by Neil M. Gunn
As each one stirred uneasily he tried to swallow, but could not and that awoke him. Moisture would not come into their mouths. Their tongues and throats felt dry and swollen. They had eaten nothing since a piece of bread in the early morning. The afternoon was obviously far spent. To go out into that sea now would mean, at the best, running upon a lee shore in the dark, a shore that for the most part was bound to be smoking cliff. And in any case the wind seemed to be rising, for they could not only hear the whine of it, but now and then a quicker, intenser whine, as if still swifter hounds of the air were being unleashed to overtake and harry the hurtling grey-backed monsters of the sea.
At the back of their minds had been a vague hope that, where sheep were, human beings might be. When they tried to shout, however, only hoarse croaks issued from them and with such lacerating effect that they coughed in pain. They then bethought them of beating the pot and kettle and tin skillet, of whacking wood on wood, until the fulmars circled in fantastic gyres and the screaming of puffin and guillemot and gull rose to a demoniac pitch, while they themselves, carried away into a momentary frenzy, laughed harshly into the infernal scene.
But Finn had had his eyes on the giddy rock-ledges with their rows of birds. It was the beginning of May. It was nesting time. The cool slither of a sucked egg went down his throat. He would climb the cliff.
He did not speak at once because he wanted to have his voice under control, so he scanned the wall on the large island to the north for a possible way up.
Roddie began to talk. They were here for the night. He was glad to hear the wind rising, still from the same airt, because there was every chance now that it would blow itself out by the morning. They could not be more than six or Seven hours at the most from Lewis, with a half-favourable passage. They would just have to hope for the best and make themselves as comfortable as they could. And the best way was to try to pass the time in dozing. One by one they would take watch through the night.
They were all silent. There was nothing else that could be done. And then Finn spoke.
“I have been looking at that cliff,” he said. “I think I can climb it.”
Roddie’s face slowly drew taut and his eyes hardened. “No-one can climb that cliff,” he said.
“Yes, if you landed me there, I could do it.”
They looked at the black ledge to which he pointed. The water rose to it, then fell down about twelve feet sheer in sucking, greeny-white swirls, then rose again.
“Are you mad?” asked Roddie, his eyes like glass.
“No, I’m not,” said Finn, and felt inside him, small and intense as a needle-prick, an animosity against Roddie. It excited him. His body grew taut in challenge.
“And how would we land you there?” asked Roddie in level mockery.
“Easily enough,” replied Finn. “If you shifted the anchor over there, one of you could pay out rope, while the others brought her in stern first on the oars. When you were close to the rock and the stern rose up, I could jump.”
It was the clearness of the operation that struck their fancy and kept them silent, but Roddie said, “And what if the stern-post got the rock coming up? What if you slipped? Do you think we could help you then?”
“Someone must take a chance,” said Finn, a lash of colour in his cheek-bones.
“Oh? Why?” demanded Roddie.
“Because if I don’t do it now, I won’t have the strength to do it to-morrow. And you know that.” Roddie’s tone had whipped him. He shut his mouth to keep more words from boiling out.
“Well, you won’t do it now,” said Roddie.
“Why not?” cried Finn, in direct challenge. “What are you frightened of?”
“I’m not usually frightened,” said Roddie. “I’d advise you to control your mouth. I’m the skipper here.”
Finn looked away with a twisted expression. He was trembling.
In their exhausted, thirst-tormented, overwrought condition, a bout of irritation or short temper was understandable enough, but the others felt that what had flared so swiftly between Roddie and Finn was deeper than irritation. They were like two with a blood-secret between them.
“Oh, very well,” replied Finn. “I could do it, if you couldn’t. That’s all.”
There was a tense, drawn-out moment and Roddie’s fist gripped round the unshipped tiller. Henry broke the silence, speaking calmly. “There’s no good talking wild, Finn. Our minds are weary enough. In any case, where would be the point of climbing? We have got to keep reasonable.”
“Because there will be water on the top. You saw the sheep. If we don’t get away to-morrow—ask Callum what he’ll be like.”
“You can leave me out of it,” said Callum dully.
“We’ll wait until to-morrow, and then——”
“And then it’ll be too late,” Finn interrupted Henry. “I’m weak enough myself and I’m dying of thirst. So are you. Someone should try it.”
“Oh, shut up!” said Henry, suddenly overborne.
Rob looked at the cliff and remarked casually, “I never had the head for it myself.”
“You’re honest, anyway,” replied Finn, trying to smile casually.
The silence that fell on the boat now gave them no rest, no ease; worked deep in their minds like a diluted poison. Roddie and Henry closed their eyes to avoid contacts. Callum was slumped against the nets and presently began to moan. His lips were pale as oatmeal. His moaning in a tortured, restless sleep irritated Henry intensely, and he got up and looked at the rock. Presently he had to waken Callum. When Callum first tried to speak, nothing came except a wheeze. But he got a smile through and enough voice to blame the accursed salt beef. He sat up and rubbed his cheeks and ears slowly and pulled at his throat. By the morning Callum would be in a state of acute distress. They could hear the clacking of his mouth as it tried for moisture.
Henry looked at Roddie. “I think I’ll have a shot at it,” he said, nodding sideways at the cliff.
Roddie removed his eyes and shook his head. Henry had a wife and three of a family.
Henry went silent.
“If the lad thinks he can do it,” began Rob, noisily scratching the beard on his jaw, “well—I don’t know——”
Finn said nothing, his face to the rock. It was between Roddie and himself, and he was aware that Roddie did not care for cliffs. It was quite possible that he hadn’t the head. But, far beyond all that, he knew what was troubling him. Roddie would not like to be the bearer of the tidings of Finn’s death to Finn’s mother! Something deep inside Finn exulted over Roddie, over his bitter predicament, with a sustained feeling of ruthless triumph. Death itself was neither here nor there, because in fact it never entered Finn’s head except as an imaginary counter in this triumph of enmity.
Excepting Roddie, Callum was the strongest man on the boat. But his strength was of the kind that lives powerfully for a short time. His body was broad, and at middle age he would be a stout heavy man. His frank generous nature had a fine simplicity, and now as he stirred and tried to smile, his blue eyes looked as pitiful as a child’s. “That salt beef,” he croaked. He wanted to lie in the bottom of the boat and not move.
Finn upended the cask and shook it over the skillet. Callum moistened his mouth with the drops and looked grateful and ashamed.
“Well, boys,” said Roddie quietly, “I’m willing to hear you.”
No-one spoke.
Roddie nodded and looked at the cliff. “Very well,” he said. “One of us will try it. Who is it to be?”
“As skipper,” said Rob, “you can’t desert the boat.”
Henry nodded. The thing did not bear discussing, with a young fellow like Finn in the crew. And it was Finn’s idea. Rob had spoken because of the look in Roddie’s eyes.
There was a minute’s long silent conflict in all their minds, then Roddie pointed to the anchor rope. Finn began to strip off his heavy sea clothes.
Henry and Rob on an oar apiece brought her head to where Roddie wanted i
t. He let the anchor down carefully, holding the rope immediately he felt bottom, and motioned them to row away. Thus he made certain of not fouling his anchor hold, and they approached Finn’s ledge, stern first.
Some three yards from the rock, Roddie held them. “Take Henry’s oar,” he cried to Callum, now on his feet. This was done, “Go right aft, Henry, and let her in as far as you dare.”
Finn, stripped to jersey and trousers, took off his boots and stockings, for any climbing he had done had been with his bare feet. With his big toe and the one next to it, he could always pick up a stone and throw it farther than any other boy. This had been often a source of young pride. He knotted his woollen cravat round his neck and stuck the ends down his jersey. Two empty bottles, which had contained milk and bore the label “Special”, he placed to one side. Then he stood up and pulled tight over his brows his round bonnet. He was ready.
With left hand up, Henry checked and guided Roddie’s control on the anchor rope, while the two men on the oars paddled gently, doing little more than holding the boat straight. Henry was in no hurry. As she rose and plunged on the great impulses of the sea, Henry studied her action and the rock in front. It was a desperate venture, because no two seas behaved quite alike, and the stern was thrown giddily not only up and down but in a swaying circular motion. If she fell fifteen feet on a sharp ledge they would drown like rats. Now the stern began to rush on the cliff-face, then to sag away, while the water streamed from the rock, from the weed, and boiled underneath in seething froth.
For long moments Henry felt he should give up. Or Finn should have a light rope from the boat round his waist. Or—“I can do it now‚” said Finn.
Henry looked round at him. Finn smiled into his eyes and nodded. Henry slowly motioned Roddie a few inches in. Finn slipped past him and crouched behind the stern-post. Holding on with his left hand, Henry gripped Finn at the waist with his right to steady him. “When she comes up, Finn boy,” said Henry in a hoarse voice.
Up she came, rushing on the rock. Henry withdrew his hand. Not until she was a foot from the top of her swinging heave did Finn rise bodily in one swift, easy motion and leap left-footed from the narrow stern-post, and land on toes, knees, and hands, in that order, on the small, rounded, sloping ledge of dark rock.
Down below in the gulf eyes stared up. He held. The boy was ashore. Roddie brought the back of a hand over his forehead.
“The bottles!” cried Finn. Henry threw them, one at each uprising, and Finn caught them against his breast. Then he whipped off his broad woollen cravat, stuck the bottles neck first into the band of his trousers behind, pulled the black jersey down over them, put two twists of the cravat round his waist, and knotted it over the necks of the bottles. Then he looked up the rock, and in a moment was climbing.
Roddie pulled the boat no more than a yard away. The boat-hook was clear. But as Finn climbed on a slant to his right, Roddie knew that the boat-hook would now fail to reach his fallen body.
The shrieking of the sea-birds became an infernal torment to their ragged nerves, and when suddenly Rob seemed to go mad in a high-pitched croak, their hearts leapt as their heads turned—and saw, choking the rock channel, advancing upon them, a gigantic wall of water.
Roddie’s whole weight threw itself instinctively on the rope, but it was torn through his hands as the Seafoam rose up and up on the towering wave. Along the rock walls it smashed in a roar flinging white arms at crevice and ledge.
Swung seaward on the crest of it, they hung for a dizzying moment on a level with Finn. He had seen it coming and flattened to the sloping rock, gripping with fingers and knees and toes. The solid water swept the soles of his feet, but the white spray covered him like a shroud. Down went the boat, down, down, until tangle, that grew in a sea-green underworld, saw the light of day, and curved over, and flattened like trees ridden by a hurricane.
Then up again, Roddie’s hands torn, but the boat well clear of the cliff.
And there was Finn, splayed black against the rock, his head turning cautiously towards the channel. They watched him get to his knees, his feet, pause for an instant to look down on them and wave, before clambering on as if another sea might be coming.
The climbing so far had not been difficult because there was a distinct ridge sloping steeply up the face of the rock for all the world like a narrow, tumbled, broken path. On his left hand the cliff rose sheer, and on his right it fell sheer into the sea. They had seen this formation, of course, from the boat. But now Finn reached a wall in front of him, little more than twice his own height, but to his eyes unclimbable. Here the path ended.
All at once, as he looked up, his vision darkened and his heart began beating at a tremendous rate. He had lived and moved these last seconds beyond his exhausted strength, His skin went cold all over and his flesh started to quiver and tremble in a sickening manner. He lay against the rock, face in, until the silent buzz of the darkness in his head began to subside and his vision to clear. The whistling of his breath made his mouth so much dryer than it was that, when he closed it, it stuck, and came apart again painfully.
As he turned round he saw the upturned faces watching him. He made a gesture of placing his hand over his heart, then he sat down carefully, lay over on one side, and closed his eyes. Deliberately he let his mind sink down in him as if he were going to sleep. For panic was near, the weak nervousness that hates defeat. They would be watching him, too, wondering why he was taking so long, as if he were playing with their nerves, particularly with Roddie’s. Well, let them! let them! So long as the panic stings kept off. And actually, for about half a minute, he was invaded by a delicious feeling of languor. He let it soak into his limp tissues. He felt cradled in an eagle’s eyrie.
Arising, he looked at the rock. In front of him and on the inward side it was flawless and impossible, but on the outward edge it was notched and in two places riven to miniature ledges. The surface was of a dark, rough texture and dry enough. Without giving himself time for thought, he reached up his right hand and gripped a boss.
They watched him from the boat.
There were moments when the slowness of his movements had, for Roddie, the element of extreme horror that is found only in nightmare. His bare foot would come up, feeling for the crack, pawing the rock, with a suspension of time that must for ever defeat it, while the body hung over the sea, high and sheer over the sea, and in an instant was going to fall away, fall away with a shriek, to drop, to rebound from the cornice below, to whirl—with final smash upon the water.
But Finn was still on the rock. And the rock was not his danger, as he knew. He loved the perilous cleanness of height. He could go as carefully here as if he were crossing stepping-stones in a stream. Height invigorated him, made all his senses sing. What he feared was his staying power, the trembling fingers, the dark flush.
He rounded the desperate corner, fingers pressing on the ledge above, toes on the ledge below, and suddenly found that he had rounded the real danger. His spirit lifted in a rush, in a silent cry. The rock leaned back. His toe came up searching for a purchase, found it, felt all round it, gripped; his right hand moved up and got a hold he could have swung on; his left hand, his left foot; slowly, with a certainty of care; up, up over, until he lay on his stomach in safety, with a laughing ecstasy in his heart.
They saw the broad of his feet over the edge of the cliff. Roddie, unknown to himself, groaned and sagged, completely exhausted. He had plumbed depths of fear and terror that Finn knew nothing of.
On his feet, Finn looked down at them and waved, laughing, like an immortal youth; then he turned away and went on up the steep rock with ease, until it gave on grass and he felt the rush of the wind.
From left to right the ground sloped in a long, upward sweep. In front the smooth sward was dotted with staring sheep and rose gently for about half a mile to the highest and farthest point of the island.
He went up to his right to command the whole island, and suddenly stood, his heart in
his throat, gazing at a small house. Slowly his eyes searched around everywhere. There was, however, neither human being nor smoke. He approached the house. It was dry-stone built, with long flat stones, as many a house was in Dunster. But it was small, and not like a house, either. Finn came by the door. It was a little door, about two feet by three. “Are you in?” he called. There was no answer.
Finn stooped double and entered. Inside it was no more than seven feet long and four or five broad. The vaulted roof was an inch or two above his head. There was a damp smell of the earth or of something very ancient. Finn felt that he was not alone.
He went out quietly and stepped away from that place. There were ruins farther on, up at the high north-west point. The sheep ran wildly before him. The birds screamed. He could feel the trembling of the solid rock. The wind harried his eyes and ears. A feeling of remoteness came over Finn, as if he stood on the last storm-threshed outpost of the world. The warm blood of the heart thinned away. Cavernous screaming of birds like tormented spirits, the whistling wail of the invisible wind, the pounding and booming of the sea, the tremble of the rock, all insecure, on the verge of falling away into gulfs of eternal disaster.
Who could have lived in that little house, sitting there by himself?
The ruins in the high corner were larger. Two rooms, with a low passage between.
Turning away, Finn remembered Rob’s story of Rona, the rats, and the dead woman with the child at her breast.
Then he came on the tiny pool, stone beneath it and turf round it. He scooped a little in his hand and tasted it. Sweet, sweet fresh water!
A grand-uncle of Roddie’s, a very strong man, had once, long ago, after heavy labour in the height of a summer day, drunk and drunk out of the cold well that is in the brae above the creek at Lybster, and died within an hour.
