The Silver Darlings (35 page)

“They have a great trade in dried cod,” said Henry. “They export it all over the world.”

“We must go up and see them one of these seasons!” Roddie had not been far out in his calculation of their whereabouts, and was pleased.

“Come on, Rob,” he said, “tell us about the Rockall, otherwise Callum will be at Henry for a drink.”

Callum shook his head sadly. “My mouth is stuck.”

“Stuck!” repeated Rob dryly. “In that case it’s maybe been an expensive cure, but I might have stood more for

Their ready appreciation of this sally balanced matters, and Rob told them, correctly enough, that the Rockall was a solitary rock in the sea three hundred miles out into the Atlantic, round which there was a famous cod-bank,
particularly
for large fish. “They get them there up to, yes, over, six feet. A man by the name of Flett, who was a
deckhand
on a schooner that was forced into Wick, told George Dempster, who is married on a daughter of old Danny Budge, and is a foreman cooper in Lower
Pulteneytown
…”

Finn always got lost in these relationships, though Rob would go into them at a length generally in proportion to the degree of the marvellous in his story.

The
Seafoam
had now a very complicated motion of pitch and roll. Their voices were tired from being raised to carry. Steering was a more delicate art than ever and Roddie’s head seemed to get a curious swinging motion from the cross seas that bore down on them. For ever he had to be watchful, with stem or stern ready, and when they rose at a slant over a shoulder, Finn could see the backs of the seas, herds of slate-blue backs, racing over the endless wilderness, a sweep of wind round their mighty flanks, like brutes of ocean, hurrying to some far ultimate
congregation
. But always, from the lowest swinging trough, rising to out-top them, was the boat’s stem, steadfast in its own wooden dream.

Roddie’s flanks were beginning to cramp. They could see him slowly straighten one leg and then the other, as he eased himself from hip to hip.

“Will I take a turn?” Henry asked. The others waited in silence.

“Look out!” cried Roddie sharply, and putting the tiller from him, he bore directly away. “I’m going about. Now!” And round she came, so that they were running back on their course. They saw the long-backed monstrous wave coming, and as Roddie brought the
Seafoam
up into the weather, she rode its outer edge, and then fell away on her original course. “Let out a reef,” said Roddie. Henry did not ask for the tiller again, nor did Roddie offer it, and so they were all relieved.

Hours later Finn said, “It’s land,” and Roddie answered, “Yes, I’m sure now.”

Callum’s lips, pale and with a sticky white munge at the corners, opened: “What about celebrating?” Roddie nodded, sticking his tongue between his own dry lips. For the last hour or two thirst had become a torment.

Henry, helped by Finn and Rob, eased the last of the water out of the cask. There was about a cupful each. It was Roddie first, then Callum, whose hands were in a slight tremble, then Rob, Finn, and Henry last. When Henry had
drunk, he said, “I have more than my share. There’s a little left.” No one spoke. “Give it to Callum,” said Roddie. But Callum refused to take it.

“Take it,” ordered Roddie.

“I’ll divide it with Finn,” said Callum. Finn refused.

“Dammit, take it!” cried Roddie sharply. Irritation swept their weakened bodies. Finn moistened his lips and handed the skillet to Callum, who drained it without more ado.

The irritation passed, leaving them quiet and
concentrating
on what soon were plainly seen to be islands. Roddie kept to windward to have seaway to bear down on them.

As they brought the first two islands abeam, the way the waves broke on them was a silencing sight. Then two more islands—and beyond, to the far dark horizon, nothing but ocean! These were no islands in the mouth of a land inlet. There was no mainland anywhere. No Lewis.

“Have you any idea of what they are?” shouted Roddie to Rob.

Rob stared at the rock-walls with their green tops. The smashing, spouting seas were stupendous. He shook his head slowly. “No.”

Roddie stood well away until he was beyond them. There was one larger island and perhaps——

Finn cried, “I see sheep!” White specks against a
grey-green
. Yes, they were sheep!

“Stand by!” called Roddie sharply. “I’m going to put her about.”

Down they came, racing, clearing the water foul with low rock on their port side, heading into a horse-shoe bay, girdled by black cliff.

Calm—in the slow heaving water of shelter. Finn and Callum, each with an oar ready, Rob stowing the sail, Henry forward at the anchor. “Let go!” called Roddie.

“I’ve got it,” answered Henry, holding bottom.

“Thank God,” said Callum.

“Cold iron!” cried Rob.

Slowly Roddie got up, after touching cold iron, and straightened himself, his hands gripping the small of his back and working down over his flanks. His face broke. “Boys, I’m stiff.” His eyes lifted to myriads of circling, screaming birds. “They seem surprised to see us,” he said, and his eyes glimmered.

It was a reconciling smile, and though this looked a wild and haunted enough place in all conscience, still they were here, and that, as Finn had said, was always something. Roddie stretched himself out over the nets and eased his body in rolling motions. For a short while they were full of humour, and lived in its careless moments.

There were some birds which Finn had never seen before and a group of puffins looking over a ledge reminded him of an illustration of parrots in one of Mr. Gordon’s books.

“What’s that one?”

“That one?” said Rob, screwing up his eyes. “Man, I should know it, too.”

“Do you think,” suggested Finn, “that we may have landed on an island in the South Seas?”

“No, no,” said Rob. “We’re just in the Western Ocean.”

“Ay, but where? What if that ship was not a real ship at all and we have been enchanted into the South Seas?”

“Hush, be quiet!” said Rob. “What talk is that?”

He looked around anxiously to make sure they had not been overheard by the old dark ones.

And the cliffs were dark enough and mostly sheer. It was a wild, forbidding place, a black jaw, formed as they could now see by two islands, with the gullet at the back, just wide enough to take their boat, twisting out of sight between perpendicular walls, and clearly going right through to the west side because the pulse of the sea came from the channel in undulations upon which they rose and fell.

The reverberations from the pounding waves drummed
in their ears and could be felt in their bodies. The black cliffs vibrated. The circling birds had mostly fallen back upon their visible rock ledges where they were better able to keep up the intensity of their myriad-throated screaming.

Roddie lay with his eyes closed as if he had fallen into a deep sleep. They all took their ease and upon them came an insidious lassitude. They gave in to it and lay with their mouths open in such varied attitudes that it looked as if the
Seafoam
had brought to haven a boat-load of the dead.

As each one stirred uneasily he tried to swallow, but could not and that awoke him. Moisture would not come into their mouths. Their tongues and throats felt dry and swollen. They had eaten nothing since a piece of bread in the early morning. The afternoon was obviously far spent. To go out into that sea now would mean, at the best, running upon a lee shore in the dark, a shore that for the most part was bound to be smoking cliff. And in any case the wind seemed to be rising, for they could not only hear the whine of it, but now and then a quicker, intenser whine, as if still swifter hounds of the air were being unleashed to overtake and harry the hurtling grey-backed monsters of the sea.

At the back of their minds had been a vague hope that, where sheep were, human beings might be. When they tried to shout, however, only hoarse croaks issued from them and with such lacerating effect that they coughed in pain. They then bethought them of beating the pot and kettle and tin skillet, of whacking wood on wood, until the
fulmars
circled in fantastic gyres and the screaming of puffin and guillemot and gull rose to a demoniac pitch, while they themselves, carried away into a momentary frenzy, laughed harshly into the infernal scene.

But Finn had had his eyes on the giddy rock-ledges with their rows of birds. It was the beginning of May. It was nesting time. The cool slither of a sucked egg went down his throat. He would climb the cliff.

He did not speak at once because he wanted to have his
voice under control, so he scanned the wall on the large island to the north for a possible way up.

Roddie began to talk. They were here for the night. He was glad to hear the wind rising, still from the same airt, because there was every chance now that it would blow itself out by the morning. They could not be more than six or Seven
hours at the most from Lewis, with a
half-favourable
passage. They would just have to hope for the best and make themselves as comfortable as they could. And the best way was to try to pass the time in dozing. One by one they would take watch through the night.

They were all silent. There was nothing else that could be done. And then Finn spoke.

“I have been looking at that cliff,” he said. “I think I can climb it.”

Roddie’s face slowly drew taut and his eyes hardened. “No-one can climb that cliff,” he said.

“Yes, if you landed me there, I could do it.”

They looked at the black ledge to which he pointed. The water rose to it, then fell down about twelve feet sheer in sucking, greeny-white swirls, then rose again.

“Are you mad?” asked Roddie, his eyes like glass.

“No, I’m not,” said Finn, and felt inside him, small and intense as a needle-prick, an animosity against Roddie. It excited him. His body grew taut in challenge.

“And how would we land you there?” asked Roddie in level mockery.

“Easily enough,” replied Finn. “If you shifted the anchor over there, one of you could pay out rope, while the others brought her in stern first on the oars. When you were close to the rock and the stern rose up, I could jump.”

It was the clearness of the operation that struck their fancy and kept them silent, but Roddie said, “And what if the stern-post got the rock coming up? What if you slipped? Do you think we could help you then?”

“Someone must take a chance,” said Finn, a lash of colour in his cheek-bones.

“Oh? Why?” demanded Roddie.

“Because if I don’t do it now, I won’t have the strength to do it to-morrow. And you know that.” Roddie’s tone had whipped him. He shut his mouth to keep more words from boiling out.

“Well, you won’t do it now,” said Roddie.

“Why not?” cried Finn, in direct challenge. “What are you frightened of?”

“I’m not usually frightened,” said Roddie. “I’d advise you to control your mouth. I’m the skipper here.”

Finn looked away with a twisted expression. He was trembling.

In their exhausted, thirst-tormented, overwrought
condition
, a bout of irritation or short temper was
understandable
enough, but the others felt that what had flared so swiftly between Roddie and Finn was deeper than irritation. They were like two with a blood-secret between them.

“Oh, very well,” replied Finn. “I could do it, if you couldn’t. That’s all.”

There was a tense, drawn-out moment and Roddie’s fist gripped round the unshipped tiller. Henry broke the silence, speaking calmly. “There’s no good talking wild, Finn. Our minds are weary enough. In any case, where would be the point of climbing? We have got to keep reasonable.”

“Because there will be water on the top. You saw the sheep. If we don’t get away to-morrow—ask Callum what he’ll be like.”

“You can leave me out of it,” said Callum dully.

“We’ll wait until to-morrow, and then——”

“And then it’ll be too late,” Finn interrupted Henry. “I’m weak enough myself and I’m dying of thirst. So are you. Someone should try it.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Henry, suddenly overborne.

Rob looked at the cliff and remarked casually, “I never had the head for it myself.”

“You’re honest, anyway,” replied Finn, trying to smile casually.

The silence that fell on the boat now gave them no rest, no ease; worked deep in their minds like a diluted poison. Roddie and Henry closed their eyes to avoid contacts. Callum was slumped against the nets and presently began to moan. His lips were pale as oatmeal. His moaning in a tortured, restless sleep irritated Henry intensely, and he got up and looked at the rock. Presently he had to waken Callum. When Callum first tried to speak, nothing came except a wheeze. But he got a smile through and enough voice to blame the accursed salt beef. He sat up and rubbed his cheeks and ears slowly and pulled at his throat. By the morning Callum would be in a state of acute distress. They could hear the clacking of his mouth as it tried for moisture.

Henry looked at Roddie. “I think I’ll have a shot at it,” he said, nodding sideways at the cliff.

Roddie removed his eyes and shook his head. Henry had a wife and three of a family.

Henry went silent.

“If the lad thinks he can do it,” began Rob, noisily scratching the beard on his jaw, “well—I don’t know——”

Finn said nothing, his face to the rock. It was between Roddie and himself, and he was aware that Roddie did not care for cliffs. It was quite possible that he hadn’t the head. But, far beyond all that, he knew what was troubling him. Roddie would not like to be the bearer of the tidings of Finn’s death to Finn’s mother! Something deep inside Finn exulted over Roddie, over his bitter predicament, with a sustained feeling of ruthless triumph. Death itself was neither here nor there, because in fact it never entered Finn’s head except as an imaginary counter in this triumph of enmity.

Excepting Roddie, Callum was the strongest man on the boat. But his strength was of the kind that lives powerfully for a short time. His body was broad, and at middle age he would be a stout heavy man. His frank generous nature had
a fine simplicity, and now as he stirred and tried to smile, his blue eyes looked as pitiful as a child’s. “That salt beef,” he croaked. He wanted to lie in the bottom of the boat and not move.