The Silver Darlings (59 page)

“Gosh! you’re hurting me,” said Roddie.

She did not speak.

He laughed gently, derisively, into her hair, then picked her up in his arms to relieve the sheer stress of pleasure that came over him.

When she was pouring the porridge into his plate, he said, “I’ll bring you home a rope from the boat.”

“What for?”

“You could then tie me by one leg to the end of the house as you do a hen with chickens.”

She turned away, confused.

But Roddie smiled. He felt he understood her far more deeply than she imagined and enjoyed keeping the
knowledge
to himself.

But if Roddie for the time being was thus losing grip on the sea, Finn was being drawn to it ever more elementally. The weather was often wet and stormy, and occasionally it was intensely, bitterly cold. For spells, feeling would desert his hands and even the flesh on his back, and the cold would crawl along his bones. Working in the sea water, his
fingers
would experience the smoothness of washed stone—at a little distance from him, flexible like tangle-weed. They could only feel a hook-point dimly. The men were heavily clothed, however, and in frost, with a creeping haar, Finn sometimes achieved a sensation of bodily misery that was ultimate and strangely bearable. Not only his hands but his mind seemed washed by the cold sea water.

Then in April something happened which drew Finn into an even closer kinship with the sea.

Already Roddie had let it be known that he was not going to any West Coast fishing in May. He said he didn’t think it was worth it, and doubted if there would be much doing in any case, because curers seemed dissatisfied,
unwilling
to take bounty and other risks, and doubtful of the wisdom of a too early fishing. He was going to give it a miss for this year anyway, he said. But Finn guessed correctly what had happened. He was about the last to discover that his mother was going to have a child. For two or three months, he had seen very little of her. The estrangement between them was such that when they did chance to meet in Elspet’s presence they could talk to each other with that appearance of distant ease or restraint not unusual in
members
of the same family whose interests have diverged. When he suddenly found out about the child, he had a revulsion of feeling strong enough to snap the last cord between them, to make the estrangement complete. When the revulsion had slowly ebbed, he felt glad that the whole affair was over, that he was finally cut off from any consideration for his mother.

And he could afford to smile with contempt at the thought of Roddie, the great seaman, being overcome by his wife; Roddie making excuses—because he must stay at home! He even heard Roddie suggest in a very
roundabout
way to Henry that he might take his place with the curer. For Henry was expecting his own new boat within a week. Things had come to a pretty pass with the great Viking! But it suited Finn excellently. He would never have dreamt of going with Roddie in any case. Now Henry and he would carry on the winter partnership into the West, for which there was growing within him a deep nostalgia. He was longing to get away, longing for the sea-inlets of the West, the glimmer of twilight in the quiet nights, remote from Dunster. It was like a land that existed in a dream, though he never had the felicity to dream of it except with his eyes open.

And then the incident happened.

Dunster had been luckier than many places on the rocky coasts of that northern sea in so far as loss of life was
concerned
. Hardly a season passed without its storms and alarms, but actual tragedy had been rare. Perhaps Henry and Finn had set a high standard of daring against the weather, and though there was little overt rivalry among boats, yet no skipper liked hanging about the shore when another was at sea, not unless his weather judgement had been proved in the past and was respected. However that may be, several boats were at sea in the dawn of a darkling April morning, when an easterly gale sprang up. Henry and Finn had been a little uneasy, because the sea had a nasty “lift” in it; there had been a “carry” on the sky they did not like, and they could smell bad weather about. But in the winter-spring fishing particularly, such an uneasiness was not unusual, and did little more than keep the eye
lifting
and the ear alert.

They were about to start hauling a great line with its hundred hooks on snoods a fathom apart when they saw and heard the wind coming. Such an onset occurred
frequently
enough to have found a common form of
description
in the mouths of the fishermen: “A lump of wind struck us”. The lump now struck them with a sweeping flattening violence, and Finn and another threw themselves on the loosely stowed canvas. Henry’s face was into the weather. “It’s coming, boys!” he cried, when he had assured himself of what was behind the lump.

They were about five miles from Dunster, and Henry’s decision to leave the line and make for home was
immediate
. Over the blackened water, scuds of drift were racing. With a peak of sail to give steering way Henry ran his
White
Heather
dead before it. The uneasy sea began to rise with great rapidity. But they were not frightened of the sea; what sat in Henry’s mind was fear of the shore, where in no time the rollers would be breaking. There was no harbour, no breakwater, nothing but the open beach and
the stony river mouth. And apart from that crescent of beach, with some deathly skerries beyond its southern horn, there was nothing but gaunt cliff, whose base far as the eye could reach was already white spume. That the tide was low was an added anxiety.

They could see the other boats making for home. None of them had been so far out as the
White
Heather
, and already several were approaching the bay, and three more, a little to the south’ard, were fighting hard against the drift for the wind was a little north of east. Two of them should make it, but the third, some distance behind, would have all she could do to keep off the skerries. Yes, it would be touch and go with her!

The crew felt exhilarated. Already in their bodies was the fight with the beach, the leaping overboard, the
gripping
of the gunnel, the heave upward of the bow to keep the bottom planking from getting stove in. To save the boat each in risking his life would know a high thrill. For the boat was more than all, it was their challenge to the sea, arousing in them not thought of risk but an exalted courage. And Henry was there, jealous of his seamanship, anxious in the moment of test that he should acquit himself creditably before his fellows.

Finn glanced back at him. Henry’s thin face was set, calm, but its lines held as in a faint fixed smile, the irony that was characteristic of him. Somehow this touched Finn with the old emotion of comradeship and he glanced away—and saw well to the west and fairly low in to the rocks the heaving darkness of a small boat. He cried out and pointed. They all looked and their faces quickened, for they knew on the instant that that boat was doomed.

“It’s Daniel Bannerman,” cried Henry.

Their hands gripped what they rested on. They looked from the distant boat to the beach and back to the
boat-again
. They could see her losing way as if they were
hanging
on her iron-held oars. She was done for!

Now they wanted to give their own boat more speed.
There arose in them the urge to land swiftly. They had no fear of the sea. Its spray stung their cheeks and eyes. The wind roared and whistled past them. Henry stood close into the Head to get what eddying shelter there might be by the river mouth. Bursts of spume were flying up the rock-face. Yes, he could save himself from landing on the beach. He could take the river-mouth. They could do it! Yes, they could do it with ease!

“The oars clear!” cried Henry, his eyes narrow and
calculating
.

But they hardly needed the oars, except, at the last, to hold her from broaching to, and, as her forefoot grounded, they jumped. There were some men on the water-edge. She was gripped, and went with them in their midst until only her stern was washed by the breaking waves.

The cry now rose about Daniel Bannerman. Already folk were appearing from the crofts, men and women and boys. Small boats were being drawn up the beach by seamen wet to the waists. Women with heads tightly shawled leaned against the storm, their wide skirts flapping. The seadrift whistled past in a stinging rain. Blobs of spume big as gulls’ eggs caught the ground, shivered and burst.

As Finn joined the surge of men along the crest of the beach the last of the three boats that had been seen fighting for the bay was being driven on the skerries. Seamen were leaping the boulders towards the black rocks, sloping like wedges into the sea, upon which it was now clear she would be piled up. Standing on an outer skerry, each wave as it came seething white round his feet, was a tall commanding figure with a coil of rope in his hand. Though at a
considerable
distance, Finn, running, knew that figure. It was Roddie. Then, through the roar of the breakers, he began to hear his voice. His left arm was out, directing them, indicating by a sweeping peremptory motion the narrow channel they must take between two skerries. Now could be seen the power of the storm and the desperate effort of the four men on the oars, pulling out to sea with the utmost
strength of their bodies, pulling into the eye of the wind and being driven before it, keeping the ever-lifting stem into the weather while trying to guide the stern between the two skerries, which every surge of the sea submerged in bursts of tumultuous water. When at last she caught the ground-swing properly she came in a rush and crashed against the western skerry. The man on the bow oar was unseated by a severe blow on the chest from the end of his oar as the rock smashed its blade against the gunnel. The boat shot off the skerry, still plunging inward, and would have smashed her stern in on the living rock, had not the sucking recession of the water begun. As it was she shivered from the crack. There were cries as the men gathered themselves from the bottom boards, and Roddie’s voice rang out with the uncoiling rope. A side channel to the left gave on a sandy pool, but all human effort at
direction
was futile in the heave of the sea, and as she struck again she began to fill with water. But Roddie had now belayed the rope round a corner of the rock and managed to heave her nose inward to the channel; heaved her farther, until, taking their chance as it came, the five men, assisted by Roddie, scrambled on to the rock.

“Come on!” cried Roddie, leading the way. There was shouting behind him. He turned round. It appeared the old skipper was not going to come. Roddie strode back and yelled, “Come on!”

“It’s all right,” said the old man calmly. “Be you going. I’ll stand by her for a little while.” He had to lift his voice, but his manner was quiet as if he were talking from his croft door.

“By God, you’ll come now!” cried Roddie in an anger suddenly flaming because of what moved in the heart of this old man.

But the old man began pulling on the rope. “Be you going,” he said. “She’s been a good boat to me.” There was an extraordinary, an incredible calm on his face, a gentle expression that smiled.

Out of the flowing tide the sea answered, but Roddie gripped the old man and together they clung to the
streaming
rock. They climbed upward on to the skerry whose top ledge was several feet above high-water mark (here,
perhaps
, the skipper had thought he might weather the tide), and down again, and inward, until they met the sea coming from the other direction in that welter of rock. In crossing the narrow channel to the beach the youngest of the crew was swept off his feet but he could swim and, gripping the strong tangle-weed, soon heaved himself out. A few
minutes
later, the passage could not have been made, except perhaps in a headlong dive by a strong swimmer.

There were high cries for the crew from members of their families. One man’s face was streaming blood where the skin had been scraped away by a barnacled ledge, and another had his head bent, coughing painfully, his hands against his chest. But apart from these minor bruises, they were all safe and sound, which was miracle enough.

“You’ll come now, Hamish,” cried his old wife to the old skipper.

“Be you going, Nanz,” answered the old man. “I’ll wait a little while.”

“You will not,” rose her shrill voice, “and you wet from head to foot! You’ll come now, this minute!”

“Ah, be going, woman,” said Hamish austerely. “And leave me alone. What’s a little wet?”

Finn followed the others, but as he was making for the steep green brae above the beach, he had a sudden thought and began to run towards the store by the gutting stations. He emerged with his head stuck through a heavy coil of back-rope. On the slanting path up the brae, he was
overtaken
by an elderly fisherman who had been delayed
securing
his boat in the river mouth, and, after some talk, this man went back for more rope.

Soon two men from the hills, making for the shore, ran into Finn, and when he had given them the news, they
carried the rope between them, thus giving Finn a rest and increasing speed.

As they left the braes behind and came out on top of the cliffs, they saw the crowd at a little distance and Finn, because of his knowledge of that coast, was aware in a momentary deep inward sinking that boat and men were doomed.

He knew the crew well. Daniel Bannerman, who had been evicted from the Heights of Kildonan, was a tall man of sixty-three, sparely built, patriarchal in manner, quietly religious, and, as it was solemnly said, “highly respected”, for he had a considerable formative influence on the life of the people beyond the Birch Wood; Oscar Sinclair, in his forties, robustious in action, with a red beard and the nature that got pleasure out of giving a neighbour a hand; Tom Dallas, a steady dark lad in his twenties; and Una’s brother, Duncan, a year older than Finn.