The Dangerous Islands

  THE

  DANGEROUS

  ISLANDS

  by

  ANN BRIDGE

  Contents

  *

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  The Mary Hathaway was reaching northwards up the west coast of Scotland under a stiff westerly breeze; a breeze so stiff that Philip Reeder, her owner and Skipper, had just decreed that a reef should be taken in her big mainsail, of over a thousand superficial feet. Thank goodness for the mechanical reefing gear, his wife Edina thought; she had been sailing about the West Highlands all her life and remembered, even as a child, the painful and exhausting business of putting a yacht into the wind and then with one’s bare hands clawing and scratching down the stiff canvas, damp with spray, and tying in the reefs. Nowadays, apart from loosening some ropes, an iron handle on the mainmast did the job for one, all but tying a few cords when the sail had been lowered.

  ‘I think she’ll do like that,’ Philip Reeder said. He was standing in the cockpit, steering, and as he spoke made the slightest adjustment of the wheel to meet the onslaught of a particularly large wave coming in from the Atlantic—the big graceful yacht barely swerved before resuming her northward course. The crew, consisting of his wife, her cousin Julia Probyn, and her brother Colin Monro, scrambled back from their cord-tying along the great boom, and perched themselves on the steeply-slanting deck, their legs dangling into the cockpit to give them purchase.

  ‘Yes—I think she’s fine so,’ Edina said. ‘I don’t think we need take in the foresail. We’ve got plenty of clearance, and we want to get up in good time. Goodness, how lovely Ben Mor is!—do look at that great curving ridge.’

  ‘Which is Ben Mor?’ The question came from the only passenger, Captain Benson, who had remained sitting quietly in the cockpit while his hostess and her relations shuttled precariously about the deck dealing with the reefing operations.

  ‘That great blue cone—to the right, beyond lona?’

  ‘Oh, can one see lona?’

  ‘Yes,’ Philip Reeder replied—‘I’m steering on the Cathedral. Have the glasses’—he handed his guest an outsize pair of Zeiss binoculars. ‘This is one of the few ocean spaces where one can steer on a Cathedral,’ he added amusedly.

  Captain Benson studied the squat tower of the Cathedral rather perfunctorily, and then used the field-glasses to sweep the sea for bird-life. He was an impassioned ornithologist, and this expedition had been arranged partly to take him to some rather remote islands where he could observe Manx Shearwaters and their breeding-places; but he could never keep his eyes off birds. However, save for a few guillemots, who plunged their neat black-and-white bodies smartly into the water as the yacht came near, there was little to be seen but a few questing gannets, patrolling the sky overhead. It was a brilliant day—sea, sky, and the hills to their right were all blue in different tones: the land as soft as a Japanese colour-print, the sky like one vast forget-me-not; but the water had a jewel-like brilliance, flecked with the sharp white crests of wave-tops breaking under the ever-stiffening breeze.

  ‘Colin, I think we’d better have the foresail off her,’ Philip Reeder said presently, as the wind increased in strength, and the yacht heeled over more and more.

  ‘Oh God!’ Colin groaned. ‘I hoped we were going to get some lunch. Well put her up.’ He, Edina, and Julia all scrambled to their feet as the yacht was put straight into the wind; the big mainsail flapped horribly, with a loud menacing sound, as they loosened sheets, pulled down the foresail, and lashed it in a tight bundle.

  ‘Philip’s quite dotty about this boat,’ Colin muttered to his sister, as they knotted the last linen ties.

  ‘Yes, she’s his new toy,’ Philip’s wife said cheerfully.

  In fact the yacht, though a new toy for Philip Reeder, was quite an old boat, built for the Fastnet Race many years before, and was old-fashioned in many respects, such as being gaff-rigged and having a bowsprit; he had bought her, cheap, that spring, because she was more spacious and comfortable than his previous boat, and being built for ocean racing had a considerable turn of speed—as well as the inconveniently deep draught of nearly nine feet. He had however given her a new mainsail. Only yachtsmen know the almost insane, maternal feeling which men have for such possessions. Her original name had been The Mary; but Philip Reeder had become so devoted to Mary Hathaway, his mother-in-law’s old friend and Julia Probyn’s god-mother, that he had taken the unusual step of changing the boat’s name in Lloyd’s Register to the Mary Hathaway.

  Presently they had lunch down in the saloon; Edina was the only person allowed to steer off a lee shore, and Julia brought in the food from the galley in the fo’c’sle: venison pasties from the home deep-freeze, salad, and strawberries-and-cream, washed down by ‘Heavy Export Ale’, the strongest beer in the British Isles.

  ‘What a meal!’ Captain Benson exclaimed, wiping his small military tooth-brush moustache which, like what remained of his hair, was gingery turning grey.

  ‘Ah, this is about the last of the Glentoran food—from now on you won’t do so well,’ his host said cheerfully. ‘We shall have to live off the country, or out of tins.’

  Over the coffee, produced by Julia from the Calor-gas stove in the galley, Captain Benson, a little flown by the strong ale, expatiated on the subject of Shearwaters, and their amazing capacity for finding their way back from enormous distances to their breeding-grounds.

  ‘Pigeons are nothing to them,’ he said, puffing at his cigarette. ‘Shearwaters, ringed and dated, have been taken as far as Newfoundland to be released, and within a fortnight they’ve come back to the west coast of Scotland, and been netted and checked. They must have something like radar equipment in those little heads of theirs.’

  ‘Electronics, I suppose,’ said Julia airily; she too was smoking, but turned her big eyes onto the little man in her usual casual-melting manner.

  ‘Do you know about electronics?’ he asked, surprised; Julia’s beauty, and the way in which even her yachting clothes conveyed a hint of fashion had already produced an impression. If a woman’s figure is really good, nothing displays it to greater advantage than the clinging closeness of a high-necked seaman’s jersey over trousers—but Julia was far too good at dress to wear stiff hideous jeans; her trousers were of the same dark blue as her jersey, but knitted, full, and loose, the bottoms tucked into white socks above spotless white canvas shoes.

  ‘Goodness no!’ she replied to his question—‘only the name. But isn’t that how they track Sputniks and things?—or do I mean radar?’

  ‘Julia dear, how seldom you know what you mean!’ Philip said, smiling at her as he got up. ‘Benson, don’t move—have some more coffee. I’m going to relieve my wife, and let her eat.’ He climbed nimbly up the companion-ladder, and a moment later Edina came down, and began her meal.

  Captain Benson was still obsessed with the subject of birds.

  ‘Is there any chance of finding the Red-necked Phalarope on the Erinish Islands?’ he asked earnestly.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. They used to nest on Benbecula, but with all this military occupation, and making roads and loosing off rockets, I should think they’ve been driven away, probably.”

  Colin, who was washing up in the galley, poked his dark head and pale face in through the low doorway.

  ‘The Song o
f the Naturalist in the Highlands,’ he said, and intoned:

  ‘At last, at last, I have a hope

  To see the Red-necked Phalarope.

  At last, at last I hope to see

  The red-red-necked Phalaropee.’

  He retired to his small sink; Julia burbled her low laugh; Captain Benson smiled a rather chilly smile.

  ‘Very amusing,’ he said politely. ‘Could we go to Benbecula?’

  ‘I don’t know what the restrictions are now,’ Edina said, forking salad into her mouth. ‘Everything is made so difficult with these military goings-on. How lovely it was when there was no cold war, and all this coast was utterly free.’

  ‘Well the poor little Erinishes will be free anyhow, won’t they?’ Julia said. ‘No installations there, thank God—only sheep and Shearwaters.’

  ‘Sheep?’ Captain Benson asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Edina told him. ‘They’re grassy islands, and the sheep are taken there in boats in the spring to eat the grass, and taken off again in the autumn.’

  ‘Who looks after the sheep?’

  ‘No one—they don’t take lambing ewes there, only hoggetts. There’s not a soul living on them.’

  Some hours later Philip Reeder steered the yacht carefully into the space between the two islands, Erinish Mor and Erinish Beg, the Great and the Little. The depth here was nine fathoms; just outside the entrance it was thirteen fathoms, and the little anchorage was completely protected from the west, the prevailing wind. Although the Mary Hathaway had an auxiliary engine Philip Reeder was a purist about going into an anchorage under sail, so there was the usual performance of getting down the mainsail and going in on the jib, and then letting go the anchor with a great rattling of chains; finally, when the skipper was satisfied that ‘she was holding’, his long-suffering crew took down and lashed the jib, and then lowered the dinghy over the side, and put the hooked steps into position to get into it.

  ‘Tea first, or after?’ Philip asked, when all this was done.

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake let’s have some tea!’ Julia exclaimed. ‘We toil, Philip; you merely steer, which isn’t work at all; it’s just fun.’

  Philip laughed, and agreed to tea before they went ashore. ‘Anyhow the Manx Shearwater is a crepuscular bird, isn’t it?’ he said to Captain Benson.

  ‘Ah, um, yes—well yes and no. At its breeding-places it is really nocturnal, but it ranges far and wide over the sea by day, finding food. What I am hoping to see are those curious assemblies on the water before sunset, when the birds rest and preen and wash and—well, fly about a little—before they go to their nesting-burrows.’

  ‘A sort of get-together?’ Colin asked.

  ‘It could be that. Anyhow they do it.’

  ‘Why burrows?’ Julia put in. ‘Do they nest underground?’

  ‘Oh yes—use old rabbit-burrows when they can, of course; that’s why they like these turfy islands.’

  ‘What is their Latin name?’ Edina enquired. Her husband laughed.

  ‘Puffinus puffinus puffinus. Better me that for a silly name, if you can.’

  ‘I can!’ Julia said instantly. ‘The Harlequin Duck is called Histrionicus histrionicus histrionicus!’

  ‘You got that from Peter Fleming,’ her host said cheerfully. ‘He made good use of it—the perfect excuse for not giving the Latin names of Brazilian birds.’ Fond as he was of Julia, he didn’t particularly want her to upset Captain Benson’s emotions, which he felt she was all too likely to do.

  After tea the party split up. Philip Reeder said that the Shearwaters bred principally on Erinish Mor, so Colin rowed him and Benson over there in the dinghy; then he came back and picked up Julia to take her to Erinish Beg—Edina said that she would stay on board, to get the supper and do some washing. Philip had a powerful whistle, which he undertook to blow when he and his companion wanted to be fetched.

  The Erinish Islands are not particularly high; rocky bluffs rise above their boulder-strewn shores to rather flat tops, covered with short yellowish turf, on which the sheep get their summer grazing. On both islands low stone-built walls mark the remains of the forts which Oliver Cromwell built, so it is alleged, to resist French or Spanish invasions; now they are only used by the sheep, huddled under them to shelter from the fierce rain-storms which blow in from the Atlantic. Colin and Julia climbed up by an easy gully above the anchorage, and proceeded to inspect Cromwell’s forts without much interest—they were full of droppings, and smelt strong and rank.

  ‘Can’t think what he thought he was defending, out here,’ Colin said. ‘The Highlands were worth even less, economically, then than they are today, I imagine.’

  ‘Just the western approaches in general, perhaps,’ Julia said carelessly. They left the forts and wandered on to the westernmost point of the island, and sat down at the very verge of the bluff, where it fell away to the beach below them. ‘Oh look,’ the girl said—‘one can just see all the Outer Islands, hull down; how lovely.’ Far away, where she pointed, blue mountains rose out of blue water on the horizon, where the blue of the sky turned pale.

  ‘Breaking the silence of the seas

  Among the farthest Hebrides’

  Colin quoted.

  ‘What broke the silence?’ Julia asked.

  ‘The cuckoo-bird’s sweet silly voice.’

  ‘Are there cuckoos in the Outer Islands?’

  Colin never answered her question, because at that moment Julia said ‘Oh look!’ again, but in an altogether different tone; and again pointed, this time to something quite close by, which absorbed their attention for the next hour or more—absorbed it so completely that Philip Reeder had blown his whistle four or five times before the sound penetrated their consciousness.

  ‘There’s the whistle,’ Julia said, getting up from where she knelt on the ground.

  ‘Damn!’ Colin exclaimed. ‘Yes, we shall have to go. Just help me to put these turfs back, will you?’ When she had done so he stamped several sods of turf, on a space roughly eighteen inches square, back into place, and brushed away a few pebbles and some loose soil from the surrounding grass.

  ‘That’ll do—come on,’ he said, and began to stride back across the small island to the anchorage. ‘Not a word about this to anyone,’ he said to his cousin—‘least of all to that bird-fancier type. After all, what do we know about him?’

  ‘I thought he was a friend of the Menteiths.’

  ‘Not a friend; just someone they know vaguely who said he wanted to look at Shearwaters—so, as Philip had planned a cruise anyhow, they asked him to bring Benson up here. But he may have wanted to come to the Erinish Islands to inspect precisely what we have found.’

  ‘Whatever that is,’ Julia said coolly. ‘Or not. Anyhow mum’s the word.’

  They slithered down the gully and un-moored the dinghy, which Colin rowed rapidly across to Erinish Mor; Philip Reeder, who had been whistling exasperatedly, stopped when he saw the little boat crossing the narrow channel.

  ‘I must get ashore tomorrow somehow, Great Grey Seals or no Great Grey Seals—somewhere where there’s a telephone,’ Colin said anxiously to his cousin. ‘Can you think up anything? It would look better if you suggested it.’

  ‘Don’t row so fast; let me think—Philip can wait a few more minutes for his supper.’

  Colin obediently slackened his short brief strokes, the ‘waterman’s jerk’, so useful in dinghies.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Edina could arrange it better than me. But there’s a heronry on Ullin, and she knows the MacIans; so do I, a bit. They have a telephone, I’m positive. I could say I wanted to see them, and persuade Captain Benson that he really must hear the young herons chackling in their nests—it’s the weirdest sound. That do?’

  ‘You must make it do—I’m sure you can—and better you than Edina, as she doesn’t know about this.’

  ‘Well, I’ll try.’

  ‘We thought you’d both suddenly turned stone deaf,’ Philip Reeder said, as th
e dinghy grounded on the beach of Erinish Mor. ‘Colin, get up into the bow; I’ll row.’

  ‘You’re always so impatient, Philip,’ Julia said, moving to one side of the small seat in the stern to make room for Captain Benson beside her. ‘You can’t be in the least hungry; we only had lunch about three. Captain Benson, did you see the Shearwaters?’

  ‘Yes indeed; most splendidly.’ He described the numbers of birds on the water, splashing and preening—‘You know they spend nearly half their waking life preening their feathers.’

  ‘Like cats licking themselves,’ Julia observed.

  ‘Precisely. Though I don’t know that cats are under such an imperative necessity to keep their fur clean as Shearwaters are to keep their feathers water-proof.’

  ‘Or else they’d get swamped and drowned, you mean?’

  ‘More or less,’ the little man said, beaming at this cool beautiful creature, who seemed to take such an intelligent interest in his pet subject. Julia beamed on him in return, with her great doves’ eyes; by the time they were half way through Edina’s excellent supper, in the snug little saloon on the Mary Hathaway, it was clear that Captain Benson was in full process of subjugation. Then Julia struck her blow for Colin.

  ‘Captain Benson, there’s an enormous heronry on Ullin—and I believe there are red-necked phalaropes there too. Philip, couldn’t we put in there? I’d love Captain Benson to hear the extraordinary noise the young herons make in their nests—like shingle rattling on a beach. Have you ever heard it?’ she asked the Captain.

  It so happened that he never had, and expressed a strong desire to do so.

  ‘We thought of going round Heskeir tomorrow to look for the Great Grey Seals,’ Philip said, rather repressively. ‘The tides will be just right, and the young should be out on the rocks, with their curly white fleeces. They really are worth seeing.’

  ‘Philip, the tides don’t change all that much in twenty-four hours,’ Julia protested—‘and we’re so near Ullin. If you go out to Heskeir you’ll go on and on, and never come back! I do want Captain Benson to hear the young herons.’