Little Grey Ships/Humanity
HUMANITY
In the Atlantic, within sight of the Outer Hebrides, are scattered islets not marked on ordinary maps nor mentioned in school geographies. You will, of course, find them on the proper chart; now and then a mariner may name one or two of them—perhaps with a curse; and fishermen of Lewis, Harris, Uist, Barra might have a tale to tell. But these islets lack the human interest of St. Kilda, the utility of the Flannan Group, with its lighthouse, the sensation of white, remote Rockall, where the codfish abound and many a great whale has given up the ghost under the bolt of the Norwegian harpoon gun, where, also, not so long ago, a Scandinavian liner came to bitter grief. The islets lie solitary, in pairs, in clusters. Some are barren rocks, or mere reefs; others support grass and wild flowers, but never a human habitation and rarely a human tread.
Now there is a pair called Gasgeir Mor and Gasgeir Beg—that is, the Gasgeirs big and little. The latter is low, bare but for seaweed, altogether unlovely, a haunt of the grey seal. Lying off it on a calm day, peering into the wondrous clear depths, you will surely shudder to meet the emerald glares of the swarming inquisitive dog-fish. Near to its slippery margin you may come upon round flat corks marking the positions of traps sunk by a venturesome lobster-fisher from Harris.
By contrast, at least, Gasgeir Mor is beautiful. Its coastline of a mile or so forbids at every turn, but above its rifts and buttresses abounds grass of a richness that makes the sheep placed there for a season the “best fed” in the Hebrides. At midsummer the scabia casts a lovely azure flush athwart the whole of the verdure. About the centre of the islet lies a large brown pool of rainwater. To walk there alone for the first time is trying to ordinary nerves. The woeful bleat of retreating half-wild sheep is almost drowned in the menacing yells and raucous mocking laughter of innumerable huge gulls that wheel about you in clouds, and follow you wheresoever you turn. Lie down, however, and presently you will find peace from their clamour of threats and abuse, though they, too, will settle down on the rocks around you, to regard you in suspicious silence, occasionally broken by a sneering squawk. Then you begin to hear the endless sigh and sob and gurgle of the swell about your prison, and no matter how bravely the sun may shine, a new melancholy will enter your soul.
But not on many days of the year is a landing on Gasgeir Mor a possible adventure. The swell is never so light that the stoutest little craft may kiss those ramparts with impunity. The water, indeed, is deep enough, as you best realize when about to re-embark—clinging above it, chin to rock, fingers and toes in harsh or slimy crannies, while the boatmen, waiting the favourable instant to slip in under you, call advice and encouragement. A fathom or so beneath your feet the swell heaves and sucks, and you wonder whither it would take you once it got you.... At last the men you cannot see bid you gently yet curtly “let go.” Three to one that you hesitate for what seems an age, and that having upset their calculations, you slither through their arms to land heavily among the lobsters or, perchance, on top of a seal shot at Gasgeir Beg while you were exploring Gasgeir Mor. Well, nerves or no nerves, the Atlantic sees to it that no man finds this islet familiar to his foot.
Old MacLeod would have told you as much, and he had made the landing oftener than any man alive. Boyish curiosity had inspired the earliest adventure. Age's exigencies—let us so believe—compelled the present. He lay on the turf bordering the highest part of the islet, gazing northwards. His hand outstretched would have hung over space. A lad, also named MacLeod, a distant kinsman, lay beside him; a sturdy youth, but lame—else he had not been there then. He had helped the old man with the boat since the beginning of the war. He had not been on Gasgeir before, and he did not appear to be enjoying the experience. He would have told you frankly, for he was no coward, that he was afraid ... of the old man. The old man—who had grown very old quite suddenly three months ago—was mild and gentle to look at, but the ceaseless, silent moving of his bearded lips was uncanny to see. Thus he had talked for close upon two hours, which is to say from the moment of landing.
They had left their home in the Harris loch at dawn. For the first time in the lad's knowledge the master had brought his seal gun, a short, weighty weapon built entirely of steel, the burnished barb of its harpoon protruding, the strong, thin line attached thereto coiled carefully within the tube running under the barrel. A gift from a Norwegian, it had not been fired by MacLeod for many years. But it was evidently in first-rate order.
Half-way to the Gasgeirs, the wind failed and they took to the oars. It was heavy work, and by the time they reached the lobster traps MacLeod was complaining of exhaustion, and a homing breeze was not to be hoped for.
“It is fine weather.” he said suddenly. “The creels can wait till the morning. We have food. We will sleep on Gasgeir Mor. I can pull no more to-night.”
It was not for the lad to demur. Besides, he was keen to land on Gasgeir Mor, and had visions of persuading the old man, after he had rested, to promise him a shot with the strange gun on the morrow.
So with skill won of long experience old MacLeod took the boat to the one likely landing place, and there moored her in such wise as to minimize the risks of bumping and scraping during the approaching night. Happily every natural sign pointed to a continuance of calm weather.
It was intensely still now, in this the first hour after sunset. The unruffled swell was no more than a drowsy motion. Less than a mile away, a cluster of submerged skerries heaved, as it seemed, black backs fringed with foam from the glassy hollows. For long the lad watched them come and go, thinking of huge whales, fancying he heard the gasps of their emersions, the hisses of their subsidence, thinking, also, of shipwrecks and drowning men. Then his gaze lifted beyond them and sought to separate the distant Seven Hunters (Flannen Isles), while he remembered the mystery of the three light-keepers there whose disappearance has not been explained to this day. Later he turned on his side and be held, full forty miles to the sou'-westward, St. Kilda with her more desolate sisters, Boreray and Soay, all merged in a single shape, tiny yet clear cut in the afterglow. Above it hung a canopy of purple cloud hemmed with bronze—the only cloud in that majestic dome of sky. But now the lad regarded all those sights less from interest in them than from desire to avoid the sight of his companion's lips.
Yet, inevitably, his eyes were drawn again to the mild, weary, tanned countenance. The lips were still busy. The lad was no lip reader, yet he guessed what those lips were saying. They were re-telling the story, with prayers and curses, of how a good son Ronald, dearly beloved, mate of a trawler, had been murdered, rent asunder, by a shell fired from a submarine.... And while the kindly lips moved, the weather-seared fingers stroked and patted the seal gun at his side.
With a fresh effort the lad withdrew his gaze, and as he shifted his position the old man touched his arm and spoke at last.
“Listen, Lachlan, my lad, listen to me; for I will be telling you the dream I have dreamed on seven Sabbath nights running—the dream that will be coming true before we are a night older. And it is surely the second sight I have, though I was not knowing it till the great grief came upon me.”
For a little while he paused, then proceeded softly yet coldly and very slowly, using now and then a modern English word for which there was no satisfying equivalent in the Gaelic....
At the end of half an hour the lad was shuddering. Perhaps the white sea-fog which had gathered during the recital had affected him in conjunction with the old man's dream. The fog rose no higher than the islet. Overhead the pale sky was but slightly hazy. Twilight lingered. There would be no real darkness that night.
So fascinated, or terrified, was he by the old man's talk that minutes passed after its ending before the lad ventured to call attention to a sound which had been coming from the fog with growing distinctness during the latter part of the story. Now he spoke, steadying his voice, as one anxious to change the subject.
“There is a steamer out yonder, where no steamer with a knowing skipper should be. She is going slow, but she is coming”
“It is the dream coming true,” said old MacLeod in matter-of-fact tones. “Now I will give my thanks to Almighty God.” Rising to his knees, he clasped the barrel of the upright gun between his hands, raised closed eyes to Heaven, and began fervently to pray.
The lad clapped his hands over his ears and buried his face in the grass and scabia.
Unfaltering the soft voice, warm with feeling, went up, telling the Almighty the simple history of a poor fisherman, his wife, their children, notably their first-born, Ronald, dearly beloved; confessing per sonal sins more or less lovable, easily pardonable, even by man; pouring out the agony of a sudden, heartrending loss; finally, offering humble gratitude for the wondrous, goodly gifts of dreams and second-sight.... Ere the voice fell mute a faint breath was dispersing the sea-fog.
The lad, his ears still covered, lifted his face and peered through the rifting veil across the waters northward. Dimly, at first, he beheld that which the old man had so lately foretold.
A vessel that had been a submarine was approaching the Gasgeirs. Still a mile away, she came on very slowly, appearing to be scarcely under control. She yawed and wallowed like a creature with a mortal wound. Her deck was a wreck, her periscope gone, her hull battered and rent just above the water-line. Her conning-tower seemed to have escaped serious damage. But she would never again dive—save to her grave. And she was not so far from that, for the skerries, now wholly submerged, lay between her and her only possible haven, Gasgeir Mor. The man whose head appeared above the conning-tower ought to have read danger in the glossy swirls ahead, but he may not have had all his wits; his head was bandaged.
MacLeod's prayer came to an end; he opened his wet eyes. In the same moment the lad rose, his arms out ready to wave a warning. Probably he would have been too late, even were his first signals observed. However, they were never made. His wrist was clutched and he was wrenched back to the turf.
“Oh, oh,” he sobbed, “they will all be drowned.”
“Not all, Lachlan, not all,” answered the soft voice, cold once more.
The hapless craft came on, her motors making extraordinary noises, as though working in an agony. Through the clearing atmosphere she was seen to be getting lower in the water. Yet she might float to reach Gasgeir Mor, if only those sunken skerries...
She struck!—soundlessly as far as the two watchers could have told. Her bow ran clean out of the water. For a moment she wobbled, then slid backwards, rolled heavily, recovered, and began to settle down.
Two human figures appeared to fall over the edge of the conning-tower. A third was literally blown forth to a sickening, bursting sound; he spread-eagled through the air for an appreciable period, took the water flat, and in a burst of spray disappeared. And once more the vessel that had been a submarine cocked her bow and, stern first, dived for the last time.
“The boat!” screamed the lad, pointing at the two swimmers. “We must get the boat”
“Peace, Lachlan, peace.”
The lad collapsed. Minutes passed ere he recovered.
“MacLeod, MacLeod,” he said, “they will both drown.”
“Not both, Lachlan, not both.”
In a little while there was only one swimmer. He came on bravely, yet it seemed to the helpless Lachlan that he could never reach Gasgeir.... Yet he reached it with what appeared a last despairing stroke.
As his hand found a hold on the nearly sheer rock, almost directly beneath the prone watchers, the old man rose steadily to his feet and stepped to the very verge.
“A life for a life,” he said in his best English; “a clean harpoon for a dirty shell!” His effort in fine words was wasted.
The dazed, ghastly face twenty feet below turned upwards and positively grinned with hope. A single word came up. With its foreign accent it sounded like ”Help!”
MacLeod, his face bleak and grey, put the ugly gun to his shoulder and pointed it downwards. His weather-bitten finger crooked on the trigger. He took deliberate aim.
With a strangled cry the lad leapt upon him from behind, clasped him round, and dragged him backwards. A crash split the silence, and ten thousand drowsy birds rose shrieking. The barbed bolt flashed aloft, the coils of line rippling out straight in its wake.
Old MacLeod wrenched himself free, but before his passion could find vent, the lad had sprung to the verge, flung up his arms, and dived. For a space he stood helpless and shaken under an awful revulsion of feeling, then staggered forward and looked over.
Lachlan was already clinging to the rock beside the exhausted swimmer; he was lending support to the latter.
“Hold on, Lachlan, hold on, good lad,” wailed MacLeod, and began frantically to haul in the harpoon line.
“Never mind that,” cried the lad. “Go, bring the boat. I have a good hold. I can keep him up.”
The old man stiffened as at an electric shock.
“That man—I will not save him! By God, no!”
“Then, by God, I will drown with him!”
There was a brief pause.
And MacLeod said gently: “I will bring the boat—for you, Lachlan.”
Lachlan spat out some brine. “Your word that you will save us both, or I let go now. The water is very cold.... MacLeod, oh, MacLeod, I tell you I will let go—and what will you say to your Ronald when he looks down on you in Hell?”
At that the half-crazy old man groaned and stood irresolute. And in the hush, the enemy, comprehending everything save their strange Gaelic speech, spoke, so brokenly, so feebly, that the man above just caught the words:
“Tank you, frien'... Now I vill go...” And he slid downwards into the sucking swell.
But the lad, his heart like to burst, drew him back from doom and held him safe.
“MacLeod!” gasped the lad, eyes rolled upwards: “MacLeod!”
MacLeod was not there. Ere long they heard his quavering shout and the sound of oars plied frantically.
GARDEN CITY PRESS LTD., PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND.