It was a zestful time, probably for all. For us two, it relieved a preoccupation which had become pressing in the last week or two. None of the newspaper articles had yet been paid for, and it would still be some time before the monthly accounting would catch up.
It is probably the only drawback to a completely carefree exploration of one’s own country that one may not live off the land, since the land is inhabited by fellow-citizens whose life is also on a sterling basis. This is as it should be, but at the time it made our case awkward. So far we had paid our way. Leaving Muck, we had bought eggs and scones, and persuaded the folk to take payment for some of the kindly hospitality they had given.
Here we were now, afloat, and our total cash amounted to four shillings and seven-pence.
CHAPTER 12
THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND
Bring up your batteries,
This Twelfth is Glorious!
(Mind, though, your flatteries
‘Sweet-song-and-story’ us)
Triumph of alien one
Freedom is loot for you!
Kings of this people run
Gillie-wet-foot for you.
Eigg rides the inner Minch like a ship. The island’s unmistakable shape can be seen from mainland peaks far into the heart of Scotland. Five miles long, it lies as if travelling from south to north, with a trawler bow almost 1,000 ft high, a dip down to a central well-deck, and a battlemented poop rising to 1,300 feet. This galleon shape is the central spine of the island, breaking in cliffs along the middle of the land, and shielding, at their feet, green fields and crofts. The ‘poop’ is the splendid peak, the Sgurr, and it was for the harbour at its base, in the south of the island, that we were making.
We had six miles of open water to cross, but once into the swing of the great swell we found the passage easy. We got a squall of rain half-way over which blotted out the island for many minutes, and chilled us more than the gouts of sea. As we came up to the red cliffs of the south shore, the caves there opened their mouths at us. The sea was hammering the reefs off Castle Island, sending white streaks out back into the channel. Where the channel narrows we rounded the point of the pier suddenly, seeing below us the yellow sand of the shallows.
We were very fresh, and it was no more than midday, when we came aground on the concrete slope of the pier. There was no one to be seen at the sheds, nor around any of the trim houses in sight. We bundled into some bushes, flinging off our bleached paddling clothes, and spreading them to the air. In a few moments we were kilted and shod, and on the road towards the centre of the island.
We had a dashing encounter with two small Eigg citizens, at an intersection of roads which puzzled us about our proper direction. A small girl of about six appeared, leading a tiny infant by the hand. It was an infant at that stage when, seen walking, they look even tinier than a babe in arms, and the pace it was setting was an almost imperceptible forward stacher. Here was an opportunity to have a neutral verdict on our Gaelic. We approached the pair gently, not to frighten them, and the following conversation went through in Gaelic without a hitch:
‘Which is the road to the post office?’
‘That’s it yonder.’
‘Great thanks to thyself, O little girl.’
We went forward in terrific gratification, glowing in the tribute paid by our little pathfinder, who, unlike her older relatives, could not have been tempted to help us out in English, as she had probably a very hazy knowledge of that language. We turned back to wave to her, and she waved without shyness, and also revolved the incredibly small child on its axis, so that he was looking eventually in our direction and could wave too. These two made a brave little picture on the down side of the brae from us, with 60 miles of the Scottish coast for their back-cloth.
It was a post office and grocery store combined: indeed, a co-operative store, with the isles folk shareholders, and dividends going at the end of the year. I had the melancholy first task of wiring home for three pounds, by way of an advance against the newspaper fees we would eventually get. This was a delicate piece of telegram compilation, to find an economical and yet not too disturbing form of words.
Incoming mail awaited us in the form of letters and a packet or two. The packets had been forwarded through Mallaig post office, where MrsWatt the postmistress (we did not know her yet) had printed heavily across one of them: ‘Canoe Boys! Weary waiting for you! Hurry up and give us a call! P.O. Mallaig.’ It was a friendly shattering of the post office rules, and our hearts warmed to the knowledge that we had a following.
We also failed to buy any bread, as the steamer was not due until the next day with a consignment of Glasgow-made loaves. But ‘Mrs MacDonald down at the shore will make you a baking of scones.’ This news we announced to Mrs MacDonald herself, who heard it bravely at the door of her beautiful cottage. She had a family of sons, and was accustomed to hungry emergencies. By the time we had the tent up and the tea going, the scones were ready, a biscuit tin full of treacle and soda scones. And she filled our bonnets with eggs too.
It wasn’t hard to find business in Eigg which kept us five days there. Everybody had to paddle the canoes round the bay, and some of the folk came from the bigger settlement at Cleadale on the west side, to get their turn. There was the Sgurr to climb, caves to explore, the minister, the priest, and the doctor to visit. The Muck boys came one day in their boat on ferry affairs, and they had to see the canoes again. There was also the hope that the wind, now round dead to the west, would die a little and let us get to Rum. For it was essential that we take in Rum on our way. We wrote some things, and mended our clothes; and as the thickets at our tent door abounded with the ripest brambles, we bought sugar in the store and made a great boiling of jam, which went onwards with us on the trip, in an aluminium pot which never thereafter got rid of the purple dye.
The church, the school, and the post office are strung out along the top of the ridge where the road, rising from the hamlet at the harbour, crosses the spine of the island to reach Cleadale on the far shore. Here they provide a centre for spiritual, mental and bodily services within energetic reach of all the homesteads of the island. The siting of these common buildings exposes them, of course, to heavy weather up there on the middle heights. The Roman Catholic church and the priest’s house have a cosier setting among the croft houses of Cleadale, looking over to the Outer Isles.
But on the day we attended the parish church, the Sunday, it was in a brilliant atmosphere, with the sun polishing the scene out of all recognition by artists or photographers. The church has clear windows, and as we stood to sing the psalms our eyes stared round, and our breath caught, at the immense glory of the scene. For the church, on its height, forms as it were a pulpit on the Western Isles, and dominates them all. From window after window there are views to move the soul of man. On that Sunday the sky was an endless blue, and the sea that wine-dark colour we have not yet managed to translate from the Greek. In spite of the seascapes over towards the islands, it was the mainland views that held us, starting up towards the Sound of Sleat and the low hills before Loch Alsh, and sweeping in a great purple offering east and southwards to Ardnamurchan and beyond to Caliach Point, in Mull, with ranges away inland to the Grampian Hills. In the sea, Muck and Coll were mere foreground fragments. The man who preaches a sermon yonder has a rich start in the samples of God’s handiwork under the eye.
The man who preached the sermon was as unusual as his parish. The Reverend Mr MacWhirter would announce the psalms from his pulpit, and then sweep out of the perch in his black robes like a bat, to huddle over the small harmonium, pounding and pedalling the uncertain melody. He was no islesman, having recently come from an industrial parish of Lanarkshire, and he was shortly to leave the Small Isles and move on.
In the meantime he was enjoying himself. Each time it was necessary for him to voyage to another of the islands to take a service there, or perform some pastoral office, he donned a white yachting cap and placed himself in the bow of t
he Muck launch, gulping enormous rations of sea air as they hammered solidly through the Atlantic. Upon the glebe, which ran for many green acres about the huge manse house, he was engaged in some stock-rearing experiments, and we learned from himself of a recent hitch in this planned husbandry.
At a sale on the mainland he had bought and shipped home a stallion Highland pony, arranging also for the vet to arrive in a day or two and make the beast a gelding. In the meantime the pony had been put into a meadow occupied by the minister’s mare, and while there had made unexpected use of his opportunities. In the course of nature, and long after the vet had come and finished his fell work, the mare dropped a splendid foal; and the pony was still to be seen scrutinising, perhaps with a knowing eye, this leggy pledge of his erstwhile virility.
Mr MacWhirter had tackled the problem of his bachelor housekeeping by engaging an ex-RN manservant, and when we visited the manse one evening we found the pair busy at a gallant scone-baking. The results fell short of perfection, and the blaescones were fed to the hens, a flock of which was developing about the door, as another stock sideline.
Our own taste in scones had again been grossly flattered by the productions of Mrs MacDonald. Our slightly replenished purse enabled us to call for more. On each occasion we battled for the right to make a little payment. I understand this to be another of the differences which distinguish exploration in our countryside from that carried out in foreign parts. It is the custom, one reads, to haggle with the foreign native over the price to be paid, with a flurry of bidding and bargaining on both sides. The same practice is common with us, although, in the Highlands, it is the seller who is bidding down, or even refusing payment, and the purchaser who is bidding up. It is a situation often exploited by the stranger, perhaps unwittingly, and one hears of advice given: ‘You musn’t offer payment for anything they give you. They’re very offended if you don’t take it for nothing.’ One would hope that the traveller with a decent appreciation of modern conditions will not go too far in applying to his case the ancient standards of hospitality.
Between the soda and the treacle scones, we were in as great a dilemma as with the scones and the pancakes at Calve. It was a ceaseless anxiety to decide which were best to eat. With all the electric ovens and aluminium girdles and fancies of today, how many people know how to bake scones like these? One morning we got the biscuit tin filled for the last time, and packed for an afternoon departure.
Rum was the next stop, and its mere appearance on our schedule meant the making of a little piece of history. Our best route there was to be northwards up the east coast of Eigg, and then out north-west and straight up Loch Scresort, the port where the only houses lay. The wind had gone more northerly too, but we hoped that this would die.
No one had seen us arrive in Eigg, and there was no one to watch us go. We paddled away out through the familiar channel between the two perches north of the harbour, came round the huddle of reefs off Rudha na Crannaig, and kept into the shore for the pull up the coast. There was plenty of shelter inshore, for the cliffs fall sheer almost to the sea, the only shore at most points being mere rock debris weathered and fallen off the face. Over this face, nearly 1,000 ft high for most of its length, spout a succession of waterfalls, trailing downwards like moving lace. They are merely the normal hill burns, which start in the high wet ground, and on their way to the sea suddenly lose their footing and make the endless drop. In an east wind they fold back on themselves as they reach the cliff edge, and are scattered back inland upon the grass of the plateau, where they rise to gather in their little moor channel and struggle seawards vainly again. This day the wind was from the other direction, but it was strong enough to search down over the precipices to our level, promising a harder greeting when we should leave the lee.
The shore bent away eventually towards the north-west and into the wind’s eye. A muffled belt appeared ahead like a harbour bar, streaming free past the end of Eigg through the water where we were going. We drove into it, and knew we were in real weather again. There was a sudden chill in the late September wind too, which even the heat of our effort could not thaw. We bent and dipped to a long grind to clear the north end of Eigg and reach the Sound of Rum. There were two miles to cover, and they took us over two hours.
Rum seen beyond Eigg: we saw this view as we started to round the northern point of Eigg, on the left of the picture.
It was necessary that we should reach Rum, and land and stay on it. It is an island with a dark history, and its name had followed us like a challenge since we had left the Crinan Canal. ‘You won’t be landing on Rum anyway?’ we had been repeatedly told. ‘They don’t allow anybody on the island.’ This we had heard so often that we had come to reply at last that, if we got nowhere else, we should certainly land on Rum.
The whole island is preserved as a private estate, and it is official information to yachtsmen, mountaineers, geologists, as well as mere travellers and tourists, that visitors are not encouraged. It is a phrase which can cover a variety of discouraging practices, and its modern story starts badly with the undeniable episode of the Clearances in the 1820s, when the 400 inhabitants were evicted in a body, and shipped to somewhere overseas. Memories are alive, and I judge them authentic, of the terrors of that time. One can pore with pleasure over the scale-map of the island, peppered with place-names, and discern something of the love with which a happy community dowered in apt descriptive Gaelic names their peaks and passes, the seal rocks and the cave bays, the upland lochs and mosses, the sea and inland cliffs, the rivers, the burns, the braes. All this in a noble, small landmass in the sea, six miles square, with a tumultuous skyline.
It is not that Rum has no modern challengers. The adjacent townships and villages, on isle and mainland, seethe with stories of indignation and reprisals. Raids on the deer are frequent, although perhaps more frequent in story than in performance. There are those in Mallaig who will claim, unofficially, to have seen poached stags unloaded from boats returned after a Rum foray. It is an unhappy atmosphere, mingling banditry and restriction. And it exists. We had pledged ourselves, in print and to a countless acquaintance, to land and spy out this strange land, and to report. It was utterly essential that we should reach Rum.
At the time of which we speak, however, it was becoming doubtful if the hour for the visit had arrived. Beyond the north point of Eigg we had another seven miles of open water to face, and we had seldom seen water so open and gaping. The wind was coming hard from the direction of Loch Scresort, Rum’s only harbour, and from the whole Atlantic, which was situated just round the corner. It brought not only the broken waves which rode the main mass of the water, but also the waves which it lifted from the sea and flung at us. Eigg fell away on our left as we pulled on. To stop paddling meant the losing of a great deal of way, so that it was impossible to bale, and the canoes were filling uncomfortably. A point came when we ceased to make headway at all. About two miles out from Eigg we simply sat, flailing on at the sea, and making no forward progress. The wind had no pity, and felt as if it would blow for ever. Very little more of this and we should be too tired to keep control. So we did what we had never yet done on the trip – turned round about and ran for where we had come from.
The wind and seas took us swiftly towards the shore. We surf-rode as we chose. A shout back and forward between us settled for a landing-place on the north-west, the nearest shore of Eigg, so that our next stage back towards Rum would be the shortest possible distance. Nearer the shore, we picked up the small island called Eilan Thuilm, and aimed to land behind it, to lessen the onrush which would bear us heavily on the rocks. We worked strenuously towards this lee, baling hard at intervals, to lighten the load of the canoes and keep them from damage by reducing the solid weight which would strike. Because it was clear that we were going to strike, and that heavily.
Nearer in, we saw that the shore was large boulders, and surf was spouting among them. It was too late to back out and try another place. Slowing down as
much as we dared by the dangerous process of back-paddling, we struck. I rested for a moment on a round brown boulder which ran suddenly dry and punched me jarring on the thighs through the slats and fabric of my keel. I was half-way out and up to the waist, in the hope of running the canoe up among the rocks, when the next wave took us both, canoe and me. I lost it, and went bundling up among the boulders, got to my feet some yards on, and floundered, battering my bare feet, grabbing after the painter. I got it before the next wave, and we went in this time hand in hand, as it were, bumping painfully; myself wincing over my own shin-bones, and agonising as the canoe’s ribs cracked. Eventually the canoe wedged close inshore, and, water-filled, would not be moved even by the successive waves which submerged us. Seumas, who had made a more adept if not a drier landing, splashed through to heave us both ashore, myself and canoe. Presently the paddle also came in.
At this stage we were certain that the trip was finished. In skin and ribs the canoes had taken such a damaging that they should have been unrepairable. And we were so soused and bruised ourselves as to delay the post-mortem until the morning. There was a strip of green here, good camping site save for the endless wind to which it was exposed, and we tented up, managing to build a low wind-break of stones round our walls before the darkness came down.
A miraculous healing fell upon us all during the night. A cold sunlight washing the tent roof woke us, and we stretched, feeling no more than surface wounding. A sortie to the canoes revealed a similar condition. By a freak of their fragile strength they had no ribs sprung and no rents, although we could still hear, knelling in our ears from the time of the landing, the sounds with which they had crashed ashore, tossing and crunching like flotsam tea-chests. One or two holes punched in the fabric were the only damage we could find, although a survey of the shore at low tide showed almost every rock in sight smeared with the blue paint rasped from our keels, to say nothing of other blotches we fancied could be our blood. A few strips of sticking-plaster patched up our ocean-going craft and ourselves, and we began to get ready again for the attempt on Rum.
The Canoe Boys Page 16