The Dangerous Islands Read online

  ‘No. He must have done that himself—J. I mean.’

  ‘I wonder how much else Philip’s been told?’

  ‘Enough to take us to Loch Roag, which is what matters.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘J. told me this morning; he said Philip had been so kind. Colin, do you know his Christian name?’

  ‘No. We call him Jimmy.’

  ‘Well do find out.’

  ‘Why? Do you want to start Christian-naming him?’

  ‘Might do, at any moment! But all this James-ing and J-ing is so tiresome. I like to be informed.’

  ‘So do I,’ Colin said. ‘Everything seems to be getting quite out of control.’

  ‘Well it’s the Colonel who has to control things now, isn’t it? So you can relax.’

  Her cousin scowled at her.

  ‘If only you were more responsible!’ he muttered.

  ‘Well I’ve told you all I know—if that’s irresponsible, it’s just too bad.’ She took his hand, where the nervous thumb was beginning to jerk, and pressed it gently. ‘Colin, sweet, don’t be sour!’ She laughed at her own juxtaposition of words. ‘You know I’m always on your side.’

  Colonel Jamieson, after having studied the Grey Seals and their five blobs of pups, handed the field-glasses back to his host—he did this just in time to observe Julia taking her cousin’s hand, and her obviously affectionate expression as she bent her golden-tawny head towards Colin’s black one, and spoke gently to him. He was shocked to find how much this small scene disturbed him, after less than three days in her company. Of course she was very beautiful, in a rather unusual way; but when one was on a job, one had to stick to it. ‘Stick to the job,’ the Colonel told himself, and looked away.

  They sailed on to Canna. In the entrance to Canna’s admirably sheltered little harbour is a rock only visible at half tide; but they made their way in safely past this obstacle. It was early, and when they had had tea they went ashore.

  Canna is a small sweet island, with high ground rising on its northern side; here is its most peculiar feature, a hill so full of metalliferous rock that within a range of several miles it puts all ships’ compasses out of action; it is called, rather ironically, ‘Compass Hill’. Colonel Jamieson wanted to telephone, and to his great satisfaction there proved to be a telephone in the Post Office.

  ‘Is Captain Brown still in?’ he asked when he got the London number. ‘Oh, good—put me through, please.’ Pause. ‘Nigel? Jimmy here.… From Canna. Yes, the first report is confirmed up to the hilt; I saw it myself yesterday.… Oh, just what one supposed. Now I’m on my way to look into what you wanted investigated.… On a private yacht; very convenient! Did you get any more on that Swedish-owned boat? … Goodness, you are slow! Do find out; she was about again last night.… No, I’d rather report when I get back; the posts are a bit slow from these parts.… Well I will if I can; telephones aren’t all that abundant either.… My good man, I’ve no idea where from; as I can and when I can! You stir your stumps about that boat; I’m not losing any time, but I think you are.’ He rang off.

  The others had been idling about outside. Not altogether idling, in Edina’s case; she had acquired bread, milk, butter, and vegetables, which they stowed in the dinghy—then they set out to explore. Edina wanted to look for wild-flowers, the Colonel to find a Celtic Cross.

  ‘Well it must be up that way,’ Julia said, pointing westwards.

  ‘Yes. Would you care to come and see it?’ He had done his job for the moment by telephoning; this was merely a diversion. Julia agreed, and the two set off together; Philip wanted to climb the Compass Hill; Colin went off alone.

  The cross was not typical: it was short and stumpy, without the usual long shaft; there was however the circular central boss; some of it broken away. The Colonel made notes in a pocket-book.

  ‘Why on earth do you suppose ordinary West Highland crosses are so different to any others?—except the Irish ones?’ Julia asked, when he closed his notebook and came and sat beside her on a small grassy mound. ‘European crosses practically never have a circle in the centre, and Maltese crosses are square. Why should they be so odd up here?’

  ‘I’ve often wondered the same thing myself.’ He was impressed by her question. ‘Are you interested in archaeology?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. I have a chum who is, and rubs my nose in it,’ Julia said. ‘But sometimes I notice things for myself. I always like to know why, if you follow me.’

  ‘I do. I expect I might follow you quite a long way,’ the Colonel said. His tone brought a faint ripe-apricot blush to Julia’s cheeks; Jamieson almost blushed too—was he really going to make a fool of himself?

  ‘I suppose someone will find out the reason some day,’ he added, very casually. Neither he nor Julia could know that they would stumble on the most probable reason themselves, only a day or two later.

  The other party had also been successful. Edina returned carrying a huge bunch of wild-flowers; Philip had a lump of what he thought was magnetic rock in his pocket; Colin had been to a small ruined castle, from which a Macdonald lady had lowered herself by a rope of knotted sheets to elope with her lover. ‘This was a Macdonald island,’ he said—‘part of the Lordship of the Isles.’

  ‘What a splendid phrase that is, The Lordship of the Isles,’ the Colonel said. These exchanges took place over drinks in the cabin before supper.

  ‘Yes, glorious,’ Julia said. ‘And you know the odd thing is that those crosses and tomb-slabs with the interlaced ornament are practically conterminous—is that the word?—with the boundaries of the Lordship of the Isles.’

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Oh yes, Philip; Geoffrey once showed me a map with dots on it—you know—for all the places with interlaced tomb-slabs; and then he laid over that a map showing the boundaries of the Lordship of the Isles; they fitted almost exactly.’

  ‘Who is Geoffrey? One of your miserable cast-offs?’ Philip enquired. Julia merely gave her burbling laugh; the Colonel was fairly sure that ‘Geoffrey’ was the chum who habitually rubbed Julia’s nose in archaeology, apparently to rather good effect.

  Next morning they slept in, an agreeable change, and made a late start for the fairly short run to Rodel in Harris. There the Colonel took an active part in getting down the mainsail and putting the light ‘C.Q.R.’ anchor over the stern.

  ‘Nice job, that anchor,’ he said. ‘I believe they use them for flying-boats.’

  ‘Yes.’ Philip lit a cigarette. ‘The old ones were so heavy; an appalling job to get them up without an automatic winch. Rather interesting, really; I believe it’s only the second change in anchor-design since the one Noah used on Ararat, or the Greeks off Troy.’

  ‘What was the first change?’ the Colonel asked, amused.

  ‘The movable shank, so that the flukes could get a hold in more than one direction. But this is a magical affair; those two things like ploughshares set at an angle hold far better than any previous anchor did. I find I’ve only got the small-scale chart for the Sound of Harris, and it’s a hell of a place,’ he added gloomily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, reefs and rocks everywhere. Someone will have to sit out on the bowsprit and keep watch.’

  Edina’s head appeared at the top of the companion-hatch.

  ‘Tea,’ she announced. ‘Come along—I’ve got to go ashore and buy something to eat afterwards.’

  After tea the Skipper remained on board to write up his log; the others piled into the dinghy and rowed ashore, Edina armed with a large pannikin for milk and a brightly-coloured rush basket of huge proportions. To Mrs. Reeder’s dismay she learned that there was no shop of any sort nearer than Leverburgh, some miles away.

  ‘Ye’ll get bread at the hotel,’ said a bearded man in a seaman’s jersey, who stood lounging on the quay—‘and likely Mistress Macrae up the road could let ye have some milk.’ Edina enquired about meat.

  ‘Ach no—
Mistress Macrae might let ye have some eggs, or may be a cockerel.’

  ‘Could you get the bread at the hotel?’ Edina asked the Colonel. ‘Revolting “sliced loaves”, most likely, but we must have something.’ Then the cousins set off to try their luck at Mrs. Macrae’s croft.

  Colonel Jamieson went first to inspect the ancient chapel. It contains a number of those incised tomb-slabs with interlaced ornament which Miss Probyn had said were mainly to be found within the boundaries of the Lordship of the Isles. What a surprising creature she was, Jamieson thought, bringing out these curious items of information as it were from beneath her make-up and her general appearance of being a fashionable nit-wit. Moreover she clearly did, as she had said, ‘notice things for herself’; he speculated, sitting on a stone in the small chapel, as to whether she deliberately put on an act of being a lovely fool.

  Then the Colonel betook himself to the hotel for a drink, and if possible a gossip—often a useful occupation. The hotel was a low-built and rather rambling place, and appeared to be completely deserted; he went in and wandered about, and at last routed out a pleasant middle-aged woman, who served him with whisky; she sat by politely while he drank it. Jamieson asked how the fishing was going?—and then enquired if there was any trouble about poaching by foreign trawlers?

  Oh yes, ‘terrable’, she told him. The French came right in to Barra, and sold scent and field-glasses, free of duty—‘and the people there have no conscience; they just row out and buy the stuff.’ The Colonel made sounds of disapprobation.

  ‘But the Russian trawlers are the worst,’ the middle-aged woman pursued. ‘They don’t sell anything, but at night they come close in, and fish away! ’Tis wrong—these are our waters, and our fish, and haven’t our own men their living to make?’

  The Colonel asked if there was no patrol-boat to keep an eye on the poachers?

  ‘Ach, how often do they come round? Those ones know well enough that they are safe for their mischief nine nights out of ten.’

  The Colonel paid for his drinks, bought his two loaves, and strolled up the road to meet Julia and Edina, well satisfied with his evening’s work. Yes, Russian trawlers, so-called, could easily slip in at night to renew batteries, or even plant installations.

  Edina and Julia, when he met them, were also quite pleased with themselves. The pannikin was full of milk, the Portuguese basket held another pound of butter and two dozen fresh eggs; Julia was carrying a pair of cockerels by the legs—they kept quiet while she walked, but when she stood still they began to flap their wings.

  ‘Good Heavens, they’re alive!’ the Colonel exclaimed.

  ‘Yes—there won’t be time to hang them, so we must eat them fresh-killed. I’ve got a hamper on board. Fowls always have to be starved before they’re killed, or the meat is rank,’ Edina said.

  ‘How much you know! Who will kill them?’ the Colonel asked, half-fascinated and half-horrified.

  ‘Julia or I—we can both wring chickens’ necks. Someone has to be a little bit competent about the commissariat on this sort of cruise,’ Mrs. Reeder said cheerfully.

  ‘But who will pluck them?’ Colonel Jamieson asked, eyeing the flapping feathered objects.

  ‘I shall,’ Julia said. ‘I’m a nailer at plucking birds.’

  Next day the Colonel saw for himself that Miss Probyn was indeed a ‘nailer’ at the very countrified task of plucking chickens. When the Mary Hathaway emerged into open water Edina took the two cockerels, one after the other, from the hamper, held the legs in her right hand, and with a swift jerk of her left wrist wrung their necks. ‘There you are,’ she said to her cousin—‘pluck away. Be quick—I want to get them into the pan warm.’

  Julia carried the two corpses aft of the cockpit, went below and fetched an apron and a sack, and plucked at speed; clouds of feathers floated off behind the boat over the blue waters. The Colonel looked on, much interested. In an hour both birds were plucked clean, and Julia handed them over to her cousin.

  ‘There you are—still quite warm. Want me to draw them?’

  ‘No, I’ll do that.’ Mrs. Reeder disappeared below.

  ‘Why must they be cooked warm if they can’t be hung?’ the Colonel enquired, greatly intrigued by these sidelights on the food he had always taken for granted when he ate it. To his surprise Colin answered—Julia was busy shaking the feathers and fluff, first off the sack, then from her apron, overboard.

  ‘Because rigor sets in the moment a body gets cold, and lasts for roughly seventy-two hours, in the case of chickens. So if there’s no time to hang them till the rigor is past, you must cook them before it starts. Tough, in meat or birds, is simply another word for rigor.’

  Philip Reeder cut into this dissertation sharply; he had more serious preoccupations. The Sound of Harris slants slightly north of west, and the wind had gone up a point or two into the north, and was now almost dead against them.

  ‘We shall have to beat the whole way,’ he said, ‘and this hellish small-scale chart doesn’t show half the rocks. Colin, you and Jamieson stand by to man the sheets and the jib—where’s Edina?’

  ‘Cooking the chickens,’ Julia said.

  ‘Then you go out along the bowsprit and shout if you see anything. Put up your hand, too—right if I’m to steer right, and left if I’m to steer left.’ He did not trust Miss Probyn to be very clear about Port and Starboard.

  Julia obediently went up into the bows, got astride the bowsprit, and made her way along it between the wire shrouds, somewhat encumbered by the jib-sheets; however she could soon get a foothold on the bobstay, the heavy wire which steadies the bowsprit, and continued along the narrow spar to within a few feet of its end. It was a fascinating position: as the big boat rose, plunged, and rose again over the waves she felt its every movement to the utmost, hanging poised only a few feet above the water—she loved it. But Colonel Jamieson was rather dismayed.

  ‘Couldn’t I do that?’ he asked the Skipper, watching the graceful figure perched on the long narrow piece of timber, the lion-gold hair streaming in the wind as she went up and down, up and down.

  ‘No!’ Reeder answered shortly. ‘I want you for the sheets. Julia’s all right.’

  The Sound of Harris is a difficult place to navigate at all times, even with a large-scale chart; many yachtsmen will not tackle it without a pilot. To ‘reach’ through it is not particularly easy; to beat through it, sailing diagonally on short tacks, can be rather frightening. Several times Julia, from her outlook-post, saw a great reef scarcely a hundred yards ahead bare its teeth, as the waters drew back from it with a snarl; then she shouted and stuck out a hand, Philip put the wheel hard over, Colin and Jamieson raced to the ropes, and the Mary Hathaway went about swiftly, sometimes missing the rock by a matter of yards. It was a hair-raising performance, and everyone shared the Skipper’s relief when they were safely through and out in the open Atlantic, with room to manoeuvre. Philip took the boat out a good long way, and then suggested that they should heave to and have something to eat.

  ‘A snack or a meal?’ his wife asked.

  ‘Oh, let’s have a decent meal, for pity’s sake.’

  ‘Right—we’ll eat the chickens. Ready in ten minutes.’

  The yacht was hove to, and the party sat down thankfully in the small saloon, where Edina had set out glasses and ‘Gin and It’.

  ‘That is a ghastly place,’ Reeder said. ‘I’ll never try it again without a proper chart. You did very well, Julia,’ he added.

  ‘So glad,’ Julia said, sipping her drink and smoking.

  The Colonel turned to her.

  ‘Weren’t you in the least frightened, perched out on a limb like that?’ he asked.

  ‘Only of getting my shoes wet! I love being in the bows of any boat; always have. You feel the movement more.’

  ‘Good God! Are you never seasick?’

  ‘Never in my life. I simply love that feeling when the bows go down, and your stomach falls about four inches—I sometimes go on the U
nderground to get it in the lifts.’

  ‘How appalling!’ the Colonel said.

  ‘Julia’s like those anaesthetists who get a passion for sucking in the gas themselves, where the sea is concerned,’ Reeder said. ‘She’s an addict. What about some food, Edina?’

  Colonel Jamieson was interested to taste the chickens, cooked while they were still warm. The flavour, with Edina’s herbs and onions, was excellent, but the texture of the meat was slightly gelatinous.

  ‘Yes, they’re always a big gluey,’ Edina said. ‘But not tough.’

  During the meal they became uncomfortably aware of the strong Atlantic swell, coming in from the south-west; when they started on again they found that the wind had dropped slightly, and the Mary Hathaway rolled drunkenly—however they made fair progress on their northward course, with the sheet eased. But off the mouth of West Loch Tarbert the yacht rolled more sharply; at one point she lurched hard over to windward, loosening the sheet as the boom swung across the deck; on the return roll the boom came back, and the sheet drew taut, checking the movement of the great spar abruptly—suddenly there came a loud ominous crack.

  ‘Good Lord! The boom’s gone!’ the Colonel exclaimed.

  It had indeed; it had snapped about two-thirds of its length from the mast. There ensued a time of agitated activity. Philip put the boat up into the wind, his crew hauled in the mainsheet, and then proceeded to lower the mainsail. This brought the now useless boom onto the deck, where it came to rest on the bottom of the dinghy—which was being carried upside-down on the starboard side.

  ‘That won’t do,’ Philip exclaimed. ‘She’s bending; she can’t take that weight.’

  ‘Better get the sail smothered first, hadn’t we?’ Jamieson said.

  ‘Yes. Edina, take the wheel.’

  When the boom breaks on a cutter-rigged yacht, which only has one mast, she is practically crippled; the Mary Hathaway was now so crippled, out in the open Atlantic, off a lee shore. Julia had gone below to write to Mrs. Hathaway, but the rushing tramplings on deck above her head soon brought her up. ‘Start undoing the lacing along the boom,’ Philip told her when she appeared.