C Fletcher - A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

Through the sound between Coll and Tiree, everything changed. The sky darkened and the wind, which had been constant at my back, now shifted and became difficult. As if he too sensed that some invisible boundary had been crossed, Jip finally dropped his head and curled up on the bench next to me. He didn’t close his eyes, just rested his head on his paws, sighed and then stared fatalistically into the blank wall of the cockpit in front of him. His look was a little dispiriting, but the companionable warmth against my leg was welcome.

The Sweethope had been cutting smoothly through the powerful heave of the regular Atlantic swell, but passing within the protection of the barrier islands, the boat’s motion changed and began to toil as the water around us changed to a queasy wind-blown chop. Visibility had been good for most of the day, but now it was as if several squalls of rain had been pinballing back and forth on the other side of the islands, waiting for our arrival. Within five minutes, one blew across the gap between us and the red sails in the distance, and then we were lashed with a short but vicious hail of rain that hit so quickly it seemed to have materialised out of thin air. There was so little warning that I barely had time to get my oilskin coat on over my sheepskin. Jip dropped off the bench and slid and skittered his way into the better shelter of the cockpit where he lay nose to tail on a slab of fishnet, positioning himself so that his eyes remained fixed on me through the narrow hatch.

On the other side of the squall, the visibility cleared enough for me to see that the red sails had been swallowed by a larger bank of rain ahead of us. I pushed back the dripping hood of the oilskin and stared into the weather, for the first time in the long day unable to see what we were chasing. I knew it had to be there—I had been unsighted for a short amount of time but not nearly long enough for Brand to have got away—so its absence unsettled me.

Looking back on it, I can’t really believe how stupid anger had made me. Other than arguments with my family, which were as natural to us as water is to the fish that swim in it, I had no experience with a serious confrontation with a stranger who wished me ill. Bringing the gun meant I had some unconscious awareness that there was danger ahead, but the bow and arrows always went where I did, much as you would have carried a telephone wherever you went in your more crowded world. It’s quicker to shoot a rabbit than it is to lay a snare for it if you’re caught foodless away from home, and shooting for the pot was second nature to all of us both on and off the island.

Not having the red sails in sight was alarming, but also jolted me out of my one-track mind. I had to think of other possible tracks that my future might be about to go down. Although the last glimpse I had had of Brand had been that infuriating smile, I had to think that he might hurt me. But I didn’t think he would. If he had been that kind of monster, the kind I had read so many stories about, he would just as easily have killed us in our sleep and pillaged our home at his leisure. But he had just stolen from us and tried to slink away before we woke. So a thief. But not a killer. But a thief when confronted might turn violent.

Setting out on a chase without a good plan is a very stupid thing to do, as it turns out. Almost as stupid as thinking you’re clever. If I had been clever, I would have either turned back for home, or sailed after him until we were close enough to talk. And then shot him. I was not someone to give up easily. But I was not a killer.

I’m still not one of those things.

My clever plan was to fight fire with fire. I had no confidence in being able to talk him out of his thievery. And I would not be able to best him if it came to violence. So fire with fire meant stealing from the thief. Which meant stealth and cleverness. I knew I had one: I thought I had the other. And ideally it meant not being seen. Which is not an easy thing on the open sea. But as I looked around me, I realised that we were no longer on the ocean, but within the inner islands. The sun was dropping behind me, and would be directly in Brand’s eyes. Better still, the dark loom of Coll and Tiree were also at my back as the sun set behind the low hills. I would be hard to see. And having seen the last fingernail sliver of waning moon over the familiar crags above my home yesterday, I knew the coming night would be moonless and dark.

Looking ahead, I could make out the long hummock of the next island and the mainland beyond stretching away on either side of the squall in which I knew Brand was hidden. Seeing both ends of the island, I was confident that I could see if he went to the right or left of the land, and this knowledge made me try something I thought at the time was the cleverest thing.

I took down my sails and threw out the drift anchor. Now, as the cone of material filled with water and the line went tight behind me, I could keep the boat stable against tide and wind, and hopefully pause and watch, camouflaged by the dropping sun and the land astern. Brand would think I’d lost him, or maybe been too scared to follow him between the two islands.

My plan, clever as it was, was based on the fact that no one would sail at night, especially where we now were. I knew Brand was a liar and a thief, but I also knew he was not a fool. These inner waters were rock-strewn and skerry-toothed, and sailing in the dark would turn into drowning in the dark before you knew it.

The Sweethope lay low in the water, and even though my bare mast stuck high into the air above me, I found I was crouching down with a knee on the companionway, as if that would help me hide. Jip saw something was up and got up off the bed he’d made on the nets to come and stand next to me.

I kept the rudder hard against my thigh, feeling the way it pushed against the twin forces of wind and tide, keeping us steady. And then, as the sun dipped and the world instantly seemed to get colder, the squall worried off to the right and the visibility cleared enough to reveal Brand’s sails moving round a headland I had not seen against the larger mass of the island behind it. I thought, in my cleverness, that he was running to lay up in a hidden bay for the night, maybe even trying to hide from me as he did so. I stood up. Jip whimpered. I put a hand on his head and asked him to be quiet. Sound can travel far over the water.

I was excited. What was happening was of course just an accident of timing, but in my cleverness, in my hubris, I thought he was falling into a trap I had set him. You probably already know what hubris means. I had to look it up in a dictionary the first time I came across it in a book. But if you don’t, it means getting such a big head that you miss the bad thing creeping up behind you.

I was so excited that the moment the red sails disappeared I hauled mine back up and forgot the sea anchor and nearly got knocked off the boat as the scurry of evening wind that always comes in the moment after the sun goes down hit the sail and caught me unprepared. The boat tilted and the boom swung and smacked so many stars into my head that I thought my skull had been cracked.

I swore and Jip did bark and I let him as I struggled back to my feet and got busy sorting out the mess I’d made of the boat. Three minutes later the dog was quiet, the sea anchor was aboard and I was underway, heading for the small island ahead.

I made it across the water before it became too dangerous in the dark, but in truth it was not a great spot to drop an anchor. It was on the weather side of the land, and there were skerries all around, hungry reefs waiting to snag the boat and take the bottom out of it. In the end I decided to drop two anchors to hold the boat a little further out than I might have done if the light had been better. I decided I would unstrap the kayak and paddle across. I would leave Jip, which he would not like, but the stealthiness I was anticipating was not one that would be helped if he were to bark.