The Silver Darlings (2 page)

“Hold your oar in, Ian,” he whispered and began to pull with all his strength. They had had some practice with the oars, bringing the boat up from Golspie, and Tormad soon had the bow swinging round to sea. But he kept pulling so strongly that, before Ian could get a proper start, the bow was almost in-shore again. Tormad now held water,
exasperated
that they were not making a good start before the people. When the bow went seaward, he dug in fiercely. “Keep her like that!” he cried, giving way with all his force.

On the pull of the oar, Ian’s slim body was levered off the seat and writhed like an eel. He had not Tormad’s
bull-shoulders
, but he had all Tormad’s pride and would sooner that his sinews cracked than that his tongue should cry halt. But the boat was now gathering way, and Ronnie at the tiller began to feel the kick of Tormad’s oar, the
excitement
in him making his face sallower than usual. His eyes gleamed with the knowledge that he was guiding Tormad’s wild strength and sending the boat straight on her course. “You’re doing fine,” he said quietly. The two oars
described
a high half-circle, hit the water, and dug in. “Boys, we’re making a good show.”

The exultance in Ronnie’s voice was a great
encouragement
. Not that Tormad needed any spur, for he could see Catrine standing on the beach where he had left her. His love for her came over him in half-blinding spasms. He could have cracked the oar and the boat and the world. Indeed, if the oar broke in his hands it would be with
relief
. His mind was mazed with exultation and sorrow, but singing underneath was the song of what he would yet do for her, and knew he would do for her, if God spared him.

That wildness in the house—it was her own wildness, her own mad wildness, to protect him and herself and him to come. He could see her still standing all alone.
Extraordinary how out of a man’s greatest strength could mount a softness near to tears.

“Careful, Tormad, or you’ll burst your thole pin,” said Ronnie. “Careful, boy.”

“Not yet,” said Tormad. “Keep her going, Ian.”

“I’ll keep her going till I burst,” said Ian.

The shore receded from them, and soon the folk were moving up the beach, and Tormad lost sight of Catrine. The folk were like small animals, like little dark calves. After a while, Ronnie called a halt. “It’s our turn now.”

They changed places in the boat so warily that she scarcely rocked. Tormad wiped the sweat from his eyes and Ian leaned forward, drawing his shoulders from his sticky vest. Not until that moment did they fully realize that they were by themselves, cut off, on the breast of the ocean.

They had never before been so far from land, and the slow movement of the sea became a living motion under them. It brimmed up against the boat and choked its own mouth, then moved away; and came again and moved away, without end, slow, heedless, and terrible, its power
restrained
, like the power in some great invisible bull. Fear, feather light, kept them wary, like the expectancy of a blow in a dark place.

“There’s no hurry, boys,” said Tormad quietly. “I’ll be keeping my eyes open now for the signs.”

The old Golspie man, who had been white-fishing half a century before herring-fishing started at Helmsdale, had given Tormad certain land-marks by which he might direct himself to the best grounds. Tormad had tried to memorize these marks as well as he could, but, inclined to be
over-sanguine
and the whole business of buying the boat
exciting
him, he had not grasped fully the need for the double bearing to give him his angle. Not that he showed any indecision now. “There’s Brora yonder,” he said. “And that point away far off is Tarbat Ness. Now on this side—will you look?—that’s Berriedale Head. You wouldn’t think it’s six miles off! We have to go three miles out and I
shouldn’t think we’re far off that now. Pull away gently for a little yet, boys, and then we’ll try it.” No-one spoke, and after they had pulled out, for what seemed a long time, over a sea that must be getting deeper and deeper, Tormad stopped them. “We’ll try her at that,” he said. Then he gazed around him with what was meant to be a seaman’s eye.

They all gazed around, but what they saw was the land, and with a little cry of surprise Torquil pointed to the ridge of a hill going far inland, over the valley of Kildonan. They knew it like the back of a hand, and their minds filled with pictures, with memories of boyhood and familiar scenes This was the time of year when they would be away from home at the summer shielings with the cattle, the happiest time in all the year, living in turf bothies, with the young girls there and many of the old. “Hand me up that line, Ian,” said Tormad, who had the limpets at his feet.

From the basket he took four limpets and gouged out their flesh with his thumb. The tackle consisted of a short cross-spar of slim hazel with the line tied to the middle of it and a hook on a short horse-hair snood dangling from each end. To the end of the line, which hung a foot or more below the middle of the spar, was tied a heavy sinker. Upon each hook Tormad fixed two limpets, the hard, leathery surfaces to the inside. “That’s the way it’s done,” he explained, and dropped hooks and sinker overboard. They had half a dozen herring with them which might have been better bait, but the Golspie man had been used to mussels and limpets, and Tormad had taken a fancy to the limpets.

As yard after yard of line was unwound from the
fork-shaped
hazel stick, they had a new way of realizing the sea’s depth. “It’s got no bottom to it, I do believe,” said Tormad humorously. Still the line went out; and out. “It’s not feeling so heavy, I think,” said Tormad, as if listening through his fingers. Clearly he was in doubt. He looked at the amount still wound on the stick, and let out more, and
then more. Down went the line, coil after coil, and they were beginning to believe that maybe the sea had, in fact, no bottom, when suddenly the pull ceased and the line went slack. “I’ve got it!” cried Tormad, heaving a breath. They were all relieved, and Tormad went on cheerfully to demonstrate how one must lift the sinker a yard or more off the bottom and then work the line up and down, waiting all the time for the feel of the bite.

They watched him until his mouth fell open. “I think I’ve got something.” He gulped, then pulled—but the line refused to come. It came a little way and then pulled back. “It feels like a whale,” he said, his eyes round, his head cocked. “O God, it’s something heavy indeed!” Excitement got hold of them all strongly. What if it
was
a whale?

The forked stick was very nearly jerked out of Tormad’s hands. He had to let out more line quickly. Then a little more. Leviathan was moving away from under them!

Their hearts went across them. The boat rose on the heave of the sea. Now that they were clear of the land, a gentle wind darkened the surface of the waters. A small ripple suddenly slapped the clinched planking like a hand slapping a face. The sound startled them. Ronnie looked at the sea. “We’re drifting,” he said. “The oars, boys—quick!” cried Tormad. “Quick, or all the line will be out!” Ronnie and Ian each shoved an oar out, and Ronnie pulled the bow round so smartly towards the wind that Tormad, on his feet, lurched and fell sideways, clutching at the line, which all at once went slack in his hands. On his knees he began hauling in rapidly. The line came to a clean end. Sinker and hooks and cross-spar were gone.

Tormad stared at the frayed end against his palm. No one spoke. Tormad stared at the sea. It came under the boat in a slow heave and passed on.

“When one place is no good, you try another,” he said quietly. “Let us go farther out.”

Ian and Ronnie swung the oars. Torquil was looking a
bit grey. He had been underfed for a long time, but the blue of his eyes held an intolerant green.

“I wonder were you stuck in the bottom?” Ronnie asked.

“Himself knows,” said Tormad.

When they stopped, they did not know quite what to do, for they were frightened now to use the second line. There was no sign of gulls about to signify herring. Nothing but this heaving immensity, treacherous and deep as death. That time he had fallen, Tormad remembered the joke against him in Helmsdale: “Between her two skins of tar, she’s rotten.” The old Golspie man was supposed to have fooled them—to his humorous credit, because a boat is there to be examined before it is bought. But Tormad had been shy of asking a Helmsdale man to go with him, not merely because of the long distance in the short busy season but also because he could hardly appear as a real fisherman with only the one old net. So the idea he had put about was that they were going to try for white-fish with the hand-line—to begin with, anyway. Accordingly and naturally they had come to sea before the other boats, which would not put out from the harbour for two or three hours yet, as nets were never shot until the evening. There was also the
instinctive
desire to keep to themselves until they knew enough not to be laughed at, for the folk from the glens were sensitive and had their own hidden pride.

And now the first hand-line was gone.

“We’re drifting,” said Tormad, who had been staring at the land. Then he noticed Torquil on his knees in the bow, his back to them, his head down.

“What’s wrong with you, Torquil?”

“Nothing!” snapped Torquil.

Ronnie looked over his shoulder, “Feeling sick?” he asked gently.

Torquil’s body gave a convulsive spasm. He retched, but there was nothing in his stomach. “What’s this?” asked Ian, who was next to him, putting his hand on his shoulder.

“Shut up!” said Torquil. He had tied a single hook to
the end of the broken line, and a foot or so above the hook had knotted the line about one of the slim stones that were to be used for sinking the net. “Give me the bait!”

His fingers shook as he handled the hook, and the smell and look of the pulpy yellow bait made him retch again. But he baited the hook as Tormad had done and dropped it over the side.

They watched him, fascinated, until Ronnie noticed the increasing slant on the line and put out his oar. Already experience was teaching them that they must “hold up” a boat against the wind-drift. Ian and Ronnie pulled gently as if to make no noise, for they now had a premonition that something strange was going to happen.

As Torquil worked the line up and down they waited. It was the odd thing always that did happen! Then Torquil’s grey face quickened and his eyes flashed. Swiftly he began hauling in the line. In his haste, his hands and arms got meshed in the coils. The rowers forgot their oars.
Tormad’s
lips came apart.

When Torquil stopped hauling, as if something had hit him, they craned over the edge of the boat and saw a great grey back that frightened them. “Stand away!” screamed Torquil, and catching the line low down he heaved. The hook and line parted company as a huge cod fell thrashing on the bottom boards. Tormad lunged at it as if it were a dangerous beast and tried to throttle it. Finally, he lifted it in his arms and bashed its head against the edge of Ronnie’s seat. From the stretched-out, dead, but still quivering fish, they lifted their eyes and looked at one another.

“Torquil, my hero,” said Tormad softly. He began laughing huskily. They all began to laugh. They swayed and hit one another great friendly thumps.

“We’ll do it yet, boys!” said Ronnie.

They would do it. They would do it, by the sign beneath them. The great slippery belly of the sign made them rock with laughter.

But Torquil had now discovered his hook was gone.
When they found it inside the cod’s mouth they could hardly retrieve it for the weakness that mirth had put in their fingers.

But now Tormad was busy with the second line. When, after a shout and much fierce hauling, he produced a single little whiting, he could do no more than nod at the dangling fish with helpless good humour.

They got going in earnest. Whether they caught
anything
in the net or not, here was enough success already to justify a first venture. And presently when a good-sized haddock appeared, and shortly after that a flat fish with beautiful red spots, and then—of all things—a crab, the excitement in that fourteen-foot boat rose very high. But Ronnie failed to land the crab. Just as he was swinging it into the boat, it let go its hold of the bait, fell on the flat of its back on the narrow gunnel, balanced for an instant and tumbled back into the sea. Tormad dived to the shoulder after it, badly rocking the boat, but fortunately for him did no more than touch one of the great claws as it sank beyond reach. Then he caught his oar just as it was slipping from between the pins. What next? They were all laughing and Torquil’s sickness seemed completely cured. Their eyes were bright and very quick. They cautioned one another not to take liberties with the boat, but
whenever
two hands began hauling rapidly, four heads tried to see what was coming up. Each passed a line on after a short spell of fishing. Tormad had a dramatic moment when he struck what he felt was a heavy fish. He swore by Donan’s Seat that it was a monster, the biggest yet. His hooks came up as they had gone down, the baits whole. “I don’t care what you say,” declared Tormad, “that fish was three bushels if he was an ounce.” “Do you think perhaps it may have been the bottom?” asked Ian. “No, nor your own bottom,” said Tormad shortly. “Bottom indeed! Didn’t I feel the jag-jag of his mouth to each side? Man, do you think I don’t know the difference between the
bottom
and a fish’s mouth?” “No, it’s not the bottom,” said
Ronnie. “How do you know?” asked Ian. “Because,” said Ronnie, “the bottom here is hard and clean. I let my sinker lie for a little while on it. That’s how I got the crab. Pull just a little more strongly—just a very little. We don’t want to drift off this spot.”

By the time they saw the boats coming out from the
harbour
mouth they didn’t mind who would inspect their catch. It was a fine evening, with the wind, from the land, inclined to fall. They watched the small fleet with an
increase
of excitement and a certain self-consciousness,
expecting
them to pass close by and in a friendly way call a few sarcastic greetings. “We’ll just answer, off-hand, ‘Oh, about a cran or two.’ Like that,” said Tormad. “Leave it to me.”