Over the Seas

by Josephine Bell

  ‘So.’ MacDonald gave his new crewman a steady look that reminded Alec of when he first became a fugitive and Captain Smithson engaged him in his brig Sunflower in the Pool of London.

  But, as before, he was asked no further questions about his flight, neither the cause of it nor his detailed plans for his future. The trawler master merely said, ‘Thy name, laddie?’

  Alec hesitated. At Eilan Donan he was known as Jock Bridie, because that was written in the testimonial to his seamanship, written by Captain Smithson, and that he had shown to the constable to prove his ability. So as Jock Bridie he would be sought by the MacRaes around Loch Duich. But on Skye so far he had given no name and might use his own.

  ‘Alec,’ he answered, but gave no surname, only adding, ‘I learned the craft off the eastern shores.’

  ‘So,’ MacDonald answered again, seeming satisfied. ‘Then come aboard, Sandy, and show me thy competence. I have a mended mainsail to bend on and make ready. If the wind sets fair we leave at sundown.’

  ‘At slack water on the flood,’ Alec suggested, to show that he understood the meaning of this.

  The skipper nodded. As Alec soon found, the trawler master spoke as little as possible, but gave his orders clearly in a carrying voice and though not overbold in his manoeuvres never hesitated to take quick decisions when these were needed.

  The vessel he now went aboard was well found and reasonably ship-shape. There were two men already there, one elderly with white hair and a lined brown face, the other not much older than the boy who had met Alec upon his arrival. No wonder MacDonald had engaged him so easily, Alec thought. With these two weak members as crew he could hardly have ventured to sail. He was amazed that they had survived the storm when a presumably stronger man had been lost overboard.

  As if the skipper understood his thoughts MacDonald said, ‘Ye see how I was placed. Geordie was lost when we gybed in the storm and the boom struck him, in the neck as it went across.’

  Feeble hands on the tiller, Alec wondered, or on the main-sheet? Perhaps neither. In a confused sea such accidents could happen through no man’s fault, but simply by the will of God according to His inscrutable purpose. So he bowed his head to convey his awe and acceptance of the Divine Will and waited to be given his orders.

  Until they sailed Alec was kept busy preparing the ship for the voyage. When the sails were in order, the halliards ready to pull them up, the sheets run through the blocks and coiled down, the three members of the crew were set to lay the trawl ready in the stern to cast overboard when the word was given.

  All being now prepared, they were called on shore to the master’s small cabin, where a substantial and to Alec very welcome dinner awaited them. He had eaten nothing since his early breakfast and felt he had not yet made up for his fasting on the previous day and the night of the raid.

  As on that night a gentle off-shore breeze came up at sundown. It funnelled along the Sound of Sleat as it had done in Loch Duich, but this time blew in a southerly direction, much to MacDonald’s delight. He waited until the tide, just on the turn, began to swing his trawler round to face the stream and the wind. Alec pulled up the foresail while the old man and the boy got up the anchor, then backed the sail to turn the boat from the land. Next, springing to the mast at a word from the skipper, he pulled up the mainsail, hardened the sheets of both sails and they were away into midstream before the two hands had managed to secure the anchor in its chocks and dispose more or less neatly of the chain attached to it.

  MacDonald’s face softened a little from satisfaction at the easy success of their start, but he said nothing as Alec moved aft to hear his further orders. He stared ahead of him as the trawler gathered speed, the wind still behind them. It was not until the light began to fade that he called to the old man to set up a lantern at the bows and bring another aft to where he stood.

  ‘We should pass Armadale within the hour from now,’ he said. ‘Take the tiller and keep the course. We must clear the Point of Sleat before we let down our net.’

  He moved away forward to speak to the old man and the boy, leaving Alec to guide the boat, an easy task with that light but sufficient wind, on the beam now as the Sound widened to the open sea and a truer breeze filled their sails.

  It was quite dark when they cleared the coast of Skye and began to trawl. The net went out smoothly but its weight, even without a catch, slowed up the vessel considerably so that it seemed to Alec that they scarcely moved. MacDonald however took this as a matter of course. Nor was he put out by the darkness. All night they trawled between and around the islands of Rhum and Eigg and Muck. At dawn they were just south of the last small shape of the trio and moving slowly west with the promontory of Ardnamurchan about five miles distant.

  MacDonald had sent the boy forward to make porridge on a little brazier fed with peat they kept in partial shelter under the counter in the bows. The old man stood by the mast staring out seawards, where a bank of clouds began to move before a newly risen north-westerly breeze. Presently he raised a hand and pointed.

  ‘Aye, Tam,’ the skipper called to him. ‘Wind’s backed to nor’-west at last. We’ll maybe get a bit blow to help us.’

  ‘Nay, master,’ Tam shouted. ‘’ Tis not the wind I’m showing ye. Look to yon craft in the lee of Rhum. They be none of ourn. Nor fishing, neither.’

  MacDonald looked, frowned, yelled for the boy.

  ‘Up the mast, lad! Tell me what ye see!’

  The boy wasted no time; his report was forbidding. Five ships, three of them pirates, he thought, with two prizes in their, midst, creeping along in the lee to stay hidden till the rising sun through a misty glare should hide them further. He scrambled down to the deck and stood panting, his face full of fear,

  MacDonald called Alec to stand by the mainsheet as he gybed his boat to a standstill. He had no need to give orders for the next move. They must get in the catch and run for it if they had time. If not they must abandon the net and run.

  Hauling, heaving, panting, the four men tugged and lifted. As they got a good purchase the net came up more easily, fish spilling out into the deep bottom amidships in a slippery, gleaming mass of silver iridescent scales; flapping, jumping bodies everywhere. The fish were all over them, burying their feet, tripping them as they tried to move, still hauling, still gathering in the folds of the great net.

  At last the flood of fish ended, the net grew suddenly slack, sending Alec with his last great pull falling backwards into the seething heap. MacDonald leaped to the tiller and flung it across.

  ‘Wear ship!’ he bawled, and his crew, still panting, struggled to push the boom across so that the sail filled and they began again to move.

  Perhaps just in time, Alec thought, perhaps not, as he gazed over the stern at that distant group, no longer creeping in the lee of Rhum but running out where they caught the wind, freshening now all the time. He saw with relief that they themselves had made a square drift while they struggled with the catch, partly because the wind, being free, had reached them with more force than those skulking ones, partly because they were being helped by the tide carrying them forward towards the point of Ardnamurchan.

  ‘Tell me what ye see, Sandy,’ MacDonald ordered, keeping his own eyes on his course towards Mull. ‘Do we keep our distance?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Alec answered. ‘But we lost too much while we took the catch. If we could put on but a couple of knots—’

  ‘We are before the wind,’ MacDonald answered angrily. ‘I make for yon point to turn into the Sound of Mull. Once round that they will lose sight of us and we may reach Tobermory in safety.’

  ‘Have you another foresail?’ Alec asked. ‘A larger one?’

  ‘What use is that, running?’ MacDonald said, his anger growing. ‘Ye see our present sail flaps as it can only do as we run.’

  ‘And a spar not in use?’ Alec persisted, paying no attention to the other’s objections.

  MacDonald shook his head but old Tam caught Alec’s s
leeve and pulled him forward. From the recess where the boy, seemingly unhindered by the pile of fish, was again stirring the porridge, the old man pulled a spare foresail and untied a long boathook that was lashed to the vessel’s side. He had understood Alec’s intention and the urgency of their need.

  The skipper understood it too when Alec had set the larger sail and with the boathook lashed to the clew had pushed it out on the opposite side to the mainsail. As there was no means of securing the boathook inboard he tucked the end under a cleat at the foot of the mast and held it in place in his strong hands.

  Tam stumbled aft to MacDonald, who made no comment at what had been done without his direct orders. He was a fair man and shrewd. He had explained the need for increased speed to Alec, who had taken action to produce it. And had indeed produced it, he felt almost at once in the increased strain on the tiller. The boat pushed forward through the growing waves that slapped the sides more forcibly, sending showers of spray on board. The dying fish in the deep bottom leaped again in sudden hope, the two sails stiffened into sculptured shapes and very slowly the hulls of the pursuers dwindled as the distance between them grew longer.

  In a little more than two hours the point of Ardnamurchan was some five miles away on their beam on the port side and the island of Coll a like distance to starboard. But MacDonald held his course until he drew near to the northern shores of Mull, for he was afraid that when he turned to make his way into the Sound of Mull, he would lose much of the fresh breeze that had helped him and at the same time have to alter the novel sail arrangement that Alec had set up.

  But in this he was mistaken. As in the Sound of Sleat the wind funnelled into these narrow waters also, following them round to the entrance of the harbour at Tobermory, where Alec released the foresail and MacDonald rounded up in great style and brought his vessel to against the quay, where Tam and the boy made her fast, while Alec leaned against the mast, rubbing his numbed and stiffened hands together.

  It was the skipper himself who brought him a bowl of porridge, made him sit on the combing aft and since he could not yet hold a spoon fed him with his own hands.

  ‘We owe thee more than thanks,’ he said. ‘Our catch, our ship, our lives most like.’

  Though Alec did not understand all the words he could see the sense of them in the skipper’s eyes and bowed a formal acknowledgement, saying in his own Scots tongue, ‘And my ain life, sir, which I hae no inclination to lose. The fear of death is a fine invigorator.’

  MacDonald stared. In his turn he did not understand Alec’s form of English, but he saw in his gestures, the graceful bow, the sweeping hand, that accompanied the words, a very different person from the needy fisherman who had contracted to sail with him to Oban. There was a mystery behind this young man’s plight, he decided and he had no place in his own life for mysteries, particularly not those of strangers. So he turned away and calling to Tam and the boy to follow him he led them to one of the row of fisherfolk’s cabins that stood behind the quay facing the harbour wall.

  Alec understood the skipper’s stiff reversal. He too had been suddenly afraid of the rush of feeling between them, but he regretted his self-betrayal. It had been part of his excitement, the relief from real peril, the joy of success. Together, for old Tam and the boy had little part in it after the catch was hauled aboard, MacDonald and he had defeated the best efforts of the enemy ships to capture them. They had shared an outpouring of emotion in which each displayed his inmost self to the other. And he, Alec, in his sudden retreat from this dangerous intimacy had destroyed the best part of his disguise. He followed the three ahead of him, keeping a respectful distance and ready for any adverse move by the sturdy figure in the lead of their small procession.

  There was no adverse move, but a hearty welcome, with hand shaking and back slapping. MacDonald’s brother was some years younger than the skipper. He had a lively wife and two subdued children, who approached their uncle shyly and ran away out of the house as soon as he had accepted their greeting.

  Food, plain and coarse, but abundant, as in Skye, was soon on the table and after all had eaten the skipper had to tell his story, which he did at considerable length with much reference to Alec’s strength and resource, which the latter gathered from the frequent glances in his direction. When the tale was done Tam and the boy got up to return to the boat and Alec rose to go with them, but MacDonald stopped him.

  ‘Stay thou, Sandy. Let them go. They have much they can do on board to get us fit to sail again with the catch.’

  ‘Today?’ Alec asked, moving from foot to foot and giving frequent glances at the open door.

  ‘Nay,’ said the brother, whose name was Hamish. ‘Ye sleep here tonight, brother, and thy crew may guard the catch. Am not I to be with ye down to Oban?’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘My home is here,’ Hamish told him.

  There was a further discussion while Alec waited, still standing, hoping for leave to go. At last MacDonald turned to him and said, ‘Did’st take in what we decided? The seas going south from Oban by the open route round Jura and Islay and on by the Mull of Kintyre are infested by foreign rogues, so Hamish hath it. I have no arms to repel them. Even with thy newfangled set of my canvas I could not outsail them without I had as good a start of them as we had today. With Hamish’s help I’ll get me back here from Oban. But if ye would go into England ye must leave us at that place.’

  ‘Would I find another berth there to continue my voyage?’ Alec asked, disregarding the threat and warning before him.

  The two men consulted again and shook their heads.

  ‘Overland, then?’ Alec said, wondering how he could find a way among the manifold tongues of land and numerous sea lochs and inland waters that lay, he understood, between this coast and the western Borders.

  Again they shook their heads.

  ‘We will consult them we sell our catch to in Oban,’ the skipper said and with that the brothers fell silent and Alec left them to return to the boat where he meant to go over all the gear and make any repairs that needed doing.

  He found the vessel surrounded, hidden, assailed, by a grey-white cloud of screaming gulls. Having beaten them off sufficiently to find his way aboard he discovered Tam gutting the catch at lightning speed while the boy threw the offal overboard, attacking with the boathook in a sweeping movement those gulls that flew in too close.

  ‘Have a care, laddie,’ Alec cried, as the metal end of the boathook flew past his face. ‘I did not hold that spar for six hours to have it gouge out my eyes.’

  The boy laughed, apologised, but continued his sweeping, which was indeed very necessary. Alec settled down beside Tam to share the gutting operation. He had learned the skill in his father’s boats and had not forgotten it. Tam evidently considered this a better guarantee of his genuineness than any act of seamanship he had displayed on their hazardous voyage. But he said little. Like the skipper he found that words were rarely needed at sea. There was noise enough there from the elements to subdue the chatter of men’s tongues. Also he had never had much he wanted to say beyond ‘Aye sir’ when the master spoke to him.

  The next day, with Hamish added to their number, MacDonald took his catch down the Sound of Mull and through the narrow strait between that island and Lismore to the port of Oban in Argyll. Here the brothers sold the catch for a good price, since it was an ample one and supplies, they learned, had become scarce of late on account of the many attacks from Ireland upon the Scottish fishing fleet.

  ‘But the king whom we never see because he comes not back to his own country, hath sent frigates to beat them off,’ they were told. ‘They be expected any day. To preserve our boats and subdue our quarrelling clans to the north.’

  Alec exchanged significant looks with the fishermen at this. They remembered his difficulty and inquired how to advise him.

  ‘Ye maun tak the coast road to Lochgilphead,’ the fish merchant told him in wholly understandable Scots, though he had spoken Gaelic
before. ‘There ye may find some craft to take ye into the Firth of Clyde, where there be coasters and larger ships trading into England, Ireland, France—where ye will.’

  ‘England and the Channel ports,’ Alec told him, smiling. Then added in a burst of confidence, ‘My father trades fish on our eastern side—frae Fife.’

  ‘Is that so?’ the merchant answered. ‘Fife? A wide, cold and treacherous sea, I’m told, Ye’ll no be afeared o’ these sheltered waters, I’m thinking.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘The sea is ever to be feared,’ Alec said. ‘I fear these many rocks and difficult currents hereabouts. To know them as our skipper here doth and in all weathers is the work of a lifetime.’

  ‘Och, aye,’ the merchant said, translating for MacDonald’s benefit.

  Alec was fed and housed that night and the next morning set out for another long walk. He had a substantial share of the catch money as wages in his pocket and a more worthy bundle than before on his back. The sun was warm and the sea smiled below him and at every ten miles or so small hamlets or little fishing villages broke the monotony of the journey, providing food and shelter, too. On the third day he came to Ardislaig on Loch Fyne, where as Hamish MacDonald had told him he found a boat to take him to the Isle of Bute. At Rothesay he found himself at last looking across the Firth of Clyde, where ships of all sizes passed to and fro across the water from the great port of Glasgow.

  Chapter Five

  It took Alec three days to find a ship to his liking that would carry him south into England and bring him to Bristol. The first of such that he discovered rejected him, being suspicious of his somewhat wild appearance added to his great stature. Also of the state of his testimonial from Captain Smithson of Sunflower. The second captain he approached could not read but did not wish to disclose this fact to Alec. As the latter was afraid to reveal his own ability in that respect, seeing he wanted a berth as an ordinary seaman, he got no further with this one either. But opposition, as usual, only provoked him to harder effort and the third southerly bound coaster he approached, already loaded with coal from the Lothian mines, was not only short of a crewman, but welcomed Alec’s size and evident strength without paying much attention to the testimonial.