And, although no inhabited land was in sight, we weren’t even truly alone in the ocean. Ten miles west, like the moon to Rona’s fertile earth, rose the barren rock of Sula Sgeir—a gannet factory. And there was always the sense of the ‘ancient race’. Personally, if ever I felt remote or cut off, it wasn’t from the mainland far over the horizon, but from the abandoned village a quarter-mile away. There was something homely and recognisable about the oval shapes they made in the earth, and the humble chapel. We ate packet soups and tinned fruit, and looked out through the window at the relics of a lost intelligence, the long-forsaken fields, gilded in evening light.
* * *
One morning, when the day was already established, I was washing my hair in a basin round at the bothy gable when I heard Stuart shouting. He’d gone out early, over to the north side, but here he was again, bawling from the hill crest and pointing out to sea. The wind had veered a little during the night, the sea was calm with a few white caps, and nothing seemed untoward, except—I grabbed a towel—for a party of gannets, ten or a dozen, a half-mile out from the island, which were quickly heading toward us. The birds’ wings were a slow white flicker in the sunshine, as I thought later, like the flashes of paparazzi cameras. That’s what I noticed first: that the gannets were flying in a peculiar way, limp and floppy, and in a bunch low above the water, not like the arrow-lines they usually form.
This all happened very quickly—the shout, the towel, the wide sea and floppy gannets. I’d seen gannets behave like that just once before, but once was enough; I yelled back, telling Stuart that we were onto it and, wiping soapy water from my eyes, barged into the bothy to find Jill.
We all arrived breathless at the cliffy rim of an inlet called Poll Thothatom. It was where we’d landed, steep-sided but for one obliging slope where you could jump ashore without fear of breaking your neck. Now, though, at the mouth of the inlet, with the wide sea behind them, five black fins pierced the water’s surface.
Killer whales. The fins were glossy; one was tall and straight, a male’s amid four smaller and more curved. The gannets had peeled away, and the killer whales were turning slowly around one another. Now and then an area of back surfaced, lay for a moment like an atoll, as the animal blew softly. It was as if, having arrived, they were taking time to agree strategy.
We stood side by side on the clifftop, watching with our hearts in our mouths. One thing we knew—they probably weren’t here for a holiday. There were always seals loafing around this geo, both in the water or hauled out on rocks, and until that moment I’d have called a bull seal a big animal, but suddenly the seals were small and tender, and they knew exactly what was going on. In the waters of the geo, about sixty feet below us, the seals were mustering quietly, heads held above the waves. I’d expected to see them lolloping up onto rocks in panic, but instead they hung vertical and looked out at the slow, dreadful fins, while the killer whales held their council. With each incoming wave, the congregation of seals rose and fell, and for a long moment all was tense calm.
Then the killer whales moved. They moved so fast, I think I screamed. The females came in two volleys; a few leaps and they were exactly below us, exactly where we’d landed in the dinghy. As soon as she reached the rocks the first animal careened, showing her white belly, and she drew her right flank along the rocks, as though she was glad to feel them, as though she was scratching a maddening sea-itch.
Screaming, jumping up and down at their sheer speed and panache, inside I thought, She’s smelling it—I thought the huge animal below was smelling a bouquet of rock, seals, vegetation, maybe even us. That’s what my human mind said—how she seemed to relish the sensation. Then, with these four animals below us, we heard them blow—all synchronised, a sound low, regular and industrial, like a Victorian machine.
The waves still washed vaguely up against the rocks, and just at the place where water met rock the four killer whales aligned themselves one behind the other, and it seemed to me already, even in my excitement, that there was something peculiar about how I was seeing them. Four killer whales in front of my eyes—big, big, animals—but something about the play of their black-and-white livery was confounding. It was the white patch behind the eye: it seemed to deflect the gaze, the way a mirror or amulet deflects the evil eye.
As I say, I think I screamed, but Jill or Stuart was tugging me, shouting to come on, and we set off running.
The animals had turned west and were moving tight against the island, following its contours. We followed them from above—once again, I was running along a clifftop after killer whales. Again! The same as the year before on Shetland. My friend Tim had been there then. We’d run along a cliff much higher than this; it was Tim who’d pointed out the slow-moving entourage of gannets. That day we’d managed to keep up till we lost the animals in a bright band of glare, but these ones were hard against the rocks, and very much faster, and hell-bent on something. They’d ignored the Poll Thothatom seals, but were moving at terrific speed—hunt speed—cutting through the waves’ turquoise backwash, rounding every promontory to the next inlet, out again and into the next.
Hampered by thick grass, our own pounding hearts, we hadn’t a cat’s chance of keeping up, but it was worth trying, and even when they were out of sight we could hear, coming up from below, like a steam pump in a basement, that thrilling whomp, whomp.
What Jill and Stuart and I said or did or called to each other is blown out of my memory, except that we shouted a lot, and ran hard. Every moment we dreaded a sudden thrash and a bloom of blood spreading on the surf: Keep calm and watch, I’d told myself—even if it all gets bloody, try and watch, ’cause you won’t see this again—but abruptly the four killer whales struck away from us, and again, in two-by-two formation, they swam directly across a bay toward the low peninsula of Sceapull, half a mile off.
Now we could catch our breath. Catch our breath and look through binoculars at the four fins slicing through the water, still travelling fast. Somehow the seals over on Sceapull knew the killer whales were in town, because they, too, were gathering in calm groups, until they were visible only as heads above the water, like floating footballs, waiting.
Somehow we understood that these four killer whales were going to loop the whole island, so, figuring they’d round the tip of Sceapull, then drive up the island’s west side, the three of us—like spectators at a grand prix—took a shortcut, and pounded up to the crest of the island, then ran pell-mell down its steep north side to where we knew there was another geo, so long it almost cleaves the island in two. From there we’d see the killer whales again as they flashed through.
Acid burn at my sternum, taste of blood, tussocky earth and sky flashing, and my heart pounding; suddenly I was reminded mine was an animal body, all muscle and nerve—and so were they, the killer whales, surging animal bodies, in their black and whites, outclassing us utterly. We timed it well: the animals powered round the headland and into the geo below just as we arrived, sending a couple of eider ducks scuttering away, but the killer whales carried on regardless. Again I had them right in my gaze as they leaped through the water, but again that white behind-the-eye patch threw me. Black and white, it’s the conjurer’s garb: a moment’s bewilderment, a sleight of hand, and you’re gone.
By the time we’d run from Poll Thothatom halfway round the island, up over the hill and down the other side, there was no running left in us, and all we could do was jump and shout as the four animals travelled on through the surf zone northward, with the cliff at their right sides, and their vast Atlantic domain to their left. Two by two they went, leaping clear and low over the water, showing the pale underside of their tails as they went down, until at last they were out of sight.
And that was that. We stood for a while, yearning after them, the scary, beautiful animals, as one yearns after a dream, then we turned to head back to the bothy.
Except—we’d forgotten about the male. The male who’d been left behind on his own. Just then I
chanced to glance back down at the inlet below us—and there he was. He was rounding the cliff, entering the inlet, conveying his black dorsal fin through the water as if balancing it on a tray, the fin yawing a little as he swam.
This time three of us stood quietly. This was different; a different kind of tension, local and particular. After the females’ sheer speed and élan, this animal had an air of solitude about him, as though he’d been holding back, almost out of courtesy, while the females went about business of their own. But now, here he was.
Above us, around us, the summer day carried on oblivious, the helpless waves washed the rocks, fell back again and, beyond the cliff-sided inlet with birds on its ledges, the Atlantic lay to the horizon. All was focused here: one huge predator, cruising at his own speed, nearer to us and nearer. We were looking down from above, and he was heading toward us, his fin cutting through the grey-green water. Gradually, as he neared, the bulk of his body became visible: black and white, rippling under the skin of the water like a spectre. Stuart lifted his camera and I my binoculars, and we focused on that fin. Tugged in close, it was thick and rubbery, but not rubber. It was glossy, a sort of flesh-rubber—and just a little bit crooked. I could hear the clicking of the camera and the waves’ wash, and through the binoculars I saw that this fin had the slightest of wavers, a slight S-bend and, as I looked, the voice in my mind said, I know you. But right then Jill cried, ‘Oh no . . . !’, and the thought was dismissed.
Oh no, because also in the geo was a single seal. In our excitement we’d missed her, and she had somehow missed the message every other seal apparently knew. A dreamer, a loner, she was oblivious to the killer whale stealing up behind her because she was facing the wrong way. She was gazing up at us—humans! Up on the rocks! Objects of fascination! Humans who’d run down the hillside pointing and shouting! Who were suddenly bellowing again, ‘For God’s sake, it’s behind you!’ as if this were all a pantomime, and a fate could be turned by the wave of a magic wand.
* * *
A hundred questions. After they were gone, a hundred questions. As we walked back to the bothy, feeling marooned and elated, we talked about what we’d witnessed. The females had indeed whipped round the entire island: we saw them again heading back down the eastern side, then they’d regrouped with the male, and eventually the whole party left, en famille, heading southwest toward Sula Sgeir.
A hundred questions. A small patch of blue on the hill was the towel I’d dropped; it felt like a long time ago. It was certainly a long time since I’d run so fast my lungs ached, since I’d screamed freely—so much for keeping your head when all around were losing theirs!
We had plenty of wine among our essential supplies, and sat that evening drinking and talking. I recalled how the first animal had rolled, seeming to relish the graze of the rock against her flank. Only then it occurred to me that she wasn’t smelling the land at all. Cetaceans can’t smell. Not like a dog can. With what would they smell? They may have been only twenty yards away but they inhabited a different sensory world—I’d just made that bit up, out of my own humanness.
There had been no blood. We’d been braced for blood, but none came. Did the seals know that this wasn’t a real raid? Could seals decipher the text messages killer whales send between themselves? There were seals aplenty, but the killer whales took none at all, not even the lone dreamer. She had lived to idle another day; the bull killer whale had simply dismissed her, had turned and swam off. A wave of a magic wand.
What then? It was almost as if they were checking an inventory—tearing round, slamming open cupboard doors, taking stock. Or, our best speculation, maybe we’d seen an exercise. Maybe we’d seen two mothers training their young in the Way of the Killer Whale: watch and repeat—like this, like this, like this.
We talked through the evening to no conclusion. Out of the shifting sea, the witless sky, out of the ambivalent world had come terrible certainty: a natural law, laid down in black and white, but mystery, too.
* * *
Night came, or what passed for night. I couldn’t sleep, so I dressed against the cold, crept out and walked down to the ruins. The surf boomed under the cliffs. If the seals were calm again, singing loopy psalms of deliverance, I can’t recall. In due course, down at the chapel, the petrels began to arrive. They darted and chased in the night, giving their high chatter, the walls striking sparks of reply. Little dusky things that flit over the ocean, so small you could hold them in the palm of your hand.
* * *
Cleared of dishes of an evening, the bothy table accumulated notebooks and bird reports, archaeological monographs, plans and photographs. One evening, maybe a week after we’d arrived, Stuart was sitting opposite Jill and me, head bowed, noting figures and tapping a calculator, calibrating the figures his field work was producing. He’d covered about half the island with his tapes. Abruptly he said, ‘There’s some consistency emerging here. Almost forty percent decline, I think, all over. And very suddenly.’
We paused. We all loved the Leach’s petrels: their midnight flit, the backchat they gave us from their burrows.
‘That’s bad,’ said Jill.
‘Why, though?’ I asked, but Stuart didn’t answer.
‘Maybe they get eaten . . .’ Jill said, but he shook his head. ‘I’m sure it’s not predators. Bonxies get the blame, but I’m sure it’s not just that.’
‘What, then?’
Again he shook his head.
‘But you must have some idea,’ I persisted. ‘Is it to do with climate change—with the ocean—is there not enough food . . . ? What do they eat, anyway?’
‘Zooplankton, larval-stage fish . . . creepy-crawly things.’
‘Plankton? We’re not running out of plankton, are we?’
This time Stuart put down his pencil, took off his glasses and pinched his eyes.
‘I don’t know. But something’s going on out there.’
Stuart often said there was no such thing as ‘natural harmony’. It was a dynamic. Populations expand, then crash. Mysterious things happen—catastrophic things sometimes, on the island, everywhere. Nothing stays the same.
Our attitude to the village houses we explored and the fields we walked was tempered by a particular piece of knowledge. This: the Rona people hadn’t simply quit their tenancy and sailed away to a life less isolated. Neither had they been forcibly cleared. The village was abandoned because the people had died—all wiped out, suddenly.
It happened about 1680. Their fate was discovered because of a shipwreck. A man called McLeod, his wife and a ‘good crew’ were heading home from St Kilda to Harris, but a storm blew up which drove them a hundred miles north until they were cast up on the rocks of Rona. They managed to save themselves and some provisions, but their boat was destroyed. They’d have been hoping for help, but what they found were corpses.
What had happened is unsure; the stories are peculiar. A plague of rats had somehow swarmed ashore and devoured the people’s supplies. Pirates had stolen their bull. No boat had come north from Lewis that year, which might have brought supplies. These calamities, compounded, were too much. But, with everyone dead, who was left to bear witness?
The shipwrecked party buried the bodies, and overwintered; then, in spring, fashioned a new boat, which they sailed home to Harris, to arrive like revenants. That was then. No one has really lived on Rona since.
* * *
On our next to last day, Jill said to Stuart and me, ‘Come and look at this stonework.’
She led us down through the ruined village to its southern edge, then toward some more curved low walls, built, as were all the dwelling houses, of stone and turf. To my untrained eye these walls looked no different to the others, but Jill beckoned us to follow her.
Then she jumped down into a curving sort of trench. There, she knelt at the entrance of a short passageway about four feet long. She brushed the side wall with her hand. Its stones were close-packed and neat.
‘See how different
this stonework is to the rest, how thick? This wall’s about three foot thick. Solid. But now, come and look here.’
From the doorway, she followed the external wall a few yards rightward, to a place where it had partially collapsed. There was a hole just big enough to peer into. She handed over her torch and told us to look through the gap. It was like spying through a letterbox into a hallway beyond.
‘It’s hollow!’
‘Caved in, I think.’
She took the torch herself and shone the light into the gap within the wall, so the light played along a particular stone, which was tilted with one end in the earth.
‘See that stone? If that’s a lintel, and if all that stuff that looks like a floor is actually accumulation debris, then we’re looking at a passageway enclosed within two walls. Now, come up here . . . ?’
She climbed nimbly up onto the wall-head and stood above us on an uneven platform of flat stones.
‘This is its roof, a bit caved in . . .’
‘You’re standing on the roof?’
‘. . . of a cell-like structure. Which is a side chamber to that bigger interior, the one that first passageway entered into. This chamber is contained within the thickness of the wall. Maybe it was a sleeping area. All of this’—she gestured around her—‘was a very thick-walled circular structure.’
‘That means it’s old?’
‘Oooh, two thousand years? But what’s happened is that new people have come and changed it to suit themselves. So, jump down here again, come inside . . . and you have a rectangular room, cut into the pre-existing round structure, see? This was done much, much later . . . Look how the stonework here’s not very well made, really, compared to where we just were?’
‘Two thousand years? You mean, when the Christians came, there was already a thousand years of settlement?’
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