Complete New Tales of Para Handy (48 page)

“Och, you wass probably right, Dan,” he conceded. “There iss not a lot to steal from the
Vital Spark
and in any case I am sure that the locals iss aal true Highland chentlemen.”

Nobody was foolish enough to remind Para Handy of that cheerily expressed opinion when, at first light, Sunny Jim staggered up on deck to look at the weather, and found two individuals in the act of jumping onto the canal bank with the oars of the puffer's dinghy over their shoulders.

The oars, recovered from the towpath where the thieves dropped them in their flight, were firmly lashed, upright, to the mast of the
Vital Spark
as the puffer proceeded to make passage up Loch Lochy and Loch Oich, and then came to the historic little town of Fort Augustus at the foot of Loch Ness.

“You know,” confessed Para Handy from the wheelhouse window as the vessel nosed out onto the dark waters of Scotland's longest loch, “if it wassna for having to work aal those dam' locks by hand there would be a lot to be said for a command on the canal for I am sure that you would neffer have to worry aboot the weather or the wund or the fog. An easy life!”

His crew, who had back-breakingly worked their way through every single one of the locks, at each of which their Captain's only contribution to the process had been shouted (and all too often contradictory) instructions emanating from that same wheelhouse window, said nothing.

The puffer arrived at Drumnadrochit later that afternoon, too late for any work to be started that day, although the forestry men had got there ahead of the
Vital Spark
and a huge stack of sleepers lay piled up on the shore beside a tiny concrete slip.

Para Handy surveyed the scene with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“How in bleezes do they propose to get aal of that out to the shup?” he asked querulously. “We cannot get closer in than 50 yards and I for one am no' goin' swimmin' for anyone.”

He had his answer in the morning.

By eight o'clock the loading process was in full swing, with two foremen from the sawmills — one ashore and one on board the
Vital Spark
— supervising and co-ordinating the operations.

A raft some twelve feet square lay alongside the concrete slip, attached by two ropes to the collar of a towering but placid Clydesdale horse which, having been led down the slip by its handlers, now stood in the loch to the front of the raft up to its hocks in the water.

Once the raft was loaded, the two handlers — who wore only canvas trousers cut off at the knee, and heavy boots with substantial, studded soles — took one rein of the bridle apiece and led the horse across the sandy bottom of the loch till they were in up to their waists and the the loch bed began to deepen rapidly. At this point the cargo was within twenty yards of the puffer, lying in the deeper water, and the forestry foreman on board the
Vital Spark
threw a light rope, lead-line for a heavy hawser which was itself coiled round the drum of the puffer's steam-winch. The handlers unloosed the patient horse, Macphail started up the winch at the foreman's signal, and the raft was reeled in to the side of the ship as an angler might reel in a fish. The men in the water, who had retained one line attached to the stern of the cargo-carrier. pulled it back once it had been unloaded and returned with it and the horse, once more set within its traces, to the shore.

The process continued all morning till the hold of the
Vital Spark
was full and a substantial deck cargo had been built up on the main hatch.

Para Handy watched the proceedings with some admiration.

“Now that iss chust astonishing,” he said. “And that horse iss a wonder. Wass she no' awful hard to train, for I'm sure and she canna like the watter at aal.”

“On the contrary,” the foreman laughed. “She just loves it, for most horses are great swimmers. We sometimes have a job keeping her in the shallows. She'd be swimming out with the raft given a half a chance!”

Para Handy looked appraisingly at the sleepers stacked on the main hatch.

“I think that will do us,” said he. “It iss not ass if we only have to take them doon the loch. We have to get back doon to Gleska and I will not overload the shup.”

“Fair enough,” said the foreman. “You know your own business best. But we would ask one wee favour of you, it will not be a problem I'm thinking, and that is to let me put just three new wooden mash-tubs for the distillery at Fort William on top of the lot. If you would just drop them off at the distillery pier, I know that the maltings manager will see that it is made worth your while.”

Para Handy nodded his agreement and the foreman then bellowed instructions to the shore party. Three very large barrels were rolled down the slip roped together in line, and the first of them attached to one of the Clydesdale's towing ropes.

Just what happened was never too clear. Probably one of the handlers slipped on a rock and took his colleague with him, but next second the two men had let go of the horse's bridle and disappeared, briefly, under water.

By the time they surfaced, spluttering, the horse was gone. Pulling this much lighter burden behind her with ease, she splashed out into the deeper water, kicked out, and began to swim out past the
Vital Spark
with the three barrels bobbing in her wake. As she past the puffer she turned to the south and proceeded to swim along parallel with the shore.

“ 'Dalmighty,” exclaimed the foreman. “She's off! Please get your dinghy in the water, Captain, and I'll row after her and catch her. Otherwise she'll probably swim a couple of miles or more before she decides she's had enough and heads for the shore”

Launching the dinghy was the work of a moment — but of course it was then realised that her
oars
were firmly lashed to the puffer's mast. By the time these had been loosed, the horse was a hundred yards away and the prospects of catching her slim.

The foreman and the puffer's crew watched the horse with its attendant barrels move into the distance, silhouetted darkly against the mirror-brightness of the still surface of the loch.

“I'll tell you something,” chipped in Sunny Jim after a moment, laughing delightedly. “See wi' jist the heid o' the horse oot o' the watter like that, and they three barrels like humps behind it, the whole shebang fair pits ye in mind o' a dragon: or better yet a sea-serpent, eh?”

Para Handy chuckled.

“Aye Jum, that'll be right. A monster in Loch Ness! Now that
would
be something to excite the towerists, eh?”

And, helping the foreman into the dinghy, he rowed him ashore to find a pony and trap with which to pursue his errant charge along the road which wound along the lochside.

“You and your monsters, Jum!” protested the Mate. “All I know iss that this wan has cost us the chance of a dram from the distillery, and that iss most certainly a monster inchustice, to be sure!”

F
ACTNOTE

Telford's Caledonian Canal was a formidable undertaking for the technology of the age. It took 18 years to complete and was opened formally in 1822. Using the natural fault of the Great Glen and the string of lochs (Lochy, Oich and Ness) which gave immediately navigable waterways over two thirds of its length from Corpach at the head of Loch Linnhe to Inverness on the Moray Firth, it is 60 miles long and vessels traversing it have to negotiate 29 locks.

The government of the day was first moved to find the funds to build it by the exigencies of the Napoleonic Wars. A sheltered passage from Scotland's East to West coasts, wide enough and deep enough to enable frigates and small merchant vessels to use it, would help the Navy to deploy ships to and from the various theatres of the maritime war more readily: and it would offer a safer passage for merchant and fishing vessels, one that would shelter them not just from the storms of the Pentland Firth but from the intrusions of the French privateers which skulked off the Scottish coasts on the lookout for unwary and defenceless prey.

The flight of eight locks at Banavie was an engineering marvel, an achievement without parallel at that early stage of canal development and still today an impressive prospect.

What can one say about the Loch Ness monster that either hasn't been said before or is palpable nonsense?

It would be very satisfying to believe in its existence and I suppose that it must be real enough in one sense, for it has spawned an immense tourist industry, and lured individuals and organisations from the patently dotty to the seriously scientific, and from all quarters of the globe, to expend years of effort and enormous sums of money in an attempt to track it down for the discomfiture of non-believers.

All this despite the fact that the first and most famous of all the Loch Ness photographs — the ‘Surgeon's Picture' of 1933, the basis really for all the subsequent monster mania of the last sixty years, has now been acknowledged — by no less an authoritative voice than that of its perpetrators — as a quite deliberate hoax.

At one time there were two distilleries at Fort William though they were under the same ownership and the second one operated only for a few years at the turn of the century. Both stood on the river Nevis, and were served by a private jetty on Loch Linnhe. The water for both was drawn from a single well, high up on the slopes of Ben Nevis.

41

The Tight White Collar

F
rom the window of the Inns at Crarae, Para Handy watched with interest the comings and goings in and around the pier of the little Lochfyneside village — a popular destination in summer for day-trippers, and a much-loved oasis of peace for those who were fortunate enough to manage to secure rooms in one of its handful of boarding-houses for the Fair Fortnight.

The steamer from Glasgow had just berthed, and was disgorging the usual motley selection of human kind. The
Vital Spark
, with Sunny Jim just visible — perched on her stern-quarter with a fishing-line — was sharing the inner wing of the wooden pier with two local fishing boats.

At that moment, the three man crew of one of these vessels came in sight, having just left the Inns by the front door and now striding across the lochside road to the pierhead. As they did so they were confronted by a group of Ministers, unmistakable in the dark frock-coats and contrasting white collars which were their badge of office, making their way up to the village from the excursion steamer. Suddenly aware of the presence of the approaching gentlemen of the cloth the fishermen hesitated momentarily and then side-stepped to the right, thus giving the clergy as wide a berth as the narrow pierhead allowed, before proceeding onwards and down towards their skiff.

Para Handy turned to his Engineer and Mate and remarked: “Well now, there iss a sign of the times and no mustake! It iss not aal that many years ago that a fisherman meetin' a Meenister on his way to his vessel would chust have turned for home again and neffer sailed that day. It wass thought to be duvvelish bad luck, and a sure sign of disaster or poor, poor fushin's at the very least, to meet with the clergy like that. Yet here is Col MacIlvain and his laads cairryin' on aboot their business quite jocco, and them efter meeting not chust the wan Meenister but a good half-a-dozen o' the species! Changed days indeed!”

Macphail nodded.

“Right enough,” he said: “Ah've seen jist one English munister on his holidays turn back the hauf o' the Tarbert herring fleet at the very height o' the fushin's in the good days, by takin' a daunder alang the quay at the wrang time o' day!”

Dougie snorted.

“Chust nonsense,” he protested, “superstitious nonsense. There iss no more ill-luck aboot a Meenister than there iss aboot ony o' God's creatures. The man that tells you different doesna ken ony better and that's the truth of it! It would tak' mair nor a Meenister to keep me from my shup any hour of the day, I can assure you of that.”

“Mind you,” Para Handy observed, “I think it must be admutted that there have been many times when it hass been the fushermen or the sailormen — Brutain's hardy sons! — that have made life difficult for the Meenisters.