by Jeremy Page
‘Very good!’
‘Am I being tested?’ I asked. For the first time he smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. It was more like the smile a snake is said to give, when swallowing prey.
‘What can you tell me of these?’ he said, producing a couple of eggs he had folded into a band of cotton.
‘Well, the more elongated one is a sandwich tern’s. The other is a turnstone’s. Its markings often have a smudged appearance, such as this one. If you would like my opinion I would say it is not a particularly good example—’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘I will employ you. I have a fine egg collection which is in need of restoration and of cataloguing. I shall pay you well and feed you for the duration of the time you spend at the house. Are you interested?’
He asked without any possibility of being turned down. He was forceful and persuasive.
‘We’ll walk back to the staithe together and discuss the particulars.’
‘Sir,’ I said. ‘What is in your bag?’
Celeste’s father, Judge Cottesloe, gave an ugly smile, while he considered. ‘You may look,’ he answered. In a matter of seconds he had reached into his felt bag and pulled out a live Arctic tern, which I estimated to be a juvenile from the previous year. The bird splayed its slender wings in terror as Celeste’s father held it, expertly but a little too tightly, as if he was wringing water from a flannel. ‘A sea swallow. I snared it in the colony.’ The bird trembled under the pressure of his hand.
‘For what purpose, sir?’
‘A present.’
With that, he pushed the tern roughly into his bag, and it was then that I should have known: known that this man was a cruel man, known that I should never go to work for him. For as he forced the bird into the bottom of the bag his hand lingered for a second too long, and it was in that second that I heard a soft damp click. A noise that might easily have been missed. But I knew what it was. It was the bone in the tern’s wing being snapped.
After we had left the ice floe, Sykes invited me to the chart room to explain the approach we would make to the island of Eldey, the last known breeding site of the great auks.
There is no point in being at the ice in this weather,’ he told me, unrolling the necessary charts. ‘The hunting is poor and the conditions are unpredictable for the ship. It is near impossible to keep a bearing on it, and it behaves most aggressively. A storm at the ice edge is a most hazardous situation—you would not wish to experience it. In fact, you might hear the breakers, right now, Mr Saxby, a few miles away?’ He gestured for me to listen and, distantly, I heard a low moaning roar, the sound of which had not previously been pointed out to me. It was a terrible and frightening noise. Sykes smiled, satisfied at my reaction. ‘Yes, she’s a hungry beast.’ He placed four glass weights on the corners of the uppermost chart. ‘Besides, I believe your fellow passenger, Mr Bletchley, has had enough of the hunt?’
‘Yes, most definitely,’ I answered.
‘He is a fine one,’ Sykes said, rubbing his chin. ‘He prances like a gelding pony in those flashy trousers, showing us his guns and the like, then he has to be brought back to my ship howling like a baby. Most curious. I believe you witnessed the scene?’
‘I did.’
‘A child can hold a rifle, but it takes a man to fire it. Tell me, do I need to keep an eye on Mr B, or not?’
‘I think Bletchley has conflicting emotions we know little about. I thought he was supremely confident when I first met him, but I was mistaken.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ve seen his type many times before. A man like that, out here, it’s a disaster. But I have more worries about him upon the ship than on the ice. This business in the evenings, with him and Miss Gould sitting as if they are possessed—well, I don’t know. He’ll have the crew spooked. Mr French has an interesting theory on the matter. Has he told you?’
‘No.’
‘He believes they might be communing with the spirit world,’ Sykes said, conspiratorially.
‘That’s absurd.’
‘My thought entirely. But that Bletchley is a piece of work. I won’t have my passengers going mad on me, upon my ship. Do you think that is possible?’
‘I would say you have little choice, Captain Sykes. If he wishes to become mad, we shall just have to look after him. At the moment I think he is merely agitated.’
‘Agitated, you say.’ Sykes considered the problem. I’ll have French keep an eye on him. I believe they could be soulmates.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, no reason. But Mr French has his own currents of disaster running through his veins. Have you seen how he stares at the candle flames? I do not like it one bit. When he does that I feel like slapping the man.’
‘Perhaps you should,’ I said, amused.
‘It is no laughing matter, sir,’ Sykes replied. ‘I have a ship to run, not an asylum.’
Sykes waved his hand expansively over the intricate markings of the chart. ‘So. This is the island you speak of.’ He pricked the map with a finger. ‘Not much to look at. A few hundred feet long. There are many underwater features and reefs in that area, and a racing current that is something of a trickster. It’s a fine one to read. I was once caught in it and handled the ship in a most unprofessional manner. I shall leave the Amethyst with Mr Talbot, because he has a walrus’s nose when it comes to water. I believe he smells changes as they rise from the depths. Mr French will command one of the whaleboats, and I shall skipper the other. Best you sit in my boat. In that manner we can gain access to many of the rocks without danger.’ He pointed to an area of cross-hatching on one side of the island. ‘Notice these markings?’
‘A landing place?’
‘Precisely. We shall be expecting a neap tide, so the reef should be accessible and reliable.’ He cocked his head at the chart, as if a fresh perspective might reveal more. ‘This island is a well-known feature on the approach to Iceland, Mr Saxby. It has a very distinctive profile, as flat as a table on top, but with sheer cliffs perhaps two hundred feet high. It is this shape.’ He made an impression with his hands. ‘Among English sailors it is called the flour-sack. You will see why.’
He began to roll the chart up. Apparently our meeting was at an end. ‘Will we find your birds?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it.’
‘Me also. But we shall try. And in any case we will have some sport, Mr Saxby. I’m looking forward to it.’
‘As am I. I want to thank you, once again, for making all this possible.’
‘Well, I have been chartered to steer this ship to these bird ledges of yours, let us not forget that. There’s no charity out here. Did you enjoy the ice?’
‘I thought it was the most extraordinary sight a man could wish to see. Do you ever get used to it?’
‘I look at it merely as a farmer regards his field. Work to be done and machinery to maintain. Workers, too, to keep content. But I’m glad you were inspired—the first sight of the ice sheet can haunt a man for many years. I watched you with Miss Gould as you conducted your promenades upon the floe. You two seemed to be getting on very well indeed.’
I regarded the captain suspiciously, trying to ascertain his point.
‘What is your opinion of her and Mr Bletchley?’ he asked. ‘What say you—are we dealing with an elopement here?’
‘Captain Sykes!’ I said, appalled by his indiscretion. ‘You must withdraw that at once—such gossiping is beneath you.’
He sounded curiously happy to have riled me. ‘It is a captain’s role to be a gossip, sir.’ He turned his back to me, busily putting the rolled chart into a pigeonhole. ‘An attractive woman, wouldn’t you say?’ He glanced slyly at me. ‘Ah, yes, I see you agree.’
‘Yes, Captain Sykes.’ His prying tone annoyed me intensely. ‘I have noticed that Miss Gould is an attractive woman. I have also noticed she is delicate and should not be discussed in this manner.’
Sykes turned back, satisfied with his childish goadin
g. ‘Well, as I say, we’ll have us some sport. I have enjoyed our chat. That is all, Mr Saxby.’
A couple of days later we were passing the barren treeless coast of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. It was a world away from the great sheets of ice we had been among. The weather was dreary, with a persistent Scotch mist drifting in bands and coating every inch of the ship with a cold wet shine. Little auks—or rotges as the sailors called them—constantly circled the ship in a small flock, their fast wings and aimless motion making me feel quite dizzy as I watched them. I wore a rain cap and greatcoat, and had tied the hat’s brim to one of my coat buttons with a cord, as I had seen several of the men do. Peering with difficulty at the rocky peninsula, a mile or two off, I realised that what I was seeing was no ordinary land. This was a lava coast, where volcanic earth had risen and cooled in successive layers of black and grey, in heaps such as a child might make, in disorder and without scheme, some parts pushed roughly into the sea, other stretches in cliffs and crumbled ridges. The land was desolate, without houses or lights or signs that it had ever been set upon.
Talbot was at the helm that morning, stoic and wet through, one of his frostbitten hands resting on the face of a binnacle.
‘Your island,’ he said, simply, gesturing with a nod towards a point somewhere off the front port bow.
I could make out nothing but the grey on grey of bad weather on a dismal sea. A low brooding sky seamed to leach, at distance, into the ocean, both without colour.
‘How can you see it?’ I asked, more to myself than to him. He seldom answered a question.
Even the tops of the masts could not be seen. The crosstrees and captain’s barrel had a feathery aspect as the mist drifted past. Yet strangely, corridors of clear view were emerging. At certain angles, whole mile lengths of sea were suddenly visible, the small black waves in sharp focus, and it was through one of these gaps in the vapours that I saw, or imagined, my first glimpse of Eldey. After all those years of dreaming the sight. This was it, the last rock on the earth where the great auks had stood. I felt a thrill shooting up my spine. Yet it had appeared as a distant window appears, a paler squared-off shape in the sky, which vanished as soon as I looked directly at it.
I remembered being in the upstairs corridor at Celeste’s house. Waiting, in the chill damp air on a threadbare carpet, for sounds of her on the other side of her bedroom door. An awareness, as I bent my ear to the lock, that she was just a few inches away from me. She had spoken. A sudden, urgent whisper: ‘Save me from this place.’
11
‘CAREFUL NOW,’ SYKES ADVISED. ‘Sharp eyes, men.’
The mist was impenetrable, glowing with a pale light that played tricks on the senses. Sounds could be heard, not far away, of surges of water being interrupted by rock. Of flow and backwash.
‘Mr French!’ Sykes called.
‘Aye,’ French replied, some way off in the fog.
‘Best ring a bell once a minute,’ Sykes ordered. ‘Or we’ll lose each other.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Sykes handed me a small bell. ‘Do the same, would you, Mr Saxby.’
‘Christ and the Saints!’ Martin Herlihy yelled.
Appearing like some falling spear of masonry, a large bird—its wings folded—had dropped through the fog and pierced the water by our boat. It vanished, almost without a splash.
‘Steady, I say,’ Sykes said, calmly. ‘What was that?’
I tried to see beneath the water, but even while I looked a second bird fell, plunging through the fog, wings closed, diving into the water.
‘Gannets, captain,’ I said.
More followed, perhaps half a dozen, falling like icicles from a church roof and vanishing into the ocean. The two Herlihy brothers became unnerved, crouching on their seats and close to letting go of the oars. One of the birds, quite near the boat, could be seen paddling thickly underwater, its neck straining this way and that, a thin chain of bubbles escaping from the nostrils on its beak, before bringing itself back to the surface with a laboured drag of wings.
‘Smack it!’ Connor urged, trying to smite it with his oar. ‘Devil!’ Freeing itself from the sea it spied us, warily, before climbing into the air with a lizard’s crawl, streams spilling from its wings as it flew away.
‘Don’t forget to ring that bell,’ Sykes uttered, unimpressed, turning his collar up. I rang it, and a second later heard French’s boat in answer. As if summoned, two puffins flew out from the mist, fast as hornets and low to the water, their wings beating so rapidly they were blurred. At the last moment they managed to avoid the prow of the boat, both turning at a precise angle to speed alongside and disappear. They were so fast I almost disbelieved they had been there, yet after they had gone, an image of an eye remained, large and comical and set amid the coloured flags of its beak, frozen in the air a few feet from where I sat. Soon, as we rowed, more birds appeared, guillemots and razorbills, rafting in groups, bobbing apprehensively as we approached, and it was seeing these birds that made us realise we had all been hearing a noise beyond that of the sea. It was a sound of hundreds or possibly thousands of similar seabirds, high above us.
‘Here she is, men,’ Sykes said.
Below us, we saw the first glimpses of boulders emerging on a seabed. The water lifted us with a new swell. Almost instantaneously a vast wall of rock loomed about sixty yards ahead of the boat, towering vertically and streaked with white as if lime wash had been thrown down it and smeared with a sea-blackened stain along its base. Dotted on its ledges were lines of birds—every inch of level ground turned into a roost or a nest. We must have been a curious sight, emerging from the mist below them, but they viewed us with indifference. I recognised the white breasts of razorbills, heads raised up to the sky, and the brightly banded beaks of puffins.
Eldey had emerged like a phantom, a rock obelisk rising sheer from the ocean. Making the same discovery as ourselves, French’s boat began to work its way, as we did, in an anticlockwise direction to the cliff. Glimpses of the top of the island could be seen now and again, two hundred feet in the air, where the rock broke to an almost perfect level. Birds were launching off this ledge, gliding in a looping flight before plunging into the water.
‘Well done, men,’ Sykes said.
‘There’s a swell,’ Martin replied.
‘Not too close, now. She has a cross-tide,’ Sykes commanded. ‘And we don’t know what’s below.’
Passing so close to the rock was an oppressive and unnerving experience. New surges of water grew, lifting smoothly and regularly against the bare cliff, a glassy lip that trembled before falling away as if a plug had been pulled. Each time it happened, a raft of seaweed rose with it, a full beard which gave the rock a pliable, velvety quality to its foundations. It smelt as damp and earthy as a cellar, but with the sharp ammonium stink of rotten eggs.
‘Are they puffins?’ the captain asked.
‘Yes.’
The captain smiled at them. ‘They are sweet animals. It was once thought they were fish—did you know that?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I have not heard that before.’
‘It’s true,’ he replied. ‘Fish.’
As we turned the end of the island, meeting a stiffer current, French’s boat drew alongside.
‘We’ll be speared by these blasted birds!’ he exclaimed, agitated. ‘I swear one was aiming for the boat, can you believe it!’
‘Have your gaff hook raised to fend them off,’ Sykes instructed, more than a little amused, ‘and we’ll see if you can skewer one.’
‘You’ll look fine with one down your neck,’ he replied.
Sykes shrugged, indicating the collar he had turned up. But he decided we should do the same, passing the hook from beneath his legs to me. I lifted it upright, pointing it into the mist. ‘Move it a little,’ he said. ‘Anything of note?’ he then asked his first mate.
‘A wretched stink, sir.’
‘Yes, my nose is not immune.’
‘On the
other side,’ French continued, ‘the isle has a low broken reef. It might be possible to land there.’
‘The chart has outlying rocks to the south-west, a mile distant,’ Sykes said. ‘You’ll hear them in this swell. Mr French, you look such a fine admiral of your craft—I would appreciate it most gratefully if you would inspect those, before returning to us at the reef. We will circle Eldey and find the best place to land.’
French gave a grudging nod, making it clear he thought the whole venture was a fool’s errand, and commanded his boat off into the mist.
While this exchange had occurred, I had been searching the rock face desperately for any sign of the auks that had once lived here. But the lower ledges, the only ones accessible to a flightless bird, were bare, or had signs that the razorbills and kittiwakes had nested instead.
On the south side, low shelving rocks formed the only possible point for a landing. Above them, the cliffs were just as sheer as before, overhanging us with a presence that was unnatural and foreboding. Half the sky was rock; it felt as if the world had tipped upon its side. And the mist only made this worse. In places it was so dense it created an optical trickery, whereby new impossible cliff faces might be reflected, drifting above us where we knew they could not be.
Suddenly we heard a sharp fizzing sound as a shoal of fish broke the surface in front of the boat. An instant later, a rising tunnel of water arrowed towards us and a dolphin emerged just a few feet beyond the oars, breaching entirely from the sea with a smooth glistening arch of its back. It hung suspended in the air long enough for its tail to twist, like a weathervane swinging, before it dived back into the water. The dorsal fin of a second dolphin appeared in almost the exact spot where the first had jumped, this one scything the water in a sharp turn as the shoal of fish were harried against the surface. The fizzing returned, like a wave breaking on shingle, as the two dolphins hunted as a team, running through the shoal, dividing it in two. We watched, in awe, as each dolphin sped beneath, the bulk of their bodies enough to lift us as they passed. They used our boat as part of their strategy, utilising its shape and presence to corral the fish, both of them angling their heads to regard us. Joyously they leapt in front of the boat and cut like knives through the water, while the vibrations of their enigmatic clicking resonated through the boards.