Алистер Маклин - The Lonely Sea

I was only halfway there when I heard Eachan shouting, his voice high and excited.

‘There, Torry, look there! Just off the port bow. Somebody in the water – no, by God, two of them!’

When the Dileas heaved over the next crest, I looked along the beam of the Aldis. Eachan was right. There, sure enough, were two dark forms struggling in the water.

In three quick jumps I was back at the doghouse, pointing. Old Grant just nodded, and started edging the Dileas across. What a skill he had with him, that old one! Bring the bows too far round and we’d broach to and be gone in a second in yon great gullies between the waves. But old Seumas made never a mistake.

And then a miracle happened. Just that, Mr MacLean – a miracle. It was the Sea of Galilee all over again. Mind you, the waves were as terrible as ever, but just for a moment the wind dropped away to a deathly hush – and suddenly, off to starboard, a thin, high-pitched wail came keening out of the darkness.

In a flash, Torry had whipped his Aldis round, and the beam, plunging up and down, settled on a spot less than a hundred yards away – almost dead ahead. At first I thought it was just some wreckage, then I could see it was a couple of timber baulks and planks tied together. And lying on top of this makeshift raft – no, by God, lashed to it! – were a couple of children. We caught only flying glimpses of them: up one minute, down the next, playthings of the devil in yon madness of a sea. The poor wee souls. Oh Dhia! The poor wee souls.

‘Mr Grant!’ I roared in old Seumas’s ear. ‘There’s a raft dead ahead – two wee children on it.’

The old eyes were quiet as ever. He just stared straight ahead: his face was like a stone.

‘I canna be picking up both,’ he said, his voice level and never a touch of feeling in it, damn his flinty heart. ‘To come round in this would finish us – I’ll have to quarter for the shelter of Seal Point to turn. Can the children be hanging on a while longer, do you think, Calum?’

‘The children are near gone,’ I said flatly. ‘And they’re not hanging on – they’re lashed on.’

He looked quickly at me, his eyes narrowing.

‘Lashed, did you say, Calum?’ he asked softly. ‘Lashed?’

I nodded without speaking. And then a strange thing happened, Mr MacLean, a strange thing indeed. Yon craggy old face of his broke into a smile – I can see yet the gleam of his teeth and the little rivers of blood running down his face – and he nodded several times as if in satisfaction and understanding…And he gave the wheel a wee bit spin to starboard.

The little raft was drifting down fast on us, and we had only the one chance of picking them up. But with old Seumas at the wheel that was enough, and Torry Mor, with one sweep of his great arm, had the children, raft and all, safely aboard.

We took them below and old Grant worked his way up to Seal Point. Then we came tearing down the Sound, steady as a rock – for in a heavy stern sea there’s no boat on earth the equal of a Loch-Fyner – but never a trace of the two men did we see. A mile out from harbour old Seumas handed over to Torry Mor and came below to see the children.

They were sitting up on a bunk before the stove, wrapped in blankets – a lad of nine and a fair-haired wee lass of six. Pale, pale they were, and frightened and exhausted, but a good night’s sleep would put them right.

Quietly I told old Grant what I’d learned. They’d been playing in a wee skiff, under the sheltered walls of the Buidhe harbour, when the boy had gone too near the entrance and the wind had plucked them out to the open Sound. But they had been seen, and the two men had come after them in the ferryboat: and then, they couldn’t turn back. The rest they couldn’t remember: the poor wee souls they’d been scared to death.

I was just finishing when Eachan came below.

‘The wind’s backing, Seumas, and the sea with it. Perhaps there’s a chance for yon two – if they’re swimmers at all – of being carried ashore. ’

Old Seumas looked up. His face was tired, lined and – all of a sudden – old.

‘There’s no chance, Eachan, no chance at all.’

‘How can you be so sure, man?’ Eachan argued. ‘You never know.’

‘I know, Eachan.’ The old man’s voice was a murmur, a million miles away. ‘I know indeed. What was good enough for their old father was good enough for Donal’ and Lachie. I never learned to swim – and neither did they.’

We were shocked into silence, I tell you. We looked at him stupidly, unbelievingly, then in horror.

‘You mean –’ I couldn’t get the words out.

‘It was Lachie and Donal’ all right. I saw them.’ Old Grant gazed sightlessly into the fire. ‘They must have come back early from Scavaig.’

A whole minute passed before Eachan spoke, his voice wondering, halting.

‘But Seumas, Seumas! Your own two boys. How could you –’

For the first and only time old Grant’s self-control snapped. He cut in, his voice low and fierce, his eyes masked with pain and tears.

‘And what would you have had me do, Eachan? Pick them up and let these wee souls go?’

He went on, more slowly now.

‘Can’t you see, Eachan? They’d used the only bits of wood in yon old ferryboat to make a wee raft for the children. They knew what they were doing – and they knew, by doing it, that there was no hope for themselves. They did it deliberately, man. And if I hadn’t picked the wee craturs up, it – it –’

His voice trailed off into silence, then we heard it again, the faintest shadow of a whisper.

‘My two boys, Lachie and Donal’ – oh, Eachan, Eachan, I couldna be letting them down.’

Old Grant straightened, reached out for a bit of waste, and wiped the blood from his face – and, I’m thinking, the tears from his eyes. Then he picked up the wee girl, all wrapped in her blankets, set her on his knee and smiled down gently.

‘Well, now, mo ghaol, and how would you be fancying a wee drop hot cocoa?’

If ever a man had a right to be happy, you would have thought it was George. In the eyes of any reasonable man, especially a parched and dusty city-dweller, George, at that very moment, was already halfway to Paradise.

Above, the hot afternoon sun beat down from a cloudless summer sky; on either side the golden stubble fields of the south slid lazily by; beneath his feet pulsed the sleek length of a 25-foot cabin cruiser; and immediately ahead stretched the lovely and unruffled reaches of the Lower Dipworth canal – not to mention the prospect of an entire month’s vacation. Halfway to Paradise? The man was there already.

Dr George Rickaby, BSc, MSc, DS, AMIEE, considered himself the most unfortunate of mortals. How grossly deceived the world would be, he thought bitterly, if it judged by what it saw. What if he had sufficient money to indulge his taste for inland cruising and plenty of time to enjoy it? What if he had for his crew his devoted and industrious ex-batman whose sole aim in life was to prevent George from overexerting himself? What if he was spoken of as a coming man in nuclear fission? What, even, if the Minister of Supply had been known to clap his shoulder and call him George?

Dust and ashes, mused George disconsolately, easing the cruiser round a wooded corner of the canal, just dust and ashes. But he supposed he shouldn’t judge the foolish imaginings of an ignorant world too harshly. He mournfully regarded the spotless deck of white pine. After all, in the days of his youth, he had been criminally guilty of the same thing himself. Why, only three months ago –

‘Look out! You’re going to hit me!’