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When he waved, she waved back, then muttered to herself, “I like that! Making me do all that hard work, and now he rides back the easy way.” But secretly she had loved it.

AS July slid into August, rumours of a seamen’s strike buzzed more ominously.

“Would it affect this part of Scotland?” Judith asked Andy.

“Certainly. Most of the trouble is at ports in England, but the men say that Glasgow and Belfast will also be involved, if it comes off.”

“It’s going to be rough on holidaymakers if they’re stranded,” she observed.

“Rougher still on the islanders who depend on the steamers for food all the year round. We’re better off here on Kylsaig. It’s so near to Cruban that we have only to ferry across all we want, but all the Western Isles and the Hebrides will be cut off.”

Robbie eagerly picked up scraps of information from the quayside at Cruban or the local newspaper. With school closed for the summer holidays, he welcomed the prospect of any exciting events in which he might be able to share. He came back from the mainland one morning with the news that the strike was definitely on.

“Hector McKinnon told me.” Hector was his particular crony in the McKinnon family, a boy about a year older than himself.

“Hector thinks he’ll be going with his father in their boat to the islands,” Robbie went on. “I hope Dad’ll take me.”

Judith’s opinion was that Hector was indulging in wishful thinking, but two days later the strike started and the steamers remained idle.

Neil called when she was wrestling with cleaning an ancient oil cooking-stove out in the yard.

“The gas cylinders for the cooker haven’t arrived and the old ones are finished,” she told him.

“Probably waiting at Cruban station, or they may be among the goods piled up on the quay. If I have a chance I’ll look for them, if Andy’s busy elsewhere. But I’m taking over the ferry for the time being. Fraser is using his boat to take stores to Mull and other islands. Donald is away camping, so—I’m the new ferryman!”

“I shall expect excellent service,” she answered, immediately then regretting that she had given him an opening.

“You can always be assured of that—any time.” His tone was low-pitched and ardent, and she knew that he was so close beside her that if she turned her head her face would be within kissing distance. She was determined to deny him that opportunity and concentrated on the stove, but in her agitation she had turned one of the burners too high, so that when it was lit, a sheet of flame billowed towards her.

She felt Neil push her backwards, saw him push over the stove with his foot and in a moment he had found a sack, thrown it over the burning stove and flung a bucket of water on top.

“It’ll be all right—bum itself out,” he gasped. “But you’ll have to clean it all over again.” He grinned at her. Then she saw that he was holding his wrist.

“Neil! You’re hurt!” she exclaimed.

“Only a scorch on my arm.” But she hurried him indoors, gave him a towel to cover the burn while she hunted for a dressing.

“I’m not very expert at bandaging,” she confessed. “Does that feel comfortable?” She fastened the safety pin.

“You have the ministering angel touch.” His free arm was around her waist.

“It was my fault—the thing wouldn’t have caught alight if I’d paid more attention to what I was doing. Thank you for your help, Neil.”

She was encircled within his arms and he bent swiftly to kiss her lips.

“Neil! Please let me go. I’ll make you some tea. Good for shock.”

His answer was lost on her, for she was aware of a slight noise behind her, and she turned quickly to see Stuart and Mairi at the open kitchen door.

“Sorry! We seem to have intruded.” Stuart spoke briskly. “Perhaps you could spare me a few moments outside, Raeburn.”

For one fantastic moment, Judith wondered if he were challenging Neil to some kind of duel, but discarded the silly idea almost before it had taken shape in her mind.

“There was an accident—I was cleaning the stove,” she explained, as much to Mairi as to Stuart. “It caught fire, and Neil’s arm is burned.”

Mairi, who had remained a still, accusing figure, now ran towards Neil, exclaiming, Oh! Are you hurt?”

He smiled at her. “Not serious. Judith’s first-aid was most efficient.” He flourished the bandaged forearm and followed Stuart out into the yard.

In the brief silence in the room, Judith could hear Stuart and Neil outside discussing the strike and what arrangements could be made. Then Mairi turned back to Judith.

“You said—you promised—I was a fool to trust you!” she stammered incoherently. “You tried to make me believe that you wouldn’t come between us—now you take every chance to let him make love to you!”

“Mairi—please believe me—I did nothing except bandage Neil’s wrist. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

“Yes. But Neil might not have behaved in the same way towards me,” Mairi answered harshly.

“Hush! He’s only just outside. He’ll hear you.”

Mairi’s lips trembled. “I saw the way he looked at you.

I don’t doubt that your kind of first-aid was efficient, as he said. You don’t care if you break his heart. You like flirting with men.”

“Oh, no! That’s not true.”

“I’ve seen you with Stuart. You like playing one man off against another. But I wish—you’d leave Neil alone!” Mairi’s final words broke on a tearful, hysterical note and she dashed out of the door before Judith could make any further reply.

Barbara came into the kitchen. “What was all that about?” she enquired.

“She’s upset.”

“I gathered that,” returned Barbara drily. “What have you been up to now?”

“That old oil-stove caught fire. Neil put it out, burned his wrist. I bandaged it, and Neil took the opportunity to thank me with a kiss. Stuart and Mairi came along at that moment. That’s all.”

“Poor Mairi! You’re determined to make her suffer.” Judith went out into the yard. The two men had disappeared, she had no idea of the purpose of Mairi’s visit, and now she was left with an unusable oil-stove. Far from encouraging Neil, it would have been better for everybody if he had not called half an hour ago. At least she might have had the stove functioning by now. Her fierce resentment was directed against both Neil and Mairi, although for different reasons, but somewhere underneath her anger was an aching regret that Stuart had chanced to see her in Neil’s embrace. Gradually she was becoming aware how little she cared for the opinions of Neil or Mairi or Fiona—and how much more was her desire to stand well in Stuart’s eyes.

For the next few days, Judith had little time to dwell on her own problems, for Andy joined some of the others from Kylsaig in manning boats to ferry stores and passengers to and from the other islands. He came home at all hours needing food and changes of clothing, and in his absence Judith and Robbie between them had to take charge of obtaining all their own stores from Cruban and getting them over to Kylsaig.

The ferry was now in charge of the two older McKinnon boys, with Robbie helping occasionally, and Neil had transferred his energies to one of the fishing boats that plied busily up and down the Sound in the daytime, in spite of warnings from authority that their boats were not licensed to carry passengers.

“I wish Dad would let me go along with him,” Robbie complained. “He said that some of the islands were getting very short of food, although the planes are taking some.” When the strike was a week old, the weather broke and damp mists rolled in from the Atlantic, adding further difficulties to existing troubles.

Judith, after one of her innumerable trips to the mainland and laden with stores which could not wait for McKinnon’s tractor, was thankful to arrive home in the late afternoon and make herself a welcome pot of tea. She took a cup to Barbara, who had lapsed into moody irritability.

“Where’s Robbie?” Barbara asked. Susan was absorbed in the intricacies of knitting.

“Helping his friend Hector to run the ferry.”

“I hope to goodness he won’t blow himself up with the engine or fall overboard.”

“Robbie’s very capable. He and Hector are proud to be doing what they call a man’s job.”

The telephone rang and Judith went downstairs to answer it. When she hung up, Barbara called down, “Was that Andy?”

“Yes. He wants me to go with him to one of the islands.”

“What? In this fog?”

“He says it will clear in an hour or so. The wind is freshening. There’s a woman urgently needing hospital attention. Her baby is due and there are complications that the island doctor can’t deal with.”

Her sister sighed. “Oh, I’m sick of all this emergency. It isn’t that I’m unsympathetic about other people’s troubles, but if we lived on one of these more distant islands, think what it would mean when we were cut off.”

“Then think yourself lucky that you live so near the mainland.” Judith spoke brusquely. She had learned that sometimes it was necessary to oppose Barbara’s bouts of self-pity. “I’ll tell Robbie down at the ferry that he’s to come home immediately, so that you and Susan are not alone here.”

Stuart’s cabin cruiser,
Flying Cloud,
was waiting at the ferry when Judith arrived, and Stuart, wearing a tweed jacket and corduroys, greeted her.

“Andy’s already gone out in MacDonald’s fishing boat,” he told her. “We thought my boat would probably be more comfortable for Mrs. MacKenzie, the woman we’re bringing back.”

“I haven’t any nursing experience,” Judith admitted, as she stepped aboard, avoiding piles of boxes, sacks, cartons and drums stowed in every corner of the deck.

“All you have to do is make her as easy as possible. There are no trained nurses available anywhere. They’re scattered all over the islands, helping with cases that don’t need urgent hospital treatment.”

“But Judith is excellent at looking after people.”

At the sound of Neil’s voice, she glanced down into the galley. “Oh, I didn’t know you were aboard.” For the moment she was disconcerted by this second surprise. Since the incident of the burning stove when he had kissed her while she was bandaging his arm, she had not seen either Neil or Stuart, for they had both been busy running to and fro between the islands.

Mairi’s holiday arrangements had been upset by the strike, for she was to have gone to Northern Ireland, but in the absence of steamers and a waiting list for the few available planes, she had decided to stay for a week or so with her married sister in Edinburgh. In a way, Judith was glad not to see Mairi for a short time, for the situation between them was uncomfortable.

“I’m second mate and general handyman,” Neil said now.

“Second mate? Who’s the first, then?”

Neil grinned at her. “You’d better ask the captain.”

“How is your arm?” Judith chose the safer ground of polite enquiries.

“Practically healed, thanks.”

“You’d better sit in the cabin, Judith,” Stuart called out sharply, as though he wanted to end this exchange of pleasantries between her and Neil. “If you come out here, put oilskins on. We’re running into a head wind and there’ll be plenty of spray.”

By now the cabin cruiser was out in the middle of the Sound and moving at what Judith judged to be full speed. She decided that it was too tame to play the passenger in the saloon, watching the spray through the windows. Obediently, she chose the smallest of the enveloping oilskin coats, tied a scarf over her head and sat on a package close to the engine housing.

Stuart kept his attention on steering, for the cabin roof was stacked with boxes of supplies as high as safety allowed, a tarpaulin roped over the top, and he had a clear view only through the forward portholes.

“You seem to have been landed accidentally with me,” she said. “Andy should have told me.”

“He didn’t have time,” Stuart answered, shouting above the wind. “We decided on the spur of the moment that a fishing boat wasn’t suitable for Mrs. MacKenzie, in her state.” Then he added, “Neil agreed to come with me, so I hardly see what fault you have to find in that arrangement.”

“None.” She was nettled by his insinuation that she ought to be pleased to find Neil accompanying them.

As soon as he was clear of the sheltered waters of the Sound, Stuart steered across towards the south end of Mull. On the port side, the Isles of the Sea, the chain also known as the Garvellochs, lay like the humps of sleeping giants, grey smudges on a grey sea.

Then after hugging the shore for as long as possible, Stuart swung out across the wide Firth, leaving Mull behind and approaching Caronsay.
Flying Cloud
rocked and tossed from summit to trough of the waves, and for the first time in her life, Judith felt apprehensive, not only for her own safety and that of her two companions, but for the woman who would have to return with them.

Neil looked none too happy, either, but Stuart was unperturbed, and now Judith wondered if Stuart had deliberately invited Neil to show him to herself in an unfavourable light. Neil knew only a little about boats and the sea, while Stuart was accustomed to these hazards and had gained his experience since childhood.

“Stuart’s used to these waters in all weathers and knows how to zigzag,” Judith assured him.

“Naturally. One doesn’t expect to reach his standard of seamanship in less than half a lifetime.”

She heard the unmistakable sneer in his voice, but there was no sense in quarrelling.

A handful of people shouted greetings as the small cruiser edged in alongside the landing stage at Caronsay and eager hands caught the lines that Neil threw out for making fast.

The stores were quickly unloaded, with anxious enquiries about the cases of whisky expected and a whoop of delight when they were discovered. Stuart clambered ashore to enquire about Mrs. MacKenzie, his passenger. In a few minutes, the busy knot of people milling on the stage parted to allow a handcart through. The woman was helped to her feet and made jocular remarks to her friends, who gave her a cheer as they lowered her to the deck of
Flying Cloud,
where Judith supported her.