The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  “Come on!” cried Roddie, leading the way. There was shouting behind him. He turned round. It appeared the old skipper was not going to come. Roddie strode back and yelled, “Come on!”

  “It’s all right,” said the old man calmly. “Be you going. I’ll stand by her for a little while.” He had to lift his voice, but his manner was quiet as if he were talking from his croft door.

  “By God, you’ll come now!” cried Roddie in an anger suddenly flaming because of what moved in the heart of this old man.

  But the old man began pulling on the rope. “Be you going,” he said. “She’s been a good boat to me.” There was an extraordinary, an incredible calm on his face, a gentle expression that smiled.

  Out of the flowing tide the sea answered, but Roddie gripped the old man and together they clung to the streaming rock. They climbed upward on to the skerry whose top ledge was several feet above high-water mark (here, perhaps, the skipper had thought he might weather the tide), and down again, and inward, until they met the sea coming from the other direction in that welter of rock. In crossing the narrow channel to the beach the youngest of the crew was swept off his feet but he could swim and, gripping the strong tangle-weed, soon heaved himself out. A few minutes later, the passage could not have been made, except perhaps in a headlong dive by a strong swimmer.

  There were high cries for the crew from members of their families. One man’s face was streaming blood where the skin had been scraped away by a barnacled ledge, and another had his head bent, coughing painfully, his hands against his chest. But apart from these minor bruises, they were all safe and sound, which was miracle enough.

  “You’ll come now, Hamish,” cried his old wife to the old skipper.

  “Be you going, Nanz,” answered the old man. “I’ll wait a little while.”

  “You will not,” rose her shrill voice, “and you wet from head to foot! You’ll come now, this minute!”

  “Ah, be going, woman,” said Hamish austerely. “And leave me alone. What’s a little wet?”

  Finn followed the others, but as he was making for the steep green brae above the beach, he had a sudden thought and began to run towards the store by the gutting stations. He emerged with his head stuck through a heavy coil of back-rope. On the slanting path up the brae, he was overtaken by an elderly fisherman who had been delayed securing his boat in the river mouth, and, after some talk, this man went back for more rope.

  Soon two men from the hills, making for the shore, ran into Finn, and when he had given them the news, they carried the rope between them, thus giving Finn a rest and increasing speed.

  As they left the braes behind and came out on top of the cliffs, they saw the crowd at a little distance and Finn, because of his knowledge of that coast, was aware in a momentary deep inward sinking that boat and men were doomed.

  He knew the crew well. Daniel Bannerman, who had been evicted from the Heights of Kildonan, was a tall man of sixty-three, sparely built, patriarchal in manner, quietly religious, and, as it was solemnly said, “highly respected”, for he had a considerable formative influence on the life of the people beyond the Birch Wood; Oscar Sinclair, in his forties, robustious in action, with a red beard and the nature that got pleasure out of giving a neighbour a hand; Tom Dallas, a steady dark lad in his twenties; and Una’s brother, Duncan, a year older than Finn.

  They moved, living, in Finn’s mind, and it was incredible to him that they should now die, smashed against the cliffs and drawn down into the green water.

  As they approached at a trot they knew from the high desperate cries of the women and the wringing of their hands that the boat was foundering. Men were shouting and driving the adventurous back, for the grassy turf sloped gently downward a few yards to the edge of the sheer cliff and was thus a place of great danger, for the wind as it struck the rock face was thrown upward and created a suction behind it that might draw anyone over the edge.

  A woman clasped her hands and lifted them and her face to the sky and in a high voice cried, “O God, save them! Save them!” The desperate appeal affected many, and several women got to their knees and added their entreaties to the grey storm-driven sky.

  It was in that terrible moment, when grown men felt the drawn-out appalling nature of their own impotence, that Roddie, turning round like a trapped animal, saw Finn and the two men with the rope. He stood stock still, and Finn went straight to him.

  “Is she in?” asked Finn, glancing at the same time down at the cliff-edge and even taking a careful step forward. But no boat was now to be seen.

  “She has just gone in,” said Roddie evenly, as Finn turned to him again.

  Finn met his piercing eyes.

  “I’ll go down on the rope,” said Finn, “if you hold on.”

  Roddie’s face paled in a drawn concentration.

  Finn sat down and began to take off his boots. He liked to feel the rock with his bare toes. In trousers and jersey, he stood up lightly.

  Roddie turned on those pressing about them. “Get back!” His voice cracked like a whip-lash, and even old men took a backward step as if the primal force in the man had struck them.

  “Are you ready?” asked Finn, and he met Roddie’s eyes.

  “Will you try it, boy?” asked Roddie, and his voice was gentle.

  It was a moment of communion so profound that Finn felt a light-heartedness and exaltation come upon him. This was where Roddie and himself met, in the region of comradeship that lies beyond all the trials of the world.

  Finn saw the final struggle in Roddie’s nature and saw him overcome it. “Very well,” said Roddie.

  When they were satisfied that the rope was long enough, Roddie picked his team of men. Everyone now knew that Finn was going over the edge, and the clamour rose and stilled.

  “When I give two tugs on the rope, you’ll haul away,” said Finn to Roddie.

  “If you want more rope, give one pull,” said Roddie.

  Finn nodded.

  Roddie looped the rope under his armpits.

  “Take care of yourself, Finn,” Roddie said.

  Finn knew he could not say more and smiled to him. “I’ll go to the edge first and perhaps come back,” he said. “I’ll see.” Then on his bare feet, Roddie paying out rope, he walked down the grassy turf.

  At the sight of him walking down with the rope round him, the women began to weep aloud. Roddie took the strain as Finn, standing on the edge, leaned over the abyss. It was clear he saw something below by the quickened way he began examining the edge, foot by foot. Roddie knew he was looking for a smooth hard place for the rope. He stopped, turned round, and signalled Roddie that he was going down. As he met the eyes upon him, he could not help seeing Una’s astonished face, and, before dropping to his knees he gave the pleasant characteristic salute of farewell with the left hand. In a moment he had disappeared.

  “Don’t hang on the rope,” shouted Roddie sharply to the men behind him. “I want to feel him.” They obeyed him instantly, holding the rope lightly, while Roddie paid it out hand over hand, his heels dug in.

  At last the rope slackened. There was a single pull. Roddie lowered away a yard or two and held. Another pull. Through sensitive fingers he let the rope go again, and then held it, his head turned sideways as if listening to its message. But no message came up. All at once there was a single wild pull and Roddie, instead of paying out rope, hauled slowly. “Don’t pull!” whipped his voice. The rope eased and in a moment he paid out a yard, while the expression on his face cleared. All eyes were on his face, as though, through his hands, it could divine what was going on down below.

  There was no doubt about the two tugs when they came, and Roddie began hauling, checking the eagerness of the men behind him. Tension now rose to a high pitch. Twice Roddie stopped the rope and eased it before hauling away again. Was it Finn coming back—or the crew? He must be near now—near now … and then suddenly before their eyes, coming up over the crest, a red head. It was Oscar Sinclair.
/>   “It’s Oscar! It’s Oscar!”

  “Give him time!” yelled Roddie.

  Oscar tried to get to his feet, but he fell, and they hauled him up the gentle slope on his stomach. Again he tried to get to his feet, floundering like a wounded animal. But Roddie got down on his knees and caught him, trying to gather the meaning of the desperate urgency in the thickened voice. “Hurry up! Other rope! Send down two ropes! They’ll be gone!” He clawed the ground, his eyes wild and roving. Just then, the man whom Finn had sent back for more rope arrived, accompanied by two young lads and a new coil.

  Already Roddie had shouted, “A stone!” and men had scattered. Before he had the two coils in position and knotted their ends, a dozen stones were at his feet. Swiftly and securely he attached one to the double rope, and shouting, “Pay me out to the edge,” walked forward with the double rope round his back and under his armpits. A yard from the brink he got down on his stomach and pushed the stone before him. His right leg took a holding twist on the rope behind, as his head craned over. The base of the cliff did not, as it chanced, go sheer and deep into the sea, but broke into a welter of riven sloping ledges upon which the waves mounted and smashed, throwing great plumes of foam that hung on the air, falling slowly, to be renewed again, like smoke from an inferno. Bits of planking and gear from the smashed boat heaved on the rock, rushed back, and swung on the water. Of human life there was no sign.

  Roddie pushed the stone over the spot Finn had chosen and, drawing himself backward, returned without help of the rope. His face was hard and expressionless. All saw its deathly message, but no-one dared question him.

  His relations had removed Oscar to a little distance, and now there arose a crying and keening. Daniel Bannerman and Tom Dallas were gone!

  In a moment everyone seemed to know what had happened. The boat had piled up on a ledge and heeled right over as the wave fell from her, throwing them all backward into the boiling sea. The next wave had heaved Oscar again on the ledge and the receding side-swirl had washed him into a cranny, from which he had all but been torn away by the impact of Duncan’s body. There was still life in Duncan at that point. From this cranny Oscar had half-dragged Duncan to a small crevice two yards higher up and near the base of the rock, where they had lain face down, holding on, as inrushing swirls swept over them. Then the life had gone out of Duncan. Finn had taken his, Oscar’s, place, but he could not hold it long, not on a rising tide. One big sea would sweep them both away.

  The men behind Roddie said, “Daniel and Tom are gone,” in the quiet voices of fatality, but all Roddie said was, “Leave the rope to me,” and he let the stone take it through his hands. Down it went, down, down.

  Una was now standing five paces away from Roddie. She was fond of her brother Duncan. Her face was death-pale, and once she turned and looked at her mother, and for a moment it seemed that the unnatural tension of her mind would snap. But her mother’s still anguish steadied her. Una was breathing quickly and her hands opened and shut in spasmodic motions, sometimes tugging her clothes outward from her breast. Her eyes were black. Her whole body was a suppressed cry.

  The rope slackened, Roddie waited. There was no response.

  Second followed second, while Roddie waited. He eased the rope under its own weight. All who were watching saw that there was no response. Finn’s friend Donnie came forward and said he would go…. An explosive “No!” choked the words in his mouth, and he fell back a pace as if Roddie had struck him.

  Roddie began to pull on the rope slowly, patiently, took in about half a dozen yards of it, glanced over his shoulder to make sure no-one was holding it, then let it run out over his open hands under its full weight. This time it went nearly a fathom farther before it slackened. Roddie’s eyes glittered.

  They all saw the jerk on the rope. Finn was still there!

  Roddie seemed to grow taller and rock a little on his feet, his head to the gale, his face, though hard and smooth as bossed stone, imperious and exultant.

  The double pull came, and now Roddie led his strong crew with his great strength gathered into his sensitive hands; eased them, checked them, and hauled away again, until the heads of Finn and Duncan came above the brink. Duncan’s head was lolling. He was clearly unconscious or dead. Finn had him gripped from behind, and now, removing his arms, signalled Roddie, who at once lay on Finn’s rope and helped him over the edge. Finn leaned down, got a grip of Duncan, and, aided by the pull on Duncan’s rope, eased him carefully on to the grass, and supported his head and shoulders as Roddie drew them up the slope.

  Finn, breathing heavily, looked up into Roddie’s face. “There was no sign of Daniel and Tom. They’re gone,” he said in a strange defeated quietness.

  “You could do no more, Finn,” said Roddie.

  Before the ropes were right off the lads, Duncan’s mother and Una were pressing in, but Roddie pushed them back firmly, and, on his knees, set to work on Duncan’s body, which he stretched out on its face and then began to compress and relax as if he were working a slow bellows.

  *

  There was a great crowd above the cliffs now. Indeed half Dunster seemed to be gathered in the mouth of the gale. The heavy sky was low and darkened the air, and this darkening was a sadness for ever streaming by.

  A little boy, whose parents had deserted him, stood behind a turf wall, and wondered if the folk yonder were making a new market-fair. A man came hurrying down and the little boy called, “Is it a market-fair?” but the man did not wait to answer. So the little boy started out on his own. Presently he came on small groups standing at a distance here and there as they did at a market, looking and looking towards the main scene. All at once a young woman, walking reluctantly some paces in front of him, stopped and began to cry and wring her hands. Her companions tried to pacify her, and said, “Come on!” But she would not be pacified and she could not go on. The boy saw that she was terrified to go to the market. “I can’t go!” she cried in distress. “Oh, I can’t!” and all at once she got to her knees, and when it seemed she was going to weep heavily in that attitude, she threw herself on the ground and rolled over on her face, clutching at the grass. The two other girls got down on their knees and tried to pacify her, but they, too, now seemed strangely affected. Their skirts billowed and flapped in the wind.

  The boy had not greatly liked the look of the market from the beginning. The bodies had seemed to him dark and small under the awful wind like black birds. It was like a market round the corner of the eye, where queer things often are, because you see them backward, in a light that is clear but not bright.

  When now he adventured out from the shelter of the turf dyke—for he had come so far secretly and carefully—he was suddenly caught by the wind more fiercely than at the gaps in the dyke and began to be blown away. At that, the ominous black-bird terror came full upon him from the market, from the awful market, the terrifying market, lifting him in the horror of its wings under the dark streaming sky. One of the two girls ran after him, clutched him, and cried in his ear, “What are you doing here, Ian Angus?”

  At that moment Roddie had been working unceasingly on Duncan’s body for thirty minutes. After five minutes, no-one could believe that any life was left in the body. Roddie lifted his own head, working patiently at the same time. “Donnie, change that hand,” he said; and Donnie at once forgot the hurt of the lashing “No!” Una took the other hand, because Finn was wet through and now, after the exhausting effort of the rock, could hardly keep his teeth from chittering as he lay on the ground. Others made a wind-break, and in a deep half-circle the crowd stood looking and waiting. Then they saw Duncan’s mother do a thing that silently and strangely moved them all. Anticipating Roddie’s order to chafe the feet, she stripped the boots off and the two pairs of thick socks, and then with a curious whimper, she unfastened her bodice and placed the cold lifeless feet between her deep breasts, and covered them over with the bodice, and pressed them inward, while the tears flowed down her face and she murm
ured, “My boy! my own boy!”

  At the end of twenty minutes, which seemed to everyone a much longer time, they were satisfied there was no hope. Heads were shaken. Folk felt that Roddie’s patience was being overdone. This was a refusal to recognize death, a taking away from its dread dignity. The slow incessant handling of the poor lifeless body … it was time Roddie gave up.