by Neil M. Gunn
Often he was to awake like this in the future, and then, half-asleep, have a dream in which he could to some degree command the actions of the figures but more particularly his own actions.
Now he saw Una before him, and so clearly that the suppressed excitement, which always bothered him in her presence, got such a hold upon him that he could not think of one clever or cutting thing to say, for Jim Dewar, the new fish-curer’s clerk (Special’s nephew), was always nosing about Una’s section of the gutting station when the girls were there. A trash of a young fellow from Wick, with his fine English and fine boots, his laughs and little readymade jokes! But it was difficult to tell him off, for he would have been quite capable of laughing and saying, “You’re jealous!” And at least Finn knew, thank goodness, that he was not jealous. So when he saw Jim making headway in that direction he simply kept out of the way, indifferent. Once Una had flushed when he had come on them together and he had given what he had hoped was an amused, sarcastic smile. “Here, Finn!” Jim had called. But he had answered with a vague salute, hardly turning round: “I’m busy.” When he had reached the boat, however, his heart was knocking like a fist on a door. But he had done not badly. If only he could just cut them up with jocular indifference and move on, at some critical moment….
In his morning-dream, the desire to do this became so strong that he heard voices, and when he pulled back the sail and lifted his head, Roddie and Henry were talking together.
More than ever now was it strange to be upon the sea, and at the same time far in between the land. This had struck him last night, but only as part of the background to the long day’s end. Here was a new world, with flat shores of peat bog rising on either hand to mountain ridges whose tops were blotted out in trailing mists. There was a chill in the wet wind that was yet soft on the cheeks, and beyond the rising ground on the off side the rain could be seen like a white curtain, half transparent, moving, and yet remaining in the same place. Straight across the loch was a string of croft houses, and dotted here and there were single houses, but no smoke rose from any of them, for it was early yet. A curlew fluted overhead. Finn saw its brown body and long beak, and then along the shore ran the sharp cries of sea-birds whose names he did not know.
Rob poked his head up, blinking and saying, “Uh?” in a comical way, wondering for the moment where he was. The left side of his mouth twisted up, putting a wrinkle under the nostril. Hunching his shoulders, he blew a noisy breath through his lips. But Callum had to be gripped and shaken, when he said quickly, “What? Where? Eh?” and was ready for any attack.
The wind was not so strong as it had been last night. The rain had drawn the sting out of it, and even if, outside, they might have to take a reef in, they could not wish for it in a better airt. The only trouble was the poor visibility. A mile from shore and the land would be gone. But bright weather would now mean a shift of wind.
“We could go out and see what it’s like, anyway,” suggested Callum, who was fond of action.
“That’s what I think,” Roddie agreed. “We could always come back.”
The decision brightened them up, for to sit here in this weather with no shelter or warmth would become wearisome.
There was no hurry, however, because the tide was flowing, and their minds turned to hot food, which they hadn’t had since they left home. They brought the boat in near the shore and Finn leapt, followed by Callum and Rob. If they couldn’t find any life in a croft house, they would be sure to find a dry peat and perhaps a dry stick, and Rob said that, given both and a tinder-box, he would raise a fire at the bottom of the sea—and they had the tinder-box.
About a mile from the boat, Rob fell foul of a collie dog while he was robbing a peat-stack. There was great commotion and much shouting, with Callum and Finn helpless in laughter at a little distance, when a man appeared in nothing but his shirt. High words from him, and Rob started talking in his solemn, natural way. Callum and Finn heard that they had been caught in a terrible storm last night after a long sea voyage and were all but shipwrecked, with two men left on board whose bowels were in a knot for lack of a drop of warm food. “I was half-wondering if I might take a peat from your stack, for we did not want to disturb decent folk at so early an hour, but your dog here….”
After that, it was the inside of the kitchen, with the wife behind the curtain across the bed, and three eager young faces staring at them from a low bed like what Finn himself had once slept in. Only everything here was poorer, more congested. His breeches on, the man was now on his knees blowing the kindling to a flame, when his wife called him. “If you take them out,” she said in a whisper they all heard, “I’ll get up and have the porridge ready in no time.”
Outside, as Rob was telling the man about the Wells of Swinna, Finn, in order to avoid the wink that he knew was waiting in Callum’s face, looked away and saw a boat coming clear of a long island in the middle of the loch, and heading for sea. She was plainly a fishing boat of their own class. At the same moment a piercing whistle reached them.
“It’s Roddie!” cried Finn. “He’ll be wanting to follow her,” and he pointed to the boat.
“We’ll maybe be back,” said Rob to the man.
They hurried over the bogs. Roddie was holding the shore with the boat-hook and they quickly got on board. Up went the sails, and when they had cleared their anchorage they could just see the boat a mile or more ahead. “She’s a Wick boat,” said Henry.
They lost her for a time, but got a glimpse of her again as the inlet opened. She was clearly holding to the west side and therefore, beyond any doubt, bound for Stornoway. The curtains of small white rain, that made the wind from the hills visible, were troublesome, but in a clear space they saw her standing towards a tall, dark rock (Dubh Sgeir) and, once round it, head for the west.
She was probably a foot or two longer than Seafoam, and seemed certainly to have more canvas, for though Roddie gave his own boat all she could carry, he could not reduce the distance between them. For a long time, until they made Faraid Head, they lost her, and Finn called out excitedly when they picked her up again.
But Roddie was saying little. The wind was not anything like so strong as it had been last night. He did not care for the sky. His problem, without a compass in this thick weather, was complicated. He knew that the Butt of Lewis lay pretty nearly west of Cape Wrath, but the westerly stream would take them down the Minch. However, by going straight out past the Cape on the line of the land and then bearing a few points south, it would be impossible to miss the Long Island, the whole Outer Hebrides, which stretched in a line for over a hundred miles! And the distance to Stornoway was not so long as their yesterday’s trip.
All the same, his sight strained after the boat in front, and held her, off and on, until she reached the Cape.
Finn had often heard of Cape Wrath and now had plenty of time to gaze on its towering crags against which white sea-birds floated like blown feathers, their high cries sounding afar off and inward, in echo of rock and cavern. It inspired the crew with awe and held them to silence, and none the less because the sea around it was to-day comparatively calm with, however, that ominous long swing and heave of the waters that broke in deep white. Peril was clearly held on uneasy rein, and the rock-brows stared over crested seas to an uttermost Arctic. Roddie alone paid no attention to the precipice and, holding his boat towards the Stag Rock, which was awash in the hollows of the swell, scanned the westerly sea. Then for the last time he caught a glimpse of that fugitive vessel which had led him on so elusively. To Roddie it seemed she was heading straight west. His instinct for a moment troubled him for it wanted to bring the Seafoam a few points to the south’ard. He had to make his decision now and he made it without consulting anyone. They saw him look at the sky, searching for the sun, for in between the showers its presence could be vaguely discerned in a dissipated silvery brightness. Then he settled to the tiller, his body upright, his eyes ahead, and followed where the vessel had disappeared. No-one
spoke.
As Finn lay against the nets looking back, he watched the Cape slowly being shrouded, until insensibly it passed from his sight, and he shut his eyes and opened them to make sure that it really had vanished. As he gazed around, he could see nothing but tumbled waters over a radius of several miles, it seemed to him, for it was weather that lay on the sea rather than fog. “There’s weather on that sky” was the home saying.
Rob broke the spell that had fallen on them:
“Well, I don’t know how you feel, but I could do with a bite.”
“Trust Rob to remember his belly!” said Callum.
They were suddenly smiling in the happiest mood, munching away at the bread and salt beef, but going canny on the milk, for there was very little of it left. It was a pity, too, that they hadn’t at least put some more water in the cask, though no one said as much. Salt beef was bad for raising a thirst. However, by the afternoon or early evening they were bound to hit land somewhere.
“What are you looking for, Rob?” asked Callum. “Expecting anyone?”
“No,” drawled Rob, who had been peering over the sea, “not exactly.”
Callum chuckled and threw Finn a wink. “Well, you can’t say you have been here before.”
“No, I haven’t been here before,” replied Rob, “but I may know about it for all that.”
“Know what?”
“You may be a smart fellow, Callum, but your laugh sometimes reminds me on the lad who was living on the island I’m looking for. It’s the island of Rona and it lies somewhere in these seas. Have you heard tell of it?” he asked Roddie.
“Yes,” said Roddie, “but I hope it’s well to the north. Otherwise it’s a long trip we’re on.” Smiling he bit on his bannock, eyes ahead.
“Well, I know, whatever, that Lewis is their nearest port of call,” replied Rob, “so it can’t be that far away, surely.”
“What happened to the lad?” asked Finn.
“It was his first trip to Stornoway, and there for the first time he saw a horse. The horse neighed, and he thought it was laughing at him,” said Rob.
“Got me that time!” allowed Callum.
“Ach, it’s maybe not so difficult as you think,” said Rob, picking a crumb off his breast.
“Is it a big island?” asked Finn.
“No,” said Rob, with his slow, sideways nod, “it’s only big enough to hold a few families, but they have it well cultivated and they live well enough. They‘re terrible hospitable, if you land there. They’d kill a sheep for you and give you a bit of all they have. Oh, a fine people, by all accounts.”
“I thought they had all died out,” said Roddie.
“Yes—and no,” replied Rob, screwing his eyebrows. “A terrible calamity fell upon them, but a new lot was set on the island after that; though how they’re doing, I haven’t heard. But it was sad enough what befell once. It seems that a swarm of rats came from the sea, and ate their grain, and after that some wild sailors landed and killed their bull. The factor of the island reached there about a year afterwards, and found no life, only a woman with a child at her breast, both lying dead beside a rock.”
There was silence for a little. “It’s the sort of thing a factor would find,” said Henry, for he had been touched by the story.
“Ach, well,” said Rob, “he couldn’t help it, likely. A queer thing how rats come from the ocean in swarms like that. But it’s true enough. I have heard of it in other connections. Strange things happen among the beasts of the world, if we only knew.”
“Stranger things happen among the humans of the world,” said Henry, “particularly when one or two of them have the power and are after the money. The only important difference between the real rat and the human rat is that you can kill the real rat.”
“Talking of money,” said Rob, “the thing that struck me about Rona—and this is as true as I’m sitting here, for it’s all written down—was that they had no money. You see, there was nowhere to spend it, so it would have been no use to them whatever way. Isn’t that strange? Yet they lived happy without it, and they had their meal and fish and sheep and cattle—in fact, all the human body needs. But I remember that in particular—how happy they lived. It struck me.”
“And how did they pay their rents?” asked Henry.
“Well now,” said Rob thoughtfully, “well now, that’s—I don’t think it was specially mentioned—let me see——”
“Didn’t they pay it long ago,” said Finn, “in oats and butter and fish——”
“Exactly,” Rob interrupted him. “I knew there was something. Man, and do you know what they would put the grain into, for they hadn’t bags? It comes back to me now. They would skin a sheep whole, and then tie up the openings at the legs, and there was your bag! And they would fill that with grain. They would do it while you waited. And, of course, they had the wool for the weaving like ourselves.”
“But what would a young fellow do,” asked Callum, “if there wasn’t a girl for him?”
“I can tell you that, too,” said Rob. “It’s all written down and it’s no lies. They were a good-living people and had their own little place of worship where they said a prayer. And sometimes one would come to see how they were getting on with the religion. Well, once he came. Now there were two young fellows there after the one girl. And one of them said, to him who came, couldn’t each of them have the girl year about to wife? But he shook his head at that and said, no, that wouldn’t be right, that wouldn’t be the thing at all. So one of the young fellows, who was desperate keen on having a wife, even if it was only for a while at a time, was very put out, oh, sore disappointed he was. And then all at once he remembered the shilling he had got from a sailor, and he offered it, saying, Will you buy me a wife in Stornoway for that?”
A gust of wind carried the laughter from the hold, a slash of rain trickled down their smiling faces, the boat rose and plunged, lay over, and Roddie was about to let go the mainsail sheet, when she rose to it and the sting of the gust passed. Passed quite away, leaving a lull. Roddie stowed the after-sail, waiting for the next gust. There were flurries of uncertain wind—and then a calm.
This was what he had feared more than anything else. The wind had blown itself out of the south-east, and so he had lost that steering airt. As they swung at the oars, keeping her, as he hoped, to their original course, he searched the sky. From long practice he could give a pretty accurate guess at time or compass point by glimpsing the sun’s position. But there was no sun now. Every minute he expected the wind to come at them from a new airt, but the heaviness seemed to clog even the weather, and their boat wallowed in the troughs of the sea. When this had gone on long past what they felt was the height of the day, Roddie knew that the heavens would not clear and that, as far as making any sure landfall was concerned, they were rowing blind.
It must have been well on in the afternoon when the wind hit them. Roddie judged it to be from the sou’-west, and sailed as close to it as he could, once going over for a reach on the port tack to counter any northerly drift. It started to blow so hard that Roddie had to look out for lumps of sea, and soon it was a fight with the elements. It was good to watch Roddie now, felt Finn. His eyes were like living drops of the ocean itself and you could see the exaltation of the fight concentrated in them. When they judged, and succeeded, the skin sometimes creased in fine ironic lines round the eyes, and once he looked at Finn suddenly, with a friendly smile, and said something with a quiet humour that Finn did not catch.
Though Roddie told them to keep a sharp look-out for land, they neither saw nor heard anything but the sea, and when the light was sensibly diminishing, Roddie’s face went expressionless as stone.
CHAPTER XV
STORM AND PRECIPICE
All through the night they fought the sea, manning the pump in turns, though they shipped little more than lashings of wave-tops, for Roddie’s hand felt for side and crest with a skill that was most part pure divination. It was some time in the fi
rst of the night that the seas attained proportions beyond anything they had ever encountered before. Whole hills of water seemed to come at them with great valleys between. For hours Roddie was cut off from his crew in a darkness as of winter. Once when she staggered as she climbed and they felt for a terrible moment that the wave had got them, was holding them, and was going to throw them clean over, she choked shudderingly within herself, but held, reached the crest, balanced, then quivered as she caught the wind and plunged on, eased by Roddie’s hand. Clear and heartening came Roddie’s voice: “That was a bad one, boys!”
There were a few elemental jokes of the kind, with words plucked out of the mouth and blown in tatters into the darkness, before the grey of the morning came upon their half-stupified bodies; came to reveal nothing far as the eye could reach but countless herds of tumbling seas. That they had lived through the night seemed now more of a miracle than before.
“Henry,” cried Roddie, “some water all round, but go canny with it. I’m dry.”
“If you take only a mouthful,” called Henry to each, “you can have a mouthful after your piece.”
As they munched their bere bannocks, they could not keep their eyes off the waves. But Roddie could now see what was coming at him, and as the light grew it seemed to them that the wind eased.
“Keep your eye lifting for Rona, Rob,” called Callum.
“Where do you think we are?” Henry asked Roddie.
