Murdo's War (10 page)

‘Good health,’ he said.

‘Slàinte mhath.’

Hector drank, and the Englishman tossed the last of his own whisky down his throat. His face twisted with revulsion. He pushed the glass far from him and rubbed a hand over his face.

‘Where’s the coffee?’ he said. ‘I’m not used to that stuff, it’s devilish.’

Hector felt it burning in his stomach along with his dinner, and burped behind his fist.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘What about tonight?’

Anxiously Henry Smith looked up from pouring his coffee, and glanced at the door, but it was shut.

‘I don’t like the look of the weather at all,’ Hector said. ‘It’s fairly rough now, and it’s blowing up nasty. It will be bad out there. I think it might be wise to leave it for tonight.’

Henry Smith had been expecting it. He too had watched the weather deteriorating throughout the afternoon. ‘If only the old fool had gone on Sunday’, time and again the thought had recurred. Now he suppressed it.

‘We’ve got two more crossings,’ he pleaded. ‘Just two small loads, and the men. If a real storm blows up it might be days before you can get over again.’ He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, then shook his head slightly to try to clear the alcohol from his brain. ‘I know I’m a little drunk, but is there no chance?’

He was so anxious that Hector sighed and scratched the back of his neck. He looked at Murdo and raised his eyebrows.

‘Well, I’ve been out in worse,’ he said. ‘If we went now we might get one load in. But I must say I don’t like it.’

Henry Smith nodded. ‘That’s fair enough; we can but try. Thank you, Mr Gunn.’

Hector chuckled. ‘Wait until we’re out there. You can thank me then.’

The afternoon was wearing out as they put to sea. The edge of the clouds that had been rolling westward obliterated the low-burning sun, wiping the last vestiges of colour from the landscape. All turned grey and black and white.
Lobster Boy
was very small amid the ocean of waves that poured in from the north-east. Her bows rose and fell, leaped and splashed, as she chugged steadily northwards up the bay towards the point. Icy spray whipped into their faces, and Murdo tasted the familiar salt tang on his lips.

A violent smack lurched the boat sideways and Henry Smith slithered awkwardly to the bottom boards. Dripping, he pulled himself back to his seat.

‘It’s not so good!’ he cried.

Hector pushed the tiller across, bringing his boat back on course. ‘Och, she’s not so bad at all here,’ he called above the noise of the wind and waves. ‘We’ll do fine. We’ve got the sea on the bows now. It’ll be a bit bouncy when we get round the point and have to turn beam-on, though.’

He shrugged his head comfortable in the clumsy merchant navy life-jacket he kept at the cottage for such seas. On the side bench by the engine, Murdo also was wearing one. Hector only had the two. An old motor-bike inner tube, fastened to a lanyard, lay on the boards for Henry Smith, who had insisted on coming.

As they rounded Strathy Point it was just as Hector had said. Head-on the
Lobster Boy
might pitch, but beam-on, as she exposed her starboard flank to the waves and wind, she rolled and swung, yawed, pitched and flung her head in every direction.

Braced against the engine casing, Murdo loved every moment of it, feeling the boat leaping beneath him. His dark eyes shone as the spray lashed up and struck him with hard, rattling smacks. Beneath his oilskins he remained dry and warm, save at the neck where a heavy scarf absorbed the salt water that trickled from his face.

‘How do you think she’ll do?’ he shouted to Hector, turning his sou’wester into a heavy veil of sea-water that whipped across the boat.

‘All right. She’ll do all right if it gets no worse than this.’ Hector turned to Henry Smith. ‘We’ll get you there, anyhow,’ he said cheerfully.

But there was no answer. Henry Smith had turned ashen pale. With hollow eyes he stared wretchedly at Hector, then hung his head and gave an enormous yawn.

‘Not feeling too good, are you?’

He shook his head abjectly, and looked up at the water. A huge wave swept in from the near-darkness, towering above them. The little boat heaved, lurched up sideways, and slid down the far side. For an instant Mr Smith paused, then suddenly he twisted round, grabbed at the gunwale, and hung his head far out over the water. There was an ugly, coughing sound.

Murdo looked across at Hector and grinned.

With the wind behind them it took little longer than usual to reach the island. By the time they arrived Henry Smith had collapsed into a sodden bundle of misery at the lee gunwale. The tide was not yet half way in, and despite the surge of the sea it was calm enough in that sheltered corner of the bay for Hector to nurse his boat through the tunnel into the mooring pool. Murdo climbed to the jetty and Hector passed him the shaded lantern.

‘Well, we’re here, at least,’ he said a minute later, as he stood with Henry Smith watching Murdo pull the
Lobster Boy
out of her mooring in the middle of the pool. ‘Let’s hope we get back as easily.’ The Englishman stood shakily in the circle of lamplight. He wiped his lips with a handkerchief and mopped the cold sweat and sea-water from his face. A thick skein of spray rattled on the concrete at their feet.

‘Get back?’ he said weakly. ‘Through that? Heading into it?’

‘Well I’m going back, anyway,’ Hector said positively. ‘I’m not sitting out a storm on this island. You’re the one that wanted to come: and now we’re here. So where are the cases?’

Henry Smith turned and surveyed the white water that roared across the rocks at his back, then picked up the lantern and made his way to the higher rocks at the foot of the cliff steps. The last of the crates were stacked in a sheltered cranny where even the highest waves would be unable to reach them. They were covered with a heavy tarpaulin. The top of the tarpaulin and all the rocky ledges were thick with snow.

‘That’s the last of them,’ he said.

Hector surveyed the stack briefly and sniffed. ‘Too much for one load in a sea like this,’ he said. ‘We might have managed a few days ago, when it was calm, but not now.’ He turned to Henry Smith. ‘So – what’s it to be? Take as many as we can now, and come back for the rest later? Or do you want to take some of the men? They haven’t got life-jackets, mind.’

Henry Smith thought for a moment. ‘A mile or two off shore in a sea as cold and rough as this, I can’t see a life-jacket makes all that much difference,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll take some of the men. Half the cases and some of the men.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Hector. ‘You go up and tell them to get ready. Murdo and I will take the boxes down to the boat.’

Henry Smith did not reply, but from his silence it was clear that he did not like the arrangement. He tapped Murdo on the shoulder. The boy turned back from looking at the sea.

‘You go on up to the house and tell them, will you? You’re more sure-footed than I am. I’ll give Mr Gunn a hand with the cases.’

Murdo looked to Hector for confirmation, then back to the bespectacled Englishman. He nodded.

‘Remember the names,’ Henry Smith said. ‘We’ll take Peter, Sigurd, Arne, and –’ he paused for a moment, thinking; ‘– and Carl Voss. Got it?’

‘Peter, Sigurd, Arne and Carl Voss,’ Murdo said.

‘Yes. They’re to put their stuff together and get themselves down here as quickly as possible.’

‘Right.’ Murdo turned to the gale-swept cliff steps.

‘Watch how you go,’ Hector called across to him.

He nodded and started climbing. The gale was wild, rattling the oilskins about his body as he went higher. The crumbling ascent was treacherous beneath the snow and he had to feel carefully at every step, kicking his boot to the back of the tread. Once his feet skidded from under him and he fell forward, knees and toes digging in for dear life, hands grabbing at the steps to pre- vent himself sliding backwards. A foot went over the edge. When he began climbing again he was shaking. But he reached the top safely, and within five minutes of leaving the boat, was being blown across the crown of the island with the gale at his back.

It took only a minute to deliver Henry Smith’s message, and he waited in the warmth while the men got ready. They were quick, and in less than ten minutes they were all making their way back across the island to the cliff steps and the jetty.

Hector and Henry Smith had finished their job and were sheltering behind a big rock having a smoke. They had double-lashed the tarpaulins and anchored the boxes securely to the bottom-boards and deck cleats. Tight lines ran to a for’ard thwart and the engine mounting so that they could not possibly shift.

Hector stood up as he heard them approaching. A moment later they appeared through the rocks.

‘Let’s get straight away, then,’ he said. ‘The sooner the better.’ He pushed the pipe into his jacket pocket and untied the painter.

Soon they were all sitting in the boat, the shaded lantern on the bottom boards at their feet. Its light caught Mr Smith’s face, grim as he prepared for his personal ordeal of sea-sickness. He looked up at the Norwegians who were not leaving that trip, and had accompanied the others to the shore with two boxes of provisions.

‘We’ll be back when we can,’ he said. ‘I hoped it would be tonight, but...’ he shrugged and held his hands out.

Little Dag, red hair blown back from his good-natured face, raised an arm in acknowledgement.

Hand over hand Murdo pulled them out to the anchor and heaved it up. Three minutes later they were heading out between the cliffs into the very teeth of the gale.

The waves broke against the crags with explosions that flung sheets of white water fifty feet into the air. In torrents it roared across the rocks. The wind had torn the lower clouds into tatters and stars danced between the dark masses of snow clouds. Ahead, where the sky was clear to the horizon, a sick orange moon heaved itself out of the sea. The ragged waves leaped up as if to pluck it down again.

Dauntlessly Hector headed his little boat straight out from the rocks into the open sea. She swung violently as the waves thudded against her planking, and the spray whipped across the faces of the passengers. The men looked anxiously from one to the other and at the old man at the tiller, sou’wester flattened over his forehead by the wind. His wrinkled eyes flicked down to the lamplit compass and back to the waste of waters ahead, never flinching in their concentration.

Murdo made his way from the bows, clinging to one of the tarpaulin lashings as they shot dizzily up and dropped like a stone down the back of a roller.

‘It’s too rough,’ he cried above the noise of the storm, his mouth close to Hector’s ear. ‘We’ll never make it around Strathy Point in this.’

‘You’re right. But I’m not going to sit out a storm on that island for anybody.’ Hector ducked as a huge slice of icy water slapped over the boat, then looked up again, his oilskins streaming. ‘We’ll put in to Farr Port.’

‘What are they going to say about it?’

‘By the time we get to Torrisdale Bay they’ll be glad to put into any port at all,’ Hector cried, his voice whipped astern by the wind. ‘We can sit the storm out well enough in Clerkhill.’

Murdo settled himself securely on the lee side bench near Hector, and turned his shoulder and sou’wester into the main force of the wind. From beneath his brows he regarded the Norwegians. They looked scared and miserable, all except Carl Voss. His face hard set, he stared out over the water as though daring it to try to do him any harm. It was a dangerous face. Henry Smith was being sick, and as Murdo watched, Arne too, with the albino face, suddenly jerked convulsively and vomited into the bottom of the boat. Murdo looked away, it made him sick to see it.

‘They’re the ones who wanted to come,’ Hector said. ‘They’ll be glad enough to put ashore in half an hour or so.’

Eilean Neave crawled past, a dark shape to starboard. The cliffs dropped away, and as the moon vanished into the clouds they were completely out of sight of the land. Suddenly Murdo became aware that the atmosphere had changed. It was no longer fun. The
Lobster Boy
seemed infinitely small and frail, a nut-shell on a big and dangerous ocean. The circle of lamplight illuminated the timbers and huddled fligures like a painting. The light was comforting, yet made them more vulnerable, as if beyond its gleam, where they were, blind, dark forces were watching. Looking across, Murdo found the eyes of Carl Voss fixed like a hawk’s on his own. He stared straight back for a moment, his own black eyes shining in the lamplight, then looked away over the water.

Suddenly, without any warning, a huge wave rushed in from the darkness, towering above them, with another foaming on its tail.
Lobster Boy
had no time to turn head-on and slithered sidways up the massive wall of water. For a moment she poised on the crest, then slewed down the back into the black trough. The second wave was right above them. Two men cried aloud, then all was confusion and water. Great gouts of breaking sea surged over the gunwale. The lamp was extinguished. Suddenly the boat was very heavy, wallowing.

Murdo was flung to the deck. Struggling to get up he sprawled on his back as the water they had shipped surged from side to side and end to end of the boat. For a moment he thought they were going down. A man cannoned into him. Then out of the confusion he heard Hector calling for light. He fought his way to the for’ard locker and dragged out the spare lantern. Hector was still at the tiller, struggling to keep his boat’s head into the wind at half throttle. He thrust his matches into Murdo’s hands. But Murdo was sodden and awkward and could hardly handle them. As he opened the box, half the matches tipped out and fell into the water. Then he managed to light one, but as he opened the lamp the match fell from his fingers and was extinguished.