Atlantic Fury (36 page)

In just such a fog as this he had gone down the face of the sheer cliffs on the north side of the island, below Tarsaval, lowering himself on the old horse-hair rope that had been part of his wife's dowry when they married at the turn of the century. Those cliffs were over 1,300 feet high, the most spectacular volcanic wall in the British Isles. He was on his own and he had missed his footing. His hands had slipped on the wet rope and he had fallen fifty feet, his foot catching in the loop at the end. They had found him hanging there head-downwards in the morning. He had been like that most of the night, a total of five hours, but though he was frozen stiff as a board and his joints had seized solid, he nevertheless managed to walk down to his cottage. He had been fifty-two years old then.

These and other stories came flooding back into my mind; how when he had married my grandmother he had had to undergo the ordeal of the Lovers' Stone. That sloped crag, jutting out high over the sea where it boiled against the base of the cliffs, had made an indelible impression on my young mind. He had told us that all bridegrooms had had to pass this test, walking out along the tiled stone to stand on the knife-edge, balanced on the balls of their feet and reaching down to touch their toes. It was a test to prove that they were competent cragsmen, men enough to support a woman on an island where the ability to collect eggs and birds from their nesting places could make the difference between a full belly and starvation in winter. ‘Aye, and I was fool enough to stand first on one foot and then on the other, and then put my head down and stand on my hands – just to prove I wasna scared of anything at all in the whole wide wor-rld.' The old man's voice seemed to come to me again through the roar of the engine.

I was tired by then, of course, and I had the illusion that if only I could penetrate the grey curtain ahead of me, I should see the towering cliffs of Laerg rising out of the sea. At moments I even imagined there was a sudden darkening in the fog. But then I reached for the chart and a glance at it confirmed that my imagination was playing me tricks. At five o'clock the island was still almost thirty miles away. I had most of the night ahead of me before I reached it. Then, if the fog held, the first indication would not be anything seen, but the pounding of the swell at the base of the cliffs, perhaps a glint of white water.

And that was presuming my navigation was accurate.

It was just after the six o'clock weather forecast, in which the BBC admitted for the first time the whole Eastern Atlantic was enveloped in fog, that the thing I had most feared happened. There was a change in the engine note. The revolutions fell off and it began to labour. I tried it with full throttle, but it made no difference. I adjusted the choke, giving it a richer mixture, but it still continued to labour. The water cooling outlet thinned to a trickle and finally ceased. The engine was beginning to pound as it ran hot. In the end it stopped altogether.

The sudden silence was frightening. For more than twelve hours I had had the roar of the engine in my ears to the exclusion of all other sounds. Now I could hear the slap of the waves against the flat rubberised gunnels. I could hear the little rushing hisses they made as they broke all round me. There wasn't anything of a sea running, but the swell was broken by small cross-seas. The wind was about force 3, northerly, and in the stillness I could almost hear it. Other sounds were audible, too – the slop of petrol in a half-empty jerrican, the drip of moisture from my oilskins, the rattle of tins badly stowed as the dinghy wallowed with a quick, unpredictable movement.

My first thought was that the engine had run out of fuel, but I had refilled the tank less than half an hour ago, and when I checked it was still more than half-f. I thought then that it must be water in the petrol, particularly when I discovered that the jerrican I had last used was one of those that had been filled by the crofter at Carinish. Rather than empty the tank, I disconnected the fuel lead, drained the carburettor and refilled it from another jerrican; a difficult and laborious business, cramped as I was and the motion at times quite violent.

The engine started first pull and for a moment I thought I had put my finger on the trouble. But no water came out of the cooling outlet and though it ran for a moment quite normally, the revolutions gradually fell off again and for fear of permanent damage due to overheating, I stopped it.

I knew then that something must have gone wrong with the cooling system. The outlook was grim. I was not a mechanic and I had few spares. Moreover, the light was already failing. It would soon be dark, and to strip the engine down by the light of a torch was to ask for trouble with the dinghy tossing about and all available space taken up with stores. The wind seemed to be rising, too; but perhaps that was my imagination.

I sat there for a long time wondering what to do – whether to start work on it now or to wait until morning. But to wait for morning was to risk a change in the weather conditions and at least there was still light enough for me to make a start on the job. First, I had to get the engine off its bracket and into the boat. It was a big outboard, and heavy. For safety, I tied the painter round it, and then, kneeling in the stern, I undid the clamp and with a back-breaking twist managed to heave it on to the floor at my feet.

It was immensely heavy – far heavier than I had expected. But it wasn't until it was lying on the floor at my feet that the reason became apparent. The propeller and all the lower part of the shaft, including the water-cooling inlet and the exhaust, was wrapped and choked with seaweed. I almost laughed aloud with relief. ‘You silly, bloody fool.' I had begun talking to myself by then. I kept repeating, ‘You bloody fool!' for I remembered now that as I had sat with the earphones on, listening to the forecast, I had motored through a patch of sea that was littered with the wrack of the recent gale – dark patches of weed that produced their own calm where the sea did not break.

Cleared of weed and refastened to its bracket, the engine resumed its purposeful note and the sound of the sea was lost again. Lost, too, was that sense of fear, which for a moment had made me wish Cliff Morgan had allowed less than seven days before presuming I was in trouble.

I switched on the compass light and immediately it became the focus of my eyes, a little oasis of brightness that revealed the fog as a stifling blanket composed of millions upon millions of tiny beads of moisture. All else was black darkness.

It became intensely cold. Surprisingly, I suffered from thirst. But the little water I had brought with me was stowed for'ard against an emergency – and in any case, relieving myself was a problem. I suffered from cramp, too. Both feet had gone dead long ago due to constriction of the blood circulation.

My eyes, mesmerised by the compass light, became droop-lidded and I began to nod. I was steering in a daze then, my thoughts wandering. ‘You'll go to Laerg, and I'll go to my grave fighting for the mucking Sassenachs.' That was Iain, ages and ages ago, in a pub in Sauchiehall Street. What had made him say that, standing at that crowded bar in his new battledress? I couldn't remember now. But I could see him still, his dark hair tousled, a black look on his face. He was a little drunk and swaying slightly. Something else he'd said … ‘That bloody old fool.' And I'd known whom he meant, for the old man had both fascinated and repelled him. ‘Dying of a broken heart. If he'd had any guts, he'd have stuck it out alone on the island, instead of blethering about it to the two of us.' But that wasn't what I was trying to remember. It was something he'd said after that. He'd repeated it, as though it were a great truth, slurring his words. ‘Why die where you don't belong?' And then he'd clapped me on the back and ordered another drink. ‘You're lucky,' he'd said. ‘You're too young.' And I'd hated him as I often did.

Or was that the next time, when he'd come swaggering back, on leave after Dieppe? Too young! Always too young where he was concerned! If I hadn't been too young, I'd have taken Mavis …

The engine coughed, warning that the tank was running dry. I refilled it, still seeing Iain as I had seen him then, cock-sure and getting crazy drunk. Another pub that time, his black eyes wild and lines already showing on his face, boasting of the girls he'd ploughed and me saying, ‘She's going to have a baby.'

‘Yours or mine?' he said with a jeering, friendly grin.

I came near to hitting him them. ‘You know damn well whose it is.'

‘Och well, there's a war on and there's plenty of lassies with bairns and no father to call them after.' And he'd laughed in my face and raised his glass. ‘Well, here's to them. The country needs all they can produce the way this bloody war is going.' That was Iain, living for the moment, grabbing all he could and to hell with the consequences. He'd had quite a reputation even in that Glasgow factory, and God knows that was a tough place to get a reputation in. Wild, they called him – wild as a young stallion, with the girls rubbing round him and the drink in him talking big and angry.

And then that last evening we'd had together … he'd forgotten I was growing up. It had ended in a row, with him breaking a glass and threatening to cut my face to ribbons with the jagged edge of it if I didn't have another drink with him – ‘One for the road,' he'd said. ‘But not the bloody road to the Isles.' And he'd laughed drunkenly. ‘Donald my Donald, my wee brother Donald.' I'd always hated him when he'd called me that. ‘You've no spunk in your belly, but you'll drink with me this once to show you love me and would hate to see me die.'

I'd had that last drink with him and walked with him back to his barracks. Standing there, with the sentry looking on, he'd taken hold of me by the shoulders. ‘I'll make a bargain wi' ye, Donald my Donald. If ye die first, which I know bloody well ye'll never do, I'll take your body to Laerg and dump it there in a cleit to be pickled by the winds. You do the same for me, eh? Then the old bastard can lie in peace, knowing there's one of the family forever staring with sightless eyes, watching the birds copulate and produce their young and migrate and come again each year.' I had promised because he was tight and because I wanted to get away and forget about not being old enough to be a soldier.

Damn him, I thought, knowing he was out there somewhere in the fog. He wouldn't be thinking of me. He's be thinking of the last time he was in these waters – a Carley float instead of a lobster boat and men dying of exposure. All those years ago and the memory of it like a worm eating into him. Had Lane been right, making that wild accusation? Quite ruthless, Field had said. I shivered. Alone out here in the darkness, he seemed very close.

CHAPTER THREE

ISLAND OF MY ANCESTORS

(March 7)

Thinking of him, remembering moments that I'd thought obliterated from my mind, the time passed, not quickly, but unnoticed. I got the weather forecast just after midnight – wind north-westerly force 3, backing westerly and increasing to 4. Fog. Cliff Morgan at 01.00 was more specific:
Fog belt very extensive, but chance of clearance your area mid-morning
. The wind was westerly force 4 already and my problem remained – how to locate the island.

Between two and three in the morning I became very sleepy. I had been at the helm then for over twenty hours and it was almost impossible for me to keep my eyes open. The engine noise seemed to have a brain-deadening quality, the compass light a hypnotic, sleep-inducing effect. Every few moments I'd catch my head falling and jerk awake to find the compass card swinging. This happened so many times that I lost all confidence in my ability to steer a course, and as a result began to doubt my exact position.

It was a dangerous thing to do, but I took a pull at the flask then. The smell of it and the raw taste of it on my dried-up tongue, the trickle of warmth seeping down into my bowels – I was suddenly wide awake. The time was 02.48. Was it my imagination, or was the movement less?

I picked up the chart, marked in my DR position for 03.00 and then measured off the distance still to go with a pair of dividers. It was 4.8 miles – about an hour and a half.

I hadn't noticed it while I had been dozing, but the wind had definitely dropped. I could, of course, already be under the lee of Laerg if my speed had been better than I'd reckoned, but I'd no means of knowing. The fog remained impenetrable. I switched off the compass light for a moment, but it made no difference – I was simply faced with darkness then, a darkness so absolute that I might have been struck blind.

With my ETA confirmed now as approximately 04.30, I no longer seemed to have the slightest inclination to sleep. I could easily be an hour, an hour and a half out in my reckoning. At that very moment I might be heading straight for a wall of rock – or straight past the island, out into the Atlantic.

I topped up the tank so that there would be no danger of the engine stopping at the very moment when I needed it most, and after that I kept going. There was nothing else I could do – just sit there, staring at the compass.

Four o'clock. Four-fifteen. And nothing to be seen, nothing at all. If this had been a night like the last, the bulk of Tarsaval would be standing black against the stars. There would have been no difficulty at all then.

At four-thirty I switched off the engine and turned out the compass light. Black darkness and the boat rocking, and not a sound but the slop and movement of the sea. No bird called, no beat of waves on rock. I might have been a thousand miles from land.

I had only to sit there, of course, until the fog cleared. But a man doesn't think that rationally when he's bobbing about in a rubber dinghy, alone in utter darkness and virtually sitting in the sea. My grandfather's voice again, telling us of fogs that had lasted a week or more. I switched on the torch and worked over my figures again, staring at the chart. Was it the tide, or an error in navigation or just that, dozing, I had steered in circles? But even a combination of all three wouldn't produce an error of more than a few miles, and Laerg was a group of islands; it covered quite a wide area. The only answer was to cast about until I found it. The search pattern I worked out was a simple rectangular box. Fifteen minutes on my original course, then south for half an hour, east for fifteen minutes, north for an hour. At four forty-five I started the engine again, holding my course until five o'clock. Stop and listen again. Steering south then, with the grey light of dawn filtering through and the sea taking shape around me, a lumpy, confused sea, with the white of waves beginning to break.