by Neil M. Gunn
Finn had his own little bed, but she decided to take him in beside her until he went to sleep. This she did, holding him in her arms and murmuring to him, until he fell off. The wind had now a continuous rise and fall in its whine. Sometimes it was sustained for long seconds at its highest pitch. She thought of the little ricks of bog hay that Kirsty and herself had cut and left down on the flat ground. They would be tossed away, though the low birch bushes would catch great wisps. The wind came from the sea….
She thought of all the local boats at sea, and was touched by fear. She had seen the fury of a winter storm in Dale, had seen it smash and send its spume hundreds of feet high over the cliff walls. She thought of Roddie and his crew. She liked Roddie very much, but now the horror of what might happen to them all was more than the thought of any individual or of herself. Her hatred of the sea had gone deep as an instinct.
*
In the grey hours of that morning all Dunster came awake, and men and women buttoned and wrapped themselves firmly and made for the cliffs. The gale was blowing fair in on the beach, the very worst airt for boats any distance along the coast. But by great good luck the herring signs had been off the bay, and the boats had been shot a mile or so out, between the Head and the cliffs to the west. The real danger now lay not in the force of the wind but in the seas the wind would whip up and smash on the beach before they could reach it.
The smaller boats hauled their few nets as swiftly as they could and were soon on their sweeps, coming with the wind at a great pace. The seas were rising rapidly, having the whole weight of an ocean, east by north, behind them. The tide was half in and the worst of the boulders covered. As a boat grounded, the crew leapt into the surf and heaved.
Soon there were sufficient men on shore to give newcomers immediate help. The beach in that morning gloom became a scene of extraordinary activity, with dark bodies rushing and voices crying above the seething waters and the high whining of the gale.
From the cliff-tops the women of the crofts could see the boats coming, and struggled down to the beach, and watched their menfolk advancing and retreating, grasping and hauling, on the edge of the mounting surf as in a wild, infernal dance.
The larger boats, with drifts of twenty nets, lay on a back-rope and found it a dead weight, hard and unyielding under the great pressure of the storm. Many cut clear; others that hung on too long in a desperate effort to save all they could, had to face a beach where high waves were curling over, smashing, and sucking down the shingle in a white roar.
But all boats made the beach, and the bulk of them were hauled clear without any damage done. Indeed, beyond the starting of a few planks and the abandonment of some nets, the Dunster fleet was intact and its fishermen, apart from a minor bruise here and there, unharmed.
As the crowd drifted away from the shore the feeling of delivery was upon them, gratefully in the high-pitched voices of the women, but with the pleasant quiet that follows fighting exultation in the hearts of the men. When a small boy appeared, his father took him by the hand.
Realizing what might have happened had the boats been shot a few miles along the cliffs to the west, many said that Dunster had been fortunate and that news of another kind might well reach them from other fishing stations before the day was done.
The first of that news came with the stage-coach. Mr. Hendry was inmost of the group that gathered round, when Williamson drew his horses to a standstill.
“I made a special point,” answered Williamson, “of asking in Helmsdale when I came through. All the boats were accounted for except two—the Esperance from the south side and the Morning Star from Dunster.”
Through the silence Williamson climbed down stiffly.
“No word at all?” demanded the inn-keeper in a sudden loud voice.
“No,” said Williamson, pausing to look at the bay where the great combers were smashing on the beach in intermittent booming and a continuous roar. He seemed extraordinarily detached, untouched, like fate.
Mr. Hendry swung abruptly round and went stumping back to his inn at a rapid pace. There he yoked pony to gig, and to a group at the corner shouted, “I’m for Helmsdale.” Whipping up the pony, he was off; nor did he stop when man or woman cried to him, but yelled in abrupt response, “I’ll be back!”
Mr. Hendry’s wealth had been mounting these last years. Helmsdale, his first out-thrust into the greater world, had already assured him of a profit that in the few remaining weeks should handsomely increase. Roddie had become more than a fisherman to Hendry; he had almost become a talisman. Next year, Lybster. The year after, Wick. And then…. Not so much money, money, money now in the glitter of silver crowns, as that vast ultimate thing called a fortune. His banker at Wick received him in his parlour.
Now if Roddie and his crew were lost, Mr, Hendry had the superstitious feeling that it would take the heart out of Dunster and in some malign way smash up his designs.
“Hup!” and he used the whip on the sweating horse. Anything to get away from the desperate knowledge, plain to landsman or publican, that no boat could have headed into that sea, that no boat had any place to run for but the harbour or the rocks. Unless, of course, it had beached somewhere along the sandy southward shore or perhaps even have made Portgower—a mocking hope, for in either case word would have been in Helmsdale long before the stage-coach.
Far below him the cliffs of the Ord boomed and he thought he felt the gig take the shudder from the earth. The distant strand, southward to Brora, was a broad belt of white. Any boat attempting that beach would have been tumbled over and over like a wooden bucket. He cast his glance over his left shoulder and far as eye could travel was a waste of white-capped seas. “Hup! hup!” cried Mr. Hendry peremptorily, taking, at the same time, a firm hold on the reins, for he did not want the brute to come down. As he was rounding the last of the long serpentine curves, Dale below him and Helmsdale still hidden, his ever-lifting eye thought it saw something like a boat on the waters going into Helmsdale. He lost it at once and kept staring and nearly had a nasty accident, for, given her head at the wrong time, the poor brute, with the weight of the gig behind her on the fairly steep decline, had broken into a mad, hopeless gallop, and he had to exercise all his skill and strength on pulling her out of it. It was touch and go until the decline eased and he drew her to a standstill. She was quivering all over, with restless head and terrified eyes. Torn between the desire to curse her and to soothe her, he succeeded only in yelling futile questions. But his wrath he communicated, and she began backing senselessly. At once he realized this as preliminary to a mad bolt. He had over-driven her and now her nerves were quivering like her flesh. And she had not to back far to send the whole outfit headlong down the slope towards the rocks. Immediately he left his seat to get at her head she would bolt. A wheel jarred against a providential boulder on the road-edge and threw the gig forward upon her. He caught her strongly on the rebound, and then in a firm, commanding voice, crying, “Steady, there! Steady! Steady!” eased her forward. She danced but he held her, and at length in a lather of foam brought her to the Helmsdale stables. But, shout as he would, no one answered. This maddened him, and he leapt from the gig. “This is the way the Cattach does business,” he explained to the trembling beast. Not a soul outside either! What a place! Man, woman, nor child! He quickened his short steps to a waddling run and came on the whole population lining the harbour wall. As he pushed his way through, one or two men exclaimed angrily at him, for two lads on the edge of the wall had nearly been shoved over. They might have been flies for all he cared. He got to the edge and looked down. There was the Morning Star, with the crew shaking their nets, and Roddie, standing aft, with uplifted face, talking quietly to seamen above him.
He did not hear a word Roddie was saying, heard nothing but a buzzing of blood in his ears, while he gaped on the quiet picture of boat and men as if it had been conjured out of another world.
“That you, Roddie?” he shouted at last in so loud a voice that e
very face turned to him.
Roddie saw him, smiled, and nodded in a friendly way. Mr. Hendry elbowed a passage along the wall until he was right over the boat.
“We all thought you were lost!”
“Not quite,” said Roddie, while his boat rose and fell under him and pulled on her mooring-ropes.
But Mr. Hendry was staring at the silver fish. “Herring!”
“Just two or three crans,” answered Roddie. “We lost s even nets.”
But the inn-keeper, staring at the fish, did not seem to understand. At length he exploded, “By God!” and with a wave of a fist that hit a man in the ear cried, “Come on up and have something!”
“Whenever we redd the nets,” replied Roddie in the same quiet voice, “and get the herring out.”
“Great way on you to-day, Hendry,” said Simpson, a Wick curer.
“Hullo! Hullo!” cried Hendry. “Is Dunster showing you how to do it?”
“Well, they did bravely, with the help of God.”
“It’s the help a few of you could be doing with about here.”
There was chaff and sarcasm while the creels of herring were brought ashore to the gutting station.
Mr. Hendry found a delightful air of brightness and relief about the little fishing port, and admired, as always, the solid stone buildings, as good as anything in the biggest ports. Nothing like them in Dunster. The many boats tied together or beached in the river mouth; the safety of both the missing crews—the Esperance had made a forced landing in a creek down the coast; the movement of strange young men and women full of life, of grey-bearded bodachs and tight-shawled cailliachs, of boys and girls playing and quarrelling and shouting in any case; the whole stir of busy money-making appealed to Hendry strongly. “Leave the nets and come with me,” he cried impatiently to Roddie. “Dammit, you’ve got the whole night to spread them. Come on!”
A dram all round and the best meal the inn could provide. The crew did not appear tired so much as very quiet. They smiled in a silent, dazed way.
Only on the road to Dunster did Roddie explain what had happened. For the rest of the crew agreed that Roddie should take a chance of going home that night. To-morrow was Saturday, when no boats went to sea, and so, after a good sleep, the rest of the crew might then walk home and all could return together on Monday morning.
“We had intended walking home most week-ends,” Roddie explained as they set out, “but between Monday and Saturday you don’t get much sleep. We’ve got a good shake-down, comfortable enough; and it’s cheerful when things are going well.”
“Man, I’m fair delighted. Hup! She nearly killed me this morning. We’ll have to get down and walk. It’s too steep for her.” He was still clearly excited. Roddie staggered a little and got a supporting hand on the gig. “Just the road heaving a bit,” he explained.
“Get on board,” ordered Hendry. “Meg’ll pull you all right.”
Roddie shook his head. “It’s no bad thing to have the earth under your feet.” Still that quiet dreamy manner. It worked like a ferment on Mr. Hendry.
Roddie, behind the wheel, let the gig pull him in long strides. Now and then he regarded the solid purposeful body in front with a vague smile, which he sometimes turned on the sea, and sometimes on the heather rising back to the mountains. It was no bad thing to have brought your crew and yourself back alive. Anything else hardly mattered a great deal.
But it was everything else that mattered to the inn-keeper. He was fully holding his own with the best of the other curers, and in some strange way felt responsible for Roddie’s seamanship. In his elation, he was jealous of the fine stores and curing yards in Helmsdale. “You wait!” he shouted above the crunch of the wheels. “You are training skippers. You’ll train more. The time is at handl”
“The skipper of the Esperance was telling me you can’t get boats for love or money. It’s all building, building, he said,” remarked Roddie with an effort.
The inn-keeper laughed. As if he didn’t know all about that! “What would you expect? And building means money? Of course! Very well. Every man who has a stirk to sell has a stirk to sell. Every wife who has two pounds in the shottle of her kist to bury herself or her man, has two pounds. There’s such a thing in Wick as a bank. There’s what is called security. There’s …”
Roddie listened. On each of the first three days of the week they had averaged barely three hours’ sleep. All through last night and this morning they had fought the sea to the last of their strength. What had haunted him in the dreadful hours was not drowning but the bitterness of having made an error in judgement. His brain was so exhausted by the tearing roar of that sea that it now apprehended Special’s words remotely but with the clarity of something told in a dream. The lack of outward excitement, the glimmer of the eye staring into this incredible future conjured up before it, had a stimulating effect on the inn-keeper.
“O Lord, I’m thirsty,” said Roddie, as they got into the gig.
Mr. Hendry foraged under the seat and from the folds of a hemp sack produced a black bottle. “Have a pull at that. It’s special.”
Roddie shook his head. “I’m so dry, I want to drink a whole burn, you’ll excuse me.”
“Wait,” called Mr. Hendry, “wait till we get to the Grey Hen’s well. Hup, there!” On they rattled and bumped. “So you don’t think I’ll get the factor to build stores and salt-cellars and packing-sheds?” cried Hendry.
“Knowing the Laird, do you think it’s likely?”
Small eyes twinkled upon Roddie in sarcastic humour.
“You haven’t much faith in lairds and their factors?”
“We haven’t much cause, perhaps,” remarked Roddie.
“No, by God,” said Hendry. But he could not help a short laugh, the point he had to make was so good. For his own pleasure he therefore had to come at it cunningly. “Why,” he asked, “were the crofters burned out of their houses, swept from the glens?”
“We know why,” muttered Roddie.
“They were evicted, because the lairds would make more money out of sheep. You know that, as you say, but have you learned the lesson of it? Money, man; money. Why does the laird have a fish factor taking his share of the cod and haddock the small boats bring in to our river mouth? Why does he have a ground officer going over the crofts and houses? To ask after your health, is it? What happened to you the year before last, when your father and yourself and the rest of you had taken in from the rank moor that extra bit of a field on the top side? I forget how many years you were at it, but I don’t forget this—that your rent was put up ten shillings.”
“I know that,” said Roddie. His mouth was ashen dry.
“But you’re wondering what that’s got to do with building curing-yards? You have a lot to learn, my lad, in the ways of the world. You can take it from me that I wouldn’t bother myself asking the factor to claw his head unless he’d get more than lice out of it. No. And apart from what he’ll make out of the buildings and curing-stations and boats’ dues, it would pay him, man, out of the increase in rents alone. Think of what ten shillings added to each croft rent would mean, in total, from Dunster itself. Think of the new families, the new houses springing up. It’s as certain as we’re driving this road, that soon my rent will be doubled. Ay, or trebled. And if I was to complain, he would say, ‘Go!’ He can say that whether you complain or not. Did you complain when the ten shillings were put on to you? Not you. You knew better. And when you’re a successful skipper, making a wad of notes, would you take the road out of Dunster rather than pay, say, two pounds more rent? Would you?”
“I mightn’t mind then.”
“Exactly. And he knows it. The old laird at Buckie, years and years ago, used to buy the boats himself, and make the fishermen go to sea. And if the weather looked a bit rough and they didn’t feel like it, he would be down on the beach, driving them to sea with a big stick. And that’s gospel truth. Ask any of your skipper friends from the south side. And he got more money out of
them than ever he advanced on the boat! A heap more, Roddie, my man. And there was no golden herring season in those days. All line fishing. And that reminds me, by God!” He became excited again. “With the bigger type of boat we’ll be able to tackle the great-line fishing in the early part of the year. Cod and ling, boy. Cod from the Skaet Hole. I’ll be able to arrange—whoa!” he yelled, pulling Meg on her haunches. “The Grey Hen’s well.”
Roddie had heard of this well, and somehow had expected something more striking than a mossy water-hole in an expanse of bare moor. But, oh, the water was spring-cold and crystal-pure and pressed against the dry heat in his mouth, chilling it, chilling it….
“Stop,” cried Mr. Hendry, “or you’ll get a knot in your gut.”
Roddie lifted his face and stared at the well before making the effort of heaving himself round and, sitting, slowly wiping his nose and mouth. “That was good,” he said. “Good.” The water trickled from the well through a tongue of green grass, and here and there a wild flower drooped under the weight of a bee, though Roddie was not so observant as Catrine had been at this spot five years before. The scent of the moor, the faint honey scent, took his nostrils in a memory too old for him to do more than acknowledge it with his slow smile.
“Come!” said Hendry. “They’ll be waiting for us.”
Roddie looked about him. He must remember this well. Lord, but he would like to throw himself down and sleep. Sleep through the bees and the heather, with the wind soft and the sunlight yellow and old. “Ay, I suppose so,” he said, and they got back into the trap. The road sloped gently downward now for a long way.
“You’re sleepy—what?”
“Oh, a bit,” admitted Roddie.
“You had a bad night?”