the morning in a survey of our demesne, and the pattern of its old and rich life which we were able to piece from the broken fragments that lay about. These were later filled in, when we sought such old records as are available, as well as from the people now alive in the north-west of Mull, who can remember, by the true hearsay of their youth, what had been done here.

  Seumas sits to the right of our fire, which blazes in the black space where the grate has been.

  I have just scrambled into the picture, having fired our damp flash powder after several vain attempts.

  Ardmore had been a hamlet of strong men and their families. Their unroofed cornerless houses pushed walls up here and there above the tide of bracken, like wrecks reluctant at the end to lay their timbers on the seabed. There had been, at the time of the place’s most recent heyday, about ten of these houses. They had stood on the first step of the low hills above the valley floor. What had been a village green of perfect turf still lived in a few reefs of its pure herbage over which the bracken had not yet crawled.

  If I am told, as one tends to hear in such cases, that these people were able to scrape only a wretched living from the ground, and were better dispersed on their emigrant business, I shall require proof more persuasive than is usually available. And I shall be able to maintain, I think, that none of their scattered descendants now enjoys a view like the one left behind on the broken Ardmore doorsteps.

  Each of these homes possessed at least eight cattle, and other beasts upon the hill. They would have ample milk and butter and cheese, and red meat, and poultry, and their own oatmeal and potatoes and other crops. They had the fruit berries that are still there thickly, and the game. They had the choice of fish too; shell-fish for the lifting, to be stewed in milk; lobsters to trap and herring to net. But they were also connoisseurs of the delicate varieties of seafood. They used to catch close inshore the sea-bream and the gurnet, scattering shells into the water to stir the fish upwards towards the nets. These sorts of fish are the ones which have been dispersed by the illegal mechanical trawling of inshore waters.

  All this, and doubtless much else on a far from niggardly scale, must have given a hearty fullness to the old Ardmore days. There was a school with 30 pupils; and on the shore and the glen slopes nearby there was plenty of adventure for the scholars when they skailed. The little village was four miles from Tobermory, and the track is still good that leads from the Glengorm road round the mild slopes of the Mishnish hills, to spread and lose itself at last on what was the Ardmore village green, ringed now by these empty ruins. There are those still alive who knew people reared in Ardmore when it was like this. And I dare say, if you were to start telephoning round all these MacLeans we have been talking about, who would answer the call in Chicago or Toronto or London, you would sooner or later be speaking to one whose grandfather ran barefoot and well-fed upon Ardmore Point.

  That was, then, the original phase of life at Ardmore. Its trails are clear, and it lasted for at least a handful of centuries. The second phase was shorter. It is represented by the house in which we had installed ourselves – the farm built to handle the whole glen, once rid of its people. It had also failed, as we know, and that in a time shorter than an eye-blink of history. The solitary house, and the system of husbandry and lairdship it signified, had not even a hint of the endurance of the community that had been there; and that might, if management and understanding had been nearer home, have been there yet. The house itself may last a shorter time than the old blockhouse shapes of the village. A year or two after the war I walked over to it from Tobermory in a little over an hour. The whole roof has now come in, and such rafters as still hang by their ends to the ceiling level of the walls are rotten, and shedding off their slates like leaves on to the floor which is now earth, for the planking has gone. Around the ruin were huddled the stupid victors of the third phase of Ardmore, as we saw them on that first day of our residence – the sheep. Because the glen, like so many of the others, has come to a sheep run at the last; and it will hardly, on the souring ground, carry as many sheep as it did people. But there may be a fourth phase to come – the fourth segment of the circle.

  By mid-afternoon we knew we could not set off that day to round the Point. We did not care to walk in to Tobermory and the shops, although we needed to, for our food was low and our eating tremendous. For the midday meal I had baked bread. This pretentious description was applied by me to a revolting device which consisted of dampening several handfuls of flour with water, dropping the tacky mixture into a tin, setting this by the fire, and drying out the moisture again. The result was a fat and warm wafer which it was expedient to eat fresh from the tin, and in the mirk of the kitchen. We had travelled light from Calve, and all that now remained were the little basic sacks of oatmeal, flour, and dried fruit.

  Replenishments were, however, at hand. Rabbits ran in droves about the lawns, sallying from one to another of the bracken clumps in that strangely jerked creeping run which, perhaps more than any other quality, entitles them to the description of vermin. We started to hunt them, running and whooping among the green clearings, with stones for ammunition. We filled the air with missiles, and were contemptuously treated by our victims. The rabbits appeared to be able to hobble slowly from the path of even our deadliest shots, and much energy was spent before we abandoned the undisciplined hunt, to lay tactics for a more certain manoeuvre.

  Made cunning by hunger, we stalked a long way inland through the bracken, and then started a gentle drive back towards the open grass. By this time we knew the most prominent holes, and were able to steer a tiny herd past them all and out of the bracken. Here at last we cornered a small plump fellow, penning him in a sheep-fank. I herded him gradually up into a cul-de-sac, while Seumas, with an adequate stone, ran along the top of the dyke to reach a mortar position above the prize.

  Tense at my post, I saw the stone rise in Seumas’s hand, and felt a pang of grief for our dinner, still warm on the paw, but doomed. Then Seumas tossed the stone aside and clapped his two hands to scare the rabbit into scrambling free; and then turned to grin ruefully at me: ‘Couldn’t do it!’ he said, with none of the ruthlessness of the hunter. Awaiting the death-blow, the rabbit had crouched low and panting on the green, putting his ears flat back and rolling his shrinking eyes upward. This had been too piteous a sight for Seumas. With appetites grossly worked up by our exertions, we went back intrepidly to the fireplace, and cooked and ate another hideous disc of dough.

  In the night the wind slackened. The morning brought a struggling sun and a light which showed the seas breaking more gently on Ardnamurchan. So it was back to the packing again, the long scramble up and down to the shore, the stowing and trimming and stripping for the fray afloat. We could not launch, because of the tide, until well into afternoon. But there we were at last, away from Mull, with Ardmore Bay receding, and the open seas coming up hard on the wind to our left as we lost the land.

  All along, Ardnamurchan Point had been the pondered obstacle. Most of our hazards so far had come on us quickly, but this was one we knew of, and there was a release of elation to be now spearing the Point with our bows. It was a gradual building-up of effect as we went on this leg north, with greater and greater seas gathering up under us, and the wind behind them. We were frail enough, but we were the first objects the waves had met since mid-Atlantic.

  By the time the canoes were half-way between Mull and the Point we were amongst an enormous motion. This was the full Atlantic swell, more than a hundred yards from crest to crest. In the valleys we lost all sight of the land, and even felt no wind until we lifted again almost to the top of the weather slope of the new wave. We paddled many yards apart, and were out of sight of each other for seven seconds or more at a time. It was a sight to remember for a lifetime, as Seumas slid up the wave slope away from me, hung high on the crest with his keel showing, and the green daylight through the
water under him. Then he would seem to fall over the far edge, and vanish. But I would rise in my turn, alone and unseen, and eventually poise on a ridge; and there he would be in the next valley, paddling surely, and we would be together again for seconds more. The surfaces of these great waves were pitted with smaller waves borne along with them, some of them breaking. We were able to meet each breaker as it came, although it was a new problem to have to encounter these, as it were, on the side of a hill, and not on an even keel.

  At times, when it was possible to do more than glance, I would see Seumas yawning widely. This was an involuntary gant to which he was subject in broken water. It seemed to be brought on by the saturation of his throat with the briny air. It was, under the lively conditions, in no way a signal of boredom or indifference! Hereabouts, Seumas lost a bandage which had been hampering him. Two days before, as we were making ourselves comfortable at Ardmore, a branch of firewood had slashed him across the thumb, cutting almost to the bone. He still has the scar, but it speaks much for our fitness that the wound was already closed, and the salt water washed the bandage off and away.

  As we went farther there was more wind, and occasionally, not far from us, one of the main waves would itself break and explode like a depth charge and send along a heaving crest of white, travelling fast, and as great as a villa roof. We lost a little time through being wary of these breakers, paddling quickly off the crests if they seemed restless, or shouldering up to them if retreat was too late. We had fortune in that we never had one breaking where we sat, but the vigilance kept us occupied, and when we were well enough accustomed to this sailing to look around casually, it was to find ourselves well abreast of the face of Ardnamurchan. Three miles ahead, we could see for the first time the slim needle of the lighthouse which is Britain’s first signal westward.

  We kept at least a mile off the land as we went, for there was a great inshore commotion at the cliff-foot, and white water was climbing and booming on the rocks. A thick shadow of cloud suddenly darkened the day above us, and we turned to see a Fleetwood trawler coming up astern on the end of his smoke, as if he were fussing along on a tattered leash. They saw us, and came alongside, slowing down. The skipper came to his bridge window, pointing and beckoning, offering us a lift. He was near, but also had the binoculars on us, since in that water the dark blue canvas must have been hardly visible, and we would appear like two men walking waist-deep. But we waved him on. By this time all his crew were at the rail, and the whistle was blowing at us. They waved their way ahead. It was fearsome to see how they rolled, with their masts and funnel almost pushing under.

  Abreast of Ardnamurchan Lighthouse we ate our sandwiches, myself handing his to Seumas on the blade of the paddle, and he snatching as we slid and climbed. From here the isle of Muck was due north, but it was lost in a sea-haze. We had never before gone round Ardnamurchan without seeing, not only the Small Isles, with near Muck, the unforgettable skylines of Eigg and Rum, and distant Canna, but also the Cuillins of Skye. Today there was a dark veil, and it was into this we stroked for the last eight miles.

  Here was a very eerie experience. We took a course by the pocket-compass on the island ahead which we could not see, and set off firmly, for the day was passing. Behind us, Ardnamurchan grew fainter and was taken into the mist, while ahead, no land broke the veil. It was a strange and unsought moment of navigation, and the sea seemed great and dark, with all its ceaseless immediate problems, and this wider one as well. But as we pressed on, the hills of Rum, high up, came first, and then, in front, the near low ground of the Muck shore.

  Two hours of strong paddling from the lighthouse brought us to some shelter eastward of the south point of Muck. The harbour of Port Mor faced us, dyked by skerries at its entrance.

  We were now tiring, and the dusk was coming; so instead of taking the proper channel through, between the patches of Dubh-Sgeir and Bogha Rudha, we sneaked in westward of Dubh-Sgeir, among surfing fangs of rock. After rounding Ardnamurchan Point, and coming this length, we were, we felt, entitled to fortune. In this precarious manner we passed safely into the harbour bay, and took easily the half-mile leg in to the little pier. All the way, there grew upon its short concrete top a lengthening row of spectators. Before we came alongside they numbered about 20 – at least two-thirds of the total population. Among the first words we heard as we stepped out and lifted up the canoes were: ‘You’ll be hungry. Come in and have your tea!’

  The houses of the village made a little row along the shore of the inner harbour. We pitched our tent at the head of the bay, and soon were eating and thawing at a spread table before a kitchen fire. It was dark before the eating and the talk were over. One of the sons improvised a lantern from a candle stuck into a glass jam-jar, and lit us round to the tent. Some of the men crouched inside with us for a while and talked more. And then they went away – and oh, the sleep! … the sleep!

  We stayed for three days in Muck. It is the most southerly of the group of four inhabited Small Isles – Rum, Eigg and Canna are the others. The Gaelic etymology is obscure, and this makes tolerable the wit which, in an Anglicised setting, has given them the ingenious nickname of the Cocktail Isles. The Small Isles form a parish of Inverness-shire, Eigg being the headquarters of such common services as the minister, the Roman Catholic priest, and the doctor. These travel by motor-boat on their administrations from island to island, when the weather allows. The main transport headquarters is Muck, in whose ownership and anchorage is the strong motor-boat which services the inter-island needs. The isles, all but Muck, are precariously on the telephone. Muck is also excluded from the steamer calls which touch the other three twice a week or so. The whole group is a scattering of land lumps immediately to the south of Skye, and level with Barra, the most southerly of the Outer Hebrides. Eigg and Canna are the two most visited. Rum is inhospitable by proprietorial intent, and Muck’s bad coast and off-shore waters tend to keep even the cruising yachtsmen away.

  Accordingly we were greatly welcomed, and the whole of the first forenoon was devoted to an inspection of the canoes. Before evening, almost every soul in the island – men, women, and children – had been embarked for a solo paddle in the bay. Most of the younger people, adept in boats, were at home instantly in the novel structure. The only grossly unskilled, but by no means uneasy, passenger was the island herdsman, a born landlubber, although no part of his range was above half a mile from the sea, and a considerable sea at that.

  Muck is immensely fertile. The laird, Mr MacEwan, farms almost the whole of it, apart from the small croft lands about the harbour. He showed us enthusiastically round the rich knolls and valleys of his land. At that time he was spending his winters skiing in Switzerland and the rest of the year farming in Muck – an entrancing blend. In his hayfields, the haystacks jostled one another, so thick had been the growth. His fat sheep ambled and gorged the ripe grass. On the west side of the island we saw an agricultural prodigy – fields and acres of carrots flourishing. The carrot-fly disease is unknown here, and the wind lifts an endless spray of the powdered-shell sand from the beach on to the fields, which enjoy a steady snow of lime.

  The carrots were mighty, and great also was our enthusiasm to spread the news of this fertility. This led us to overreach ourselves in the matter of press illustrations, for the story we got ready to send about Muck would be better, we judged, if one of the outsize carrots could accompany it. We obtained such a carrot from the laird and wedged it into the cardboard container from a whisky bottle, coiling its long delicate tail round the inside of the parcel. The whole was wrapped and tied, and addressed, along with the story, to the late celebrated John James Miller, at that time the agricultural editor of the Daily Record. We learned later that when the parcel arrived in his mail in its familiar shape, he tore it joyfully open. His rage was dreadful when he pulled forth, instead of a bottle, the earthy club of carrot which had been our proud exhibit, and he hurled it from him. It lodged in one of the immense waste-paper containers which
buoy editorial floors, and the Muck carrots never got a mention.

  One of the lads of the motor-boat took our story and the carrot parcel to post in Tobermory on their next trip. We waved the launch away, on a bright morning, and soon struck our tent and stowed gear for the journey to Eigg, the nearest island to the north. This time we went through the proper passage, and at once hit the swell, still heaving up from the south-west, and therefore going with us.

  The whole island came to watch us on our way, and even the school came out. They lined the low brae on the eastern shore in a long waving row, and a little apart stood the laird, offering us his salute. It was an ancient sight, a picture of distinction, that we saw from the cockpits. The spectacle they saw was more mobile. We were out of sight oftener than in it, and we laughed, as we climbed and fell again, to see them straining to detect us among the water, and then pointing suddenly, and waving again, as we appeared.