The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘What a percipient person your cousin is,’ he said. ‘She really arranged it.’

  ‘Yes—there are no flies on Edina,’ Julia replied, as she manoeuvred the dinghy in to the steps. ‘Look—Colin or I will call tomorrow evening and arrange the drill for our sailing. With Philip it’s generally a case of getting out on the tide—which may mean any hour. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, skilful accomplice.’

  Two mornings later ‘any hour’ proved to be 5.30 a.m. Julia and Colin rowed ashore the evening before and conveyed these disagreeable tidings to the Colonel.

  ‘Oh, no matter. I have an alarm clock, and a tea-making apparatus. I’ll be on the quay with my baggage at 5.15.’

  ‘A regular old soldier, aren’t you?’ Julia said.

  ‘Well I don’t propose to “fade away” just yet,’ Jamieson replied. ‘See you tomorrow morning.’

  At 5.30 a.m. sharp next day the Mary Hathaway’s anchor was hauled up on the automatic winch, and she sailed serenely out of the pretty harbour, in the early morning light, on her jib and foresail. Out in the Sound the big mainsail was hauled up—‘Mr. James’ earned yet more of the Skipper’s approval by his skilful and muscular hauling on the sheets in this process.

  ‘Do you do much sailing?’ Philip Reeder asked his new guest, slightly turning the wheel to swing the yacht southward as they approached the mouth of the Sound.

  ‘Whenever I can. I don’t own a boat, but two friends of mine do, and if it’s at all possible I crew for one or other of them in the Fastnet race. This is a lovely boat,’ he added—‘she seems to handle so easily.’

  ‘She was built for the Fastnet,’ Reeder said, more pleased than ever. ‘I’ll just get her round the corner, and then you shall try her yourself.’ And when they had emerged from the Sound it was the Colonel who steered the yacht down to the Erinish Islands, to Edina’s and Julia’s amazement—though the Skipper took the wheel himself to slide the boat into the small anchorage.

  On the run down Julia had taken Edina to some extent into her confidence.

  ‘I want to take my chum onto Erinish Beg, to show him those silly forts—he’s mad to see them. Couldn’t Colin put you and Philip ashore on Mor, and then come back and drop us? I mean, not all in one party?’

  ‘Julia, is this really something?’ her cousin asked.

  ‘Oh, how do I know? Last time I thought it was, and it was a bosh shot—I got the brush-off,’ Julia replied truthfully.

  ‘The trouble with you is that you never do know,’ her cousin said, rather sternly.

  ‘I know—awful! But I do rather like this one,’ Julia said—she thought she was saying it in Colin’s interest. ‘Don’t you think he’s nice?’

  ‘Yes, very. Far better than that poor creature Torrens.’ (Edina had met Major Torrens at Mrs. Hathaway’s house in London, and had not liked him.) ‘I think you couldn’t do better,’ Edina said. ‘But don’t play the fool.’

  ‘I’ll try not to. But will you fix it that we get onto Erinish Beg without you and Philip in tow?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Whatever Mrs. Reeder tried to do she usually succeeded in doing. After eating cold duck and salad in the calm little anchorage, she insisted on Colin’s rowing her and her husband ashore on Erinish Mor so that she might see the Shearwaters’ nesting-burrows; Colin then returned to the yacht, picked up Julia and the Colonel, and ferried them the short distance to Erinish Beg. There, after climbing up the gully, the cousins led the Secret Service man across to the Atlantic side of the island, and showed him what they had found only three days earlier.

  Besides the metal socket out of which the blue-painted wireless aerial had arisen there was, set into the turf, a shallow plastic dome or cap some sixteen inches across; this Colin removed. He had brought a torch with him this time, and by its light, in turns, they all three examined this curious installation. Below the plastic dome was a metal tube in some light alloy, about four inches in diameter; it was not firmly fixed, it oscillated quite gently and easily when touched by Jamieson’s hand, but only very slightly—about 1½ inches in any direction.

  ‘Ah! I think I understand,’ the Colonel said. ‘Move aside Colin, and give me the torch.’

  He peered down into the interior of the tube. It was really a sort of cone, expanding at its lower end to a breadth of at least a foot; below this was a concave metal saucer with a metal spike sticking up into the base of the cone; all over the saucer smaller spikes, little more than an inch high, projected upwards. A flexible plastic pipe, metallised on the outside, led down from the top of the cone, beside the saucer, into what appeared to be a large aluminium case sunk in the ground.

  ‘Yes, the works,’ the Colonel muttered, half to himself. ‘Of course without digging we can’t see how big it is—and we don’t want to dig at this stage. Four-foot cube, I expect.’ He straightened up, and Julia and Colin, in their turn, peered down at this strange apparatus.

  ‘What on earth is it?’ Colin asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I know,’ Colonel Jamieson said. ‘Something planted by our dear Allies the Russians.’

  ‘Here? But why? What does it do?’

  ‘I’ll go into that later. The wireless aerial you saw of course reports to them. Now, could you show me those batteries? And we’ll just put back the plastic cover.’

  Julia and Colin pulled off the turfs which they had carefully stamped back into the ground so shortly before, revealing a metal chest with a clipped-on lid; the Colonel removed the lid, and examined the interior.

  ‘Yes, just what you said, Colin. These work the whole outfit, and need only be renewed once in six months.’ As he helped the others to stamp the turfs back into position he said—‘This is quite important. But now I really must get to Loch Roag somehow, and try to check there.’

  ‘Well if you keep on with Philip as well as you’ve done so far, he might take you there,’ Julia was saying, when Colin gave a sudden exclamation.

  ‘Oh look! There it goes again!’ This time Colonel Jamieson saw for himself the sky-blue wireless mast rising out of the ground within a few feet of where he stood—a most uncanny spectacle.

  ‘Good Lord!’ He stood watching the slender thing for a moment or two. ‘One of their bloody satellites must have been going over just now,” he said.

  ‘And now the wireless is reporting home?’ Colin asked.

  ‘Precisely. My God, they have got a nerve, planting this sort of thing right off our coasts! Clever, too; they’ve chosen an ideal place.’

  ‘But why want reports about satellites from Scotland?’ Colin asked.

  Before Colonel Jamieson could reply Julia held up her hand and said—‘Listen!’ They all did so, and heard, rather faintly, the distant phut-phut of a motor-boat’s engine. Colin looked out seawards.

  ‘It’s that stinking motor-cruiser. Let’s lie down!’ he said, with unusual firmness; his companions obediently flattened themselves on the yellowish grass.

  ‘From sea-level they can’t see us like this,’ Colin said. ‘Did you get anything on that motor-boat, Sir?’

  ‘Nothing definite, before I left. The owner was alleged to be a Swede. But it was being followed up.’

  ‘Oh well, we all know about the Swedes, poor wretches,’ Julia said. ‘Sort of counter-neutrals, don’t you think? Wasn’t Quisling a Swede?’

  ‘No, a Norwegian, you poor ignoramus,’ her cousin told her.

  ‘Oh well, they’re all Scands, anyhow, and all petrified of the Russians, poor devils.’

  The noise of the motor-cruiser’s engine was now quite loud. Colin cautiously raised his head.

  ‘They’re just below us; from there they can’t see a thing. I suggest that we hare across and get the dinghy over to the other island before they come round into the anchorage—if they do.’

  ‘Very sound,’ the Colonel said.

  ‘Keep low near the forts, though,’ Colin insisted—half-crouching, they ran across the island, scrambled down the gully, and rowed
across to Erinish Mor. They had already beached the dinghy, and were well on their way up the bluffs by the time that the motor-cruiser had picked its way through the mass of reefs and islets round the southern end of Erinish Beg, and appeared off the mouth of the anchorage.

  ‘There they are—snooping again,’ Colin exclaimed angrily.

  ‘Just wait a minute,’ the Colonel said. ‘All this wants thinking about.’ He sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette, after offering his case to Julia. ‘How well do you know your brother-in-law?’ he asked the young man.

  ‘Hardly at all, really, except that he’s a good sailor,’ Colin replied. ‘I’m almost never at home. Julia knows him much better than I do.’

  ‘Miss Probyn?’

  ‘If you mean, is Philip likely to turn into a Burgess or a Maclean, the answer is No,’ Julia said. ‘He’s been an officer in the British Merchant Navy for years, and he comes of a very old, and very rich, Northumbrian family—his father was a Bart. Rich people are hardly ever Commies—and Bart’s sons even more seldom!’

  Colonel Jamieson gave his brief laugh, which sounded like a cough.

  ‘Thank you. Well all that being so, I think I shall put the whole situation flat out to Mr. Reeder. I must get to Loch Roag, after what I’ve seen here—and probably much the quickest and most anonymous way would be on this yacht.’

  ‘If you tell Philip what you’ve seen here, he’ll want to go and examine it all for himself,’ Colin said gloomily.

  ‘Oh no he won’t—all he wants is to get out to Heskeir and see the Great Grey Seal pups,’ Julia countered.

  After they had collected the Reeders, and eaten an ample tea on board, the Colonel said to his host—‘Could I have a word with you on deck, Skipper?’

  Mr. Reeder looked a little startled; whether at the request, or at being called ‘Skipper’—which in fact he rather liked—Julia couldn’t be sure. The two men climbed the companion-ladder and sat on some piles of rope just aft of the mast. A couple of hundred yards away the motor-cruiser had also cast anchor, but her dinghy was still on her deck.

  ‘There’s that beastly motor-boat; they nearly fouled me two days ago,’ Reeder said venomously. ‘They don’t know the rules of the sea.’

  ‘They may be connected with what I want to talk to you about,’ Jamieson said. ‘Reeder, I must apologise—I’ve come here with you on false pretences.’

  ‘Aren’t you one of Julia’s boy-friends? That’s what Colin said.’

  ‘No, much as I should like to be—I’ve only met her once before in my life. And my name isn’t James; I am Colonel Jamieson, and I’m in Intelligence.’

  Philip seized on the name.

  ‘Jamieson? Then you were in the Borderers! Why on earth didn’t you tell me at once? I knew I’d never heard of a Colonel James.’

  ‘I had to use a false name in Tobermory.’

  ‘I don’t much like this,’ Reeder said. ‘Use a false name ashore, well and good; but if you come on board my boat, as my cousin’s friend, why not give me your real name?’

  ‘I have given it you now—barely twenty-four hours late. And I have apologised. I’m sorry, Reeder—I repeat that.’

  Philip Reeder reflected.

  ‘I suppose you’re one of Colin’s bosses,’ he said then—‘and that it was you he wanted to ring up from Inch-Ian. Has he found some funny-business here?’

  ‘Yes—very funny indeed, and fairly dangerous.’

  ‘Why dangerous?’

  ‘Probably tracing satellites—for no good purposes. I can’t explain it all now, it would take too long—and anyhow I won’t. But there is an installation which isn’t ours on Erinish Beg, I’ve seen it this very afternoon; your cousin and your brother-in-law spotted it when you came here three days back. And there’s another one suspected, near Loch Roag. You asked me two nights ago if you could help me at all; well you could, very much, if you would take me to Loch Roag.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Reeder said. ‘I’m all for doing down the Russians. How big is the hurry?’

  ‘The sooner the better—not desperate. It may be only a rumour, but I want to make sure.’

  ‘Well I think that’s all right. I want to go to Heskeir tomorrow to see the Great Grey Seals; then we can spend the night at Canna, on to Rodel next day, and push through the Sound of Harris the day after that, up to Loch Roag. It’s a good anchorage, and my wife would like to take a look at Callernish. I say, are you really an archaeologist?’

  ‘In a rather amateurish way, yes. F.S.A.Scot., and all that.’

  Mr. Reeder knew that Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland were not necessarily all experts; but the name denoted a certain degree of knowledge and interest.

  ‘So you can pose as one if any questions arise about your howking?’

  Colonel Jamieson grinned at that very Scottish word for any form of digging or excavation.

  ‘Yes, I can talk my way out of anything of that nature.’

  ‘Good. Now why do you think that motor-cruiser may have anything to do with Colin’s find here?’

  ‘Various reasons. Whether you saw her or not, I suspect that her crew saw you, here, and followed you into Tobermory; and they were rather in evidence that first evening while we were ashore there. Now they’ve followed you down here again. Perhaps all coincidences; perhaps not.’

  ‘I quite forgot to report her,’ Reeder said. ‘I meant to check on her owner first.’

  ‘I did that. A Swedish name, but there is some mystery about her. By the way, can I telephone from this place where we anchor tomorrow night?’

  ‘Canna?—I don’t know. I should think you could from Rodel in Harris. But what do we do about her tonight? This place is as lonely as the grave—we don’t want a set of Swedes or Russians coming aboard and trying on anything funny.’

  ‘I should be very much surprised if they did that—in fact I’m rather surprised that they should have anchored so close to you; one would expect them to try to keep out of sight as far as possible—though if they are what we think I don’t doubt that they want to go up and see if you’ve been monkeying about with their machinery, when it gets dark.’

  ‘If they want to go ashore on Erinish Beg this is the only place where they can anchor,’ Reeder said. ‘And anyhow it won’t get dark, not so as you’d notice, as far North as this—it’s only June. Twilight all night, practically.’

  ‘Well I don’t think we need do anything. Your cousin and I put everything back as it was; they won’t be able to be certain whether we’ve been there or not.’

  ‘Don’t you want them to know you know?’ Reeder enquired curiously. ‘Won’t this machine be put out of action?’

  ‘Oh naturally, in due course. But leaving it undisturbed for the moment may make it easier to find others.’

  ‘Why, do you imagine there are more than this one you want to look for at Loch Roag?’

  ‘Indeed yes—probably a whole series, all down the western coasts.’

  ‘Well, I wish you would tell me what it’s all in aid of.’

  ‘Sometime I will. But this is highly “classified” information, and it would take a long time to explain. Do you mind very much if we leave it for the moment?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly Reeder grinned broadly in the depths of his brown beard.

  ‘Take a bet of a fiver that I’ve guessed what it’s all about?’ Colonel Jamieson looked a little startled, but—‘Yes, willingly,’ he said.

  ‘Done! Correcting the map!’

  This time the Colonel looked really astonished. It was with some difficulty that he manufactured a laugh.

  Chapter 3

  The party on the Mary Hathaway passed a quiet night in their anchorage. Colin and the Skipper kept their ears cocked for any sounds from the neighbouring boat, especially that of the dinghy being lowered. After supper they all went and sat on deck—at 10.30 p.m. the sun was still shining brightly on the hills; but they had put to sea at 5, and presently the skipper decreed bed.

/>   ‘I’ll just sit and smoke here for a while,’ Jamieson said to his host—‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘So will I.’

  But about an hour later they heard the motor-cruiser’s anchor being drawn up, and then the sound of her engine as she chugged out of the anchorage—her dinghy had never been lowered at all.

  ‘Done them this time, apparently,’ Reeder said with satisfaction, and he and his guest put up the riding-lights, and performed the usual last nocturnal rites over the side of the boat; then they went below.

  The visit to Heskeir next day was not wholly successful, as far as the Grey Seals were concerned. On a very calm day it is possible to nose fairly close round the rocks where the Great Grey Seals breed, but it was not a particularly calm day. After leaving the Erinishes the Mary Hathaway ran north to Heskeir, out in the open sea. The breeze was freshening all the time. ‘Bother!’ Philip Reeder muttered. When they reached the spot he went in as close as he dared, but the seas were quite heavy, and since he could not look for seals through his binoculars as well as steer, he was rather frustrated. He handed the field-glasses to his wife. ‘Edina, can you see anything on those rocks?’

  Edina, twiddling knobs and peering through the Zeisses, said:

  ‘Yes. There are seven creatures bigger than donkeys and much the same colour, but without legs, lying out on the rocks, and at least five white blobs near them.’

  ‘Oh God! What do you mean by blobs? Here, give me the glasses, and take the wheel. Keep her at that.’

  His wife obediently took the wheel, and endeavoured to keep the yacht ‘at that’, i.e. on the same course.

  ‘Yes, five pups,’ Philip exclaimed triumphantly. ‘I wish we could get nearer inshore! Jamieson, care to have a look? Lovely creatures.’

  Julia, who couldn’t have cared less about Great Grey Seals, was startled by Philip’s use of the name Jamieson instead of ‘James’. There must have been a lot of coming clean on deck the previous evening, she reflected. Colin evidently had the same idea; he edged along the planking to sit beside her, and muttered in her ear—

  ‘How does he know his name is Jamieson? Did you tell him?’