The Silver Darlings (36 page)

Finn upended the cask and shook it over the skillet. Callum moistened his mouth with the drops and looked grateful and ashamed.

“Well, boys,” said Roddie quietly, “I’m willing to hear you.”

No-one spoke.

Roddie nodded and looked at the cliff. “Very well,” he said. “One of us will try it. Who is it to be?”

“As skipper,” said Rob, “you can’t desert the boat.”

Henry nodded. The thing did not bear discussing, with a young fellow like Finn in the crew. And it was Finn’s idea. Rob had spoken because of the look in Roddie’s eyes.

There was a minute’s long silent conflict in all their minds, then Roddie pointed to the anchor rope. Finn began to strip off his heavy sea clothes.

Henry and Rob on an oar apiece brought her head to where Roddie wanted it. He let the anchor down carefully, holding the rope immediately he felt bottom, and motioned them to row away. Thus he made certain of not fouling his anchor hold, and they approached Finn’s ledge, stern first.

Some three yards from the rock, Roddie held them. “Take Henry’s oar,” he cried to Callum, now on his feet. This was done, “Go right aft, Henry, and let her in as far as you dare.”

Finn, stripped to jersey and trousers, took off his boots and stockings, for any climbing he had done had been with his bare feet. With his big toe and the one next to it, he could always pick up a stone and throw it farther than any other boy. This had been often a source of young pride. He knotted his woollen cravat round his neck and stuck the ends down his jersey. Two empty bottles, which had contained milk and bore the label “Special”, he placed to
one side. Then he stood up and pulled tight over his brows his round bonnet. He was ready.

With left hand up, Henry checked and guided Roddie’s control on the anchor rope, while the two men on the oars paddled gently, doing little more than holding the boat straight. Henry was in no hurry. As she rose and plunged on the great impulses of the sea, Henry studied her action and the rock in front. It was a desperate venture, because no two seas behaved quite alike, and the stern was thrown giddily not only up and down but in a swaying circular motion. If she fell fifteen feet on a sharp ledge they would drown like rats. Now the stern began to rush on the
cliff-face
, then to sag away, while the water streamed from the rock, from the weed, and boiled underneath in seething froth.

For long moments Henry felt he should give up. Or Finn should have a light rope from the boat round his waist. Or—“I can do it now‚” said Finn.

Henry looked round at him. Finn smiled into his eyes and nodded. Henry slowly motioned Roddie a few inches in. Finn slipped past him and crouched behind the
stern-post
. Holding on with his left hand, Henry gripped Finn at the waist with his right to steady him. “When she comes up, Finn boy,” said Henry in a hoarse voice.

Up she came, rushing on the rock. Henry withdrew his hand. Not until she was a foot from the top of her swinging heave did Finn rise bodily in one swift, easy motion and leap left-footed from the narrow stern-post, and land on toes, knees, and hands, in that order, on the small, rounded, sloping ledge of dark rock.

Down below in the gulf eyes stared up. He held. The boy was ashore. Roddie brought the back of a hand over his forehead.

“The bottles!” cried Finn. Henry threw them, one at each uprising, and Finn caught them against his breast. Then he whipped off his broad woollen cravat, stuck the bottles neck first into the band of his trousers behind,
pulled the black jersey down over them, put two twists of the cravat round his waist, and knotted it over the necks of the bottles. Then he looked up the rock, and in a moment was climbing.

Roddie pulled the boat no more than a yard away. The boat-hook was clear. But as Finn climbed on a slant to his right, Roddie knew that the boat-hook would now fail to reach his fallen body.

The shrieking of the sea-birds became an infernal
torment
to their ragged nerves, and when suddenly Rob seemed to go mad in a high-pitched croak, their hearts leapt as their heads turned—and saw, choking the rock channel, advancing upon them, a gigantic wall of water.

Roddie’s whole weight threw itself instinctively on the rope, but it was torn through his hands as the
Seafoam
rose up and up on the towering wave. Along the rock walls it smashed in a roar flinging white arms at crevice and ledge.

Swung seaward on the crest of it, they hung for a
dizzy
ing
moment on a level with Finn. He had seen it coming and flattened to the sloping rock, gripping with fingers and knees and toes. The solid water swept the soles of his feet, but the white spray covered him like a shroud. Down went the boat, down, down, until tangle, that grew in a
sea-green
underworld, saw the light of day, and curved over, and flattened like trees ridden by a hurricane.

Then up again, Roddie’s hands torn, but the boat well clear of the cliff.

And there was Finn, splayed black against the rock, his head turning cautiously towards the channel. They watched him get to his knees, his feet, pause for an instant to look down on them and wave, before clambering on as if another sea might be coming.

The climbing so far had not been difficult because there was a distinct ridge sloping steeply up the face of the rock for all the world like a narrow, tumbled, broken path. On his left hand the cliff rose sheer, and on his right it fell sheer into the sea. They had seen this formation, of course,
from the boat. But now Finn reached a wall in front of him, little more than twice his own height, but to his eyes
unclimbable
. Here the path ended.

All at once, as he looked up, his vision darkened and his heart began beating at a tremendous rate. He had lived and moved these last seconds beyond his exhausted strength, His skin went cold all over and his flesh started to quiver and tremble in a sickening manner. He lay against the rock, face in, until the silent buzz of the darkness in his head began to subside and his vision to clear. The whistling of his breath made his mouth so much dryer than it was that, when he closed it, it stuck, and came apart again painfully.

As he turned round he saw the upturned faces watching him. He made a gesture of placing his hand over his heart, then he sat down carefully, lay over on one side, and closed his eyes. Deliberately he let his mind sink down in him as if he were going to sleep. For panic was near, the weak nervousness that hates defeat. They would be watching him, too, wondering why he was taking so long, as if he were playing with their nerves, particularly with Roddie’s. Well, let them! let them! So long as the panic stings kept off. And actually, for about half a minute, he was invaded by a delicious feeling of languor. He let it soak into his limp tissues. He felt cradled in an eagle’s eyrie.

Arising, he looked at the rock. In front of him and on the inward side it was flawless and impossible, but on the
outward
edge it was notched and in two places riven to
miniature
ledges. The surface was of a dark, rough texture and dry enough. Without giving himself time for thought, he reached up his right hand and gripped a boss.

They watched him from the boat.

There were moments when the slowness of his
movements
had, for Roddie, the element of extreme horror that is found only in nightmare. His bare foot would come up, feeling for the crack, pawing the rock, with a suspension of time that must for ever defeat it, while the body hung over the sea, high and sheer over the sea, and in an instant was
going to fall away, fall away with a shriek, to drop, to
rebound
from the cornice below, to whirl—with final smash upon the water.

But Finn was still on the rock. And the rock was not his danger, as he knew. He loved the perilous cleanness of height. He could go as carefully here as if he were crossing stepping-stones in a stream. Height invigorated him, made all his senses sing. What he feared was his staying power, the trembling fingers, the dark flush.

He rounded the desperate corner, fingers pressing on the ledge above, toes on the ledge below, and suddenly found that he had rounded the real danger. His spirit lifted in a rush, in a silent cry. The rock leaned back. His toe came up searching for a purchase, found it, felt all round it, gripped; his right hand moved up and got a hold he could have swung on; his left hand, his left foot; slowly, with a certainty of care; up, up over, until he lay on his stomach in safety, with a laughing ecstasy in his heart.

They saw the broad of his feet over the edge of the cliff. Roddie, unknown to himself, groaned and sagged,
completely
exhausted. He had plumbed depths of fear and
terror
that Finn knew nothing of.

On his feet, Finn looked down at them and waved,
laughing
, like an immortal youth; then he turned away and went on up the steep rock with ease, until it gave on grass and he felt the rush of the wind.

From left to right the ground sloped in a long, upward sweep. In front the smooth sward was dotted with staring sheep and rose gently for about half a mile to the highest and farthest point of the island.

He went up to his right to command the whole island, and suddenly stood, his heart in his throat, gazing at a small house. Slowly his eyes searched around everywhere. There was, however, neither human being nor smoke. He approached the house. It was dry-stone built, with long flat stones, as many a house was in Dunster. But it was small, and not like a house, either. Finn came by the door.
It was a little door, about two feet by three. “Are you in?” he called. There was no answer.

Finn stooped double and entered. Inside it was no more than seven feet long and four or five broad. The vaulted roof was an inch or two above his head. There was a damp smell of the earth or of something very ancient. Finn felt that he was not alone.

He went out quietly and stepped away from that place. There were ruins farther on, up at the high north-west point. The sheep ran wildly before him. The birds screamed. He could feel the trembling of the solid rock. The wind harried his eyes and ears. A feeling of remoteness came over Finn, as if he stood on the last storm-threshed outpost of the world. The warm blood of the heart thinned away. Cavernous screaming of birds like tormented spirits, the whistling wail of the invisible wind, the pounding and booming of the sea, the tremble of the rock, all insecure, on the verge of falling away into gulfs of eternal disaster.

Who could have lived in that little house, sitting there by himself?

The ruins in the high corner were larger. Two rooms, with a low passage between.

Turning away, Finn remembered Rob’s story of Rona, the rats, and the dead woman with the child at her breast.

Then he came on the tiny pool, stone beneath it and turf round it. He scooped a little in his hand and tasted it. Sweet, sweet fresh water!

A grand-uncle of Roddie’s, a very strong man, had once, long ago, after heavy labour in the height of a summer day, drunk and drunk out of the cold well that is in the brae above the creek at Lybster, and died within an hour.

Finn, flat on his breast, filled his mouth with water, held it a moment, and let it slide down. Ah-h! He filled it again, he worked it round his gums, and let it go. The water was clear and with the velvet softness that peat gives. It tasted like the water in the burn at home; it was full of memories that did not quite come, that stayed on the other side of
knowing, gently as a hand in sleep. “Oh, boys, it’s good!” he said to himself. About to lie over, he pulled up and brought forth the bottles, as if the little well might vanish should he close his eyes. After rinsing them twice, he filled and corked them, then drank again. He could not get the dry stickiness out of his mouth. Stretching himself on the turf, he let his nostrils breathe in its earthy fragrance. The land!

There was no hurry. He needed rest, against the earth. The sea came, heaving him, a ghostly sea, with all the boat’s motions. And sleep—he had to lift his head, to sit up. It would hardly do if he fell asleep!

At last he arose with a cool feeling of being renewed. At the high points to his right, as he faced from the little house to the ruins, the cliffs were three hundred feet. He did not care to go too near their edge because the wind was so strong. But away to the west side the turf sloped in a gentle breast and there the sea hammered the cliff inward to a horse-shoe bend, with sheer sides two hundred feet high. The wind, too, was now in his face, holding him back.

Finn saw a ledge a little to his right crowded with guillemots, but knew he could not climb down to it. On his hips he advanced carefully, however, just to investigate. A whirl of wind came sideways at him. It was treacherous, the wind in the rock-faces. But what an incredible number of birds! On both hands the ledges were crowded with them. Whole screaming colonies—with each kind keeping to its own ledge! Finn smiled at that. Each to its own
township
, its own parish! Crowded, shoulder to shoulder, and shouting their rights at the tops of their voices! The drink was doing Finn good already. His head was clear and steady, and the flesh on his bones was perhaps fine in the feel but ready and keen. He had often found that what looks like the very edge of a cliff a yard away, is not the final edge when you come to it. So he went on, very
carefully
, until his feet pushed out over the abyss.

The birds saw him; the guillemots went hoarse, the kittiwakes demented, the razorbills lower down stretched their noisy necks as if fish had stuck in them, the air
darkened
with wheeling gulls and fulmars, the sea-parrots blinked sideways and bit each other.

Finn saw an egg on a ledge.

The wind buffeted him. It was difficult but it might not be impossible to get at the ledge. He drew back, circled some fifteen yards, and then began again his advance on the cliff.

No, he could not get to that ledge, although it was only just over the crest, because the sloping ground behind was burrowed and treacherous. Still, he could push out, inch by inch. The ground seemed firm enough.