Alistair MacLean - The Lonely Sea

Collected Short Stories

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This eBook edition 2009

First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1985

then in paperback by Fontana 1986

Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers 1985

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2021

Cover photograph © Stephen Mulcahey.

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

City of Benares, The Arandora Star, Rawalpindi, The Meknes, The Jervis Bay and Lancastria published by the Sunday Express 1960.

Rewards and Responsibilities of Success, The Black Storm and The Good Samaritan published by the Glasgow Herald 1982, 1995 and 1996.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006172772

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007289332

Version: 2020-10-22

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Cover

Title Page Alistair Maclean The Lonely Sea Collected Short Stories

Copyright

Note to Readers

The Dileas

St George and the Dragon

The Arandora Star

Rawalpindi

The Sinking of the Bismarck

The Meknes

MacHinery and the Cauliflowers

Lancastria

McCrimmon and the Blue Moonstones

They Sweep the Seas

City of Benares

The Gold Watch

Rendezvous

The Jervis Bay

The Black Storm

The Good Samaritan

Postscript: Rewards and Responsibilities of Success

About the Author

By Alistair MacLean

About the Publisher

Three hours gone, Mr MacLean, three hours—and never a word of the lifeboat.

You can imagine just how it was. There were only the four of us there—Eachan, Torry Mor, old Grant, and myself. Talk? Never a word among the lot of us, nor even the heart of a dram—and there on the table, was a new bottle of Talisker, and Eachan not looking for a penny.

We just sat there like a lot of stookies, Seumas Grant with his expressionless face and yon wicked old pipe of his bubbling away, and the rest of us desperately busy with studying the pattern of the wallpaper. Listening to the screech of the wind, we were, and the hail like chuckies battering against the windows of the hotel. Dhia! What a night that was! And the worst of it was, we couldn’t do a thing but wait. My, but we were a right cheery crowd.

I think we all gave a wee bit jump when the telephone rang. Eachan hurried away and was back in a moment beaming all over. One look at yon great moonface of his and we felt as if the Pladda Lighthouse had been lifted off our backs.

‘Four glasses, gentlemen, and see’s over the Talisker. That was the lightkeeper at Creag Dearg. The Molly Ann got there in time—just. The puffer’s gone, but all the crew were taken off.’

He pushed the glasses over and looked straight at old Grant.

‘Well, Seumas, what have you to say now? The Molly Ann got there—and Donald Archie and Lachlan away over by Scavaig. Perhaps you would be saying it’s a miracle, eh, Seumas?’

There was no love lost between these two, I can tell you. Mind you, most of us were on Eachan’s side. He was a hard man, was old Seumas Grant. Well respected, right enough, but no one had any affection for him and, by Jove, he had none for us—none for anyone at all, except for Lachlan and Donald, his sons. For old Seumas, the sun rose to shine on them alone. His motherless sons: for them the croft, for them the boat, for them his every waking thought. But a hard man, Mr Maclean. Aloof and—what’s the word?—remote. Kept himself to himself, you might say.

‘It’s a miracle when anyone is saved on a night like this, Eachan.’ Old Grant’s voice was slow and deep.

‘But without Donald and Lachlan?’ Eachan pressed. Torry, I remember shifted in his seat, and I looked away. We didn’t care for this too much—it wasn’t right.

‘Big Neil’s weel enough in his own way,’ Grant said, kind of quiet. ‘But he’ll never be the lifeboat coxswain Lachie is—he hasn’t got the feel of the sea—’

Just then the hotel door crashed open, nearly lifted off its hinges by the wind. Peter the Post came stumbling in, heaved the door shut and stood there glistening in his oilskins. It only required one look at him to see that something was far wrong.

‘The lifeboat, Eachan, the Molly Ann !’ he jerked out, very quick and urgent. ‘Any word of her yet? Hurry, man, hurry!’

Eachan looked at him in surprise.

‘Why surely, Peter. We’ve just heard. She’s lying off Creag Dearg and…’

‘Creag Dearg! Oh Dhia, Dhia, Dhia!’ Peter the Post sunk down into a chair and gazed dully into the fire. ‘Twenty miles away—twenty miles. And here’s Iain Chisholm just in from Tarbert farm—three miles in four minutes on yon big Velocette of his—to say that the Buidhe ferry is out in the middle of the Sound, firing distress rockets. And the Molly Ann at Creag Dearg. Mo chreach, mo chreach!’ He shook his head slowly from side to side.

‘The ferry!’ I said stupidly. ‘The ferry! Big John must be smashed mad to take her out on a night like this!’