It was after seven when they left port, tipping past Cuddy Point into the outer harbour and facing into the rising swell that drove in off the Minch. By the time they had cleared Goat Island and motored out into deeper water, the sea was rising and breaking about them as they ploughed their way through the advance regiments of the storm. Padraig stood at the wheel, his face furrowed in concentration, green in the reflected phosphor of the battered radar screens that flashed and beeped all around the console. There was a little light left in the sky, but it was impossible to see anything. Padraig was guiding them by instruments and instinct. ‘Aye, she’s wild, right enough. Not so bad here in the lee of Lewis. It’ll be a lot worse when we round the Butt.’
Fin could not imagine anything much worse. He had thrown up twice by the time they passed the Tiumpan Head Lighthouse, and he declined Archie’s offer of fried egg and sausage that the boy was somehow managing to conjure in a galley that no longer had any fixed point of reference.
‘How long’s it going to take?’ he asked Padraig.
The skipper shrugged. ‘Took us just under eight hours last night. Could be nine or more tonight. We’ll be heading right into the teeth of the storm. It’ll be well into the early hours before we get to An Sgeir.’
Fin remembered how it had felt eighteen years before when they had rounded the Butt of Lewis, and the beam of the lighthouse had finally faded into darkness. The security of the island behind them, they had set out into the vast wilderness of the North Atlantic, kept safe and dry only by a few tons of rusting trawler and the skills of her skipper. He had felt scared then, lonely, incredibly vulnerable. But none of that prepared him for the fury with which the ocean would fling itself upon them this time as they rounded the northern tip of Lewis. Diesel engines hammering in the dark, they fought against seemingly impossible odds, water rising sheer all around them, like black, snow-capped mountains, crashing over the bow and hammering into the wheelhouse. He hung on to whatever he could, wondering how Padraig could remain so calm, and tried to imagine how it might be possible to survive, sanity intact, another seven or eight hours of this.
‘Before my father died,’ Padraig had to shout above the roar of the engines and the anger of the storm, ‘he bought another boat to replace the Purple Isle.‘ He nodded and smiled to himself, keeping his eyes fixed on the screens in front of him and the blackness through the glass. ‘Aye, she was a right beauty, too. The Iron Lady he called her. He spent a lot of time and money making her just the way he wanted her.’ He flicked a glance at Fin. ‘There are times you wish it was that easy with a woman.’ He turned and grinned back into the darkness, and then his smile faded. ‘He was going to sell this old dear when he got the chance. Only he never did. Cancer of the liver. He was gone in a matter of weeks. And I had to step into his shoes.’ He took a crumpled-looking cigarette one-handed from a Virginia tobacco tin and lit it. ‘Lost the Iron Lady first time I took her out. A ruptured pipe in the engine room. By the time we got to it, there was more water coming in than we could pump out. I told the rest of them to get the dinghy out, and I tried everything I could to save her. I was up to my neck in the engine room before I finally baled out. Just made it, too.’ Smoke swirled from his mouth in the turbulent air of the wheelhouse. ‘We were lucky, though. The weather was good, and there was another trawler within sight. I watched her go down. Everything that my father had put into her. All his hopes, all his dreams. And all I could think was, how was I going to tell my uncles I’d lost my father’s boat? But I needn’t have worried. They were just glad that we were safe. One of them said, “A boat’s just a bunch of wood and metal, son. The only heart it has is in those who sail her.”’ He took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘Still, I get goosebumps every time I go over the spot where she went down, and I know she’s just lying there on the seabed, right beneath where we last saw her. All my father’s dreams, gone for ever, just like him.’
Fin felt the young skipper’s intensity like a third presence in the wheelhouse. He looked at him. ‘We just went over that spot, didn’t we?’
‘Aye, Mr Macleod, we did that.’ He snatched a quick look at the policeman. ‘You should go and lie down in one of the berths for a while. You never know, you might get a bit of sleep. It’s going to be a long haul.’
Duncan took his place in the wheelhouse as Fin went below and pulled himself up into the same berth he had occupied the only other time he had made the journey. He had no expectation of sleep, just the knowledge that in the long, slow hours ahead of them he would have plenty of time in which to turn over, again and again in his mind, all the unanswered questions that plagued him. Questions he knew would not be answered until they got to An Sgeir. And even then, there was no guarantee. Artair and Fionnlagh might already be dead, and he would never know. And never forgive himself for not having had at least some inkling of what was to come.
He was surprised, then, when Archie shook him awake. ‘Nearly there, Mr Macleod.’
Fin slid out from his berth, startled, disorientated, and sat rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. The steady, rhythmic pounding of the engines seemed to have become a part of him, thudding inside his head, jarring his soul. The trawler was tipping and pitching wildly, and it was all he could do to climb back up into the galley without falling. Duncan was at the wheel, his face a study of concentration. Padraig sat beside him staring bleakly into the darkness. He was a bad colour. He saw Fin’s reflection in the glass and turned. ‘I’ve been trying to get them on the radio for the last hour, but all I’m getting is white noise and static. I don’t like it, Mr Macleod. It’s not like Gigs.’
‘How long?’ Fin said.
‘Ten minutes, maybe less.’
Fin peered into the black but could see nothing. Padraig, too, was straining to see in the dark. ‘Where’s the fucking lighthouse?’ He flicked a switch, and all the Purple Isle’s lights blazed into the night. The three hundred feet of cliff on which Fin had so nearly perished rose out of the sea almost immediately ahead of them, black and glistening and slathered in streaks of white guano. He was startled by how close they were.
‘Jesus!’ he said involuntarily, taking a step back and clutching the door frame to steady himself.
‘Fuck sake, pull her round!’ Padraig screamed at Duncan. His brother swung the wheel hard left, and the Purple Isle yawed dangerously, careening side-on through the waves that pounded and broke all around them. ‘There’s no light!’ he bellowed. ‘No bloody light!’
‘Was she working last night?’ Fin shouted.
‘Aye. You could see her for miles.’
Duncan had control of the trawler again, setting her into the wind once more, and they ploughed around the southern tip of the rock, circumventing Lighthouse Promontory and cruising finally into the comparative shelter of Gleann an Uisge Dubh. Here there was a noticeable respite from the wind. But the rise and fall was still ten feet or more, and they could see the swell breaking white at the point where usually they would land supplies, smashing and splintering all around the entrance to the caves that cut deep into the underbelly of An Sgeir.
Padraig shook his head. ‘There’s no way you’re going to get the dinghy in there tonight, Mr Macleod.’
‘I didn’t come all the way out here,’ Fin shouted above the thud of the engines, ‘to sit in a bloody boat while that man murders my son.’
‘If I take the Isle in close enough to put you down in a dinghy, there’s every chance we’ll all get smashed to pieces on those rocks.’
‘I saw your father back a trawler up to the quay at Port of Ness in a storm one year,’ Fin said. ‘In the days when they brought the guga back to Ness.’
‘You remember that?’ Padraig’s eyes were shining.
‘Everyone remembers that, Padraig. I was just a boy then. But folk talked about it for years.’
‘He had no fear, my father. If he thought he could do something, then he just did it. Folk said he must have nerves of steel. But that wasn’t true. He didn’t have any nerves at all.’
‘How did he do it?’
‘He dropped the anchor first, and then reversed in. He figured if he got into trouble he would just slip gear and haul anchor, and it would pull him straight out to safety.’
‘So, how much of your father do you have in you, Padraig?’
Padraig gave Fin a long, hard stare. ‘Once you’re in that dinghy, Mr Macleod, you’re on your own. There’s not a damned thing I can do for you.’
Fin wondered if he had ever been more frightened. Out here, with a monstrous sea smashing itself over the rocks all around them, he had never felt less in control. It was a raw confrontation with nature at its most powerful, and he seemed tiny and insignificant by comparison. And yet they had got themselves there in one piece, across fifty miles of storm-lashed ocean, and now there were only a few hundred feet still to cover. Duncan attached a line to the inflatable and kept her pulled tight to the stern as Padraig inched the Purple Isle backwards into the creek, keeping her anchor chain taut. The cliffs on the two promontories closed in around them, dangerously close now, and the trawler bucked and slid on the swell, one way, then the other. They could hear the sea snapping and slurping at the rock, as if it were trying to devour it.
Padraig signalled that he had taken her in as far as he dared, and Duncan nodded to Fin. Time to go. The rain was coming at him horizontally as he slid down the rungs of the ladder, wet fingers stiff in the freezing cold. Somehow he was still dry beneath his oilskins, but he knew that would not last long. His lifejacket seemed ludicrously flimsy. If he fell in the water, it would probably keep him afloat just long enough for the sea to tear him apart on the rock. The inflatable dinghy was swinging wildly, rising and falling beneath him, impossible to step into. He took a deep breath, as if about to duck below water, and let go of the Purple Isle, allowing himself to drop into the dinghy. As it gave way beneath his weight, his hands searched desperately for the rope that ran around the inflated perimeter. They found nothing but smooth, wet fabric. He felt himself slipping away, falling through space, the dinghy vanishing below him, and he braced himself for impact with the water. But at the last moment, the abrasive plastic of the rope burned the palm of his right hand, and he closed his fingers around it. The dinghy was there beneath him once more, and this time, clutching the rope, he rose and fell with it, securing himself by grabbing the line on the left-hand side.
He glanced up and saw Duncan’s white face a long way above him. He seemed to be shouting something, but Fin couldn’t hear what. He pulled himself towards the back of the dinghy and tipped the outboard over the stern. He opened the choke and pulled the starter cord. One, two, three, four times. Nothing. On the fifth, it coughed and spluttered and caught, and he gunned it furiously to stop it stalling. It was the moment of truth. Attached only by the umbilical of the rope, he was about to leave the safety of the mother ship.
The rope played out behind him as he swung the dinghy around, and her nose rose up through the swell towards the landing point. He twisted the accelerator, and the tiny orange vessel ploughed at a surprising speed towards the rocks. By the lights of the trawler, he saw the great black mouth of the cave opening up above him, and he could hear the cathedral roar and rush of the sea from deep within the belly of the island. A creamy-white frenzy of foam boiled all around him, and he felt the dinghy lifted by the swell and propelled towards the rocks. He yanked at the rudder and cranked up the motor to maximum power, pulling himself out of a collision at the last second, and the sea sucked him back out into the bay. The roar in his ears was deafening. He did not even dare to look back at the trawler.
He swung the dinghy around and faced the rocks again. They dipped up and down below the level of the swell, as if sizing him up, and then hiding in preparation for ambush. He hung there on the rise and fall for a full minute, gathering together all the broken pieces of his courage. He realized that timing was everything. He could not afford to run in with the swell as he had the first time. It was much more powerful than his tiny outboard and would dash him on to the rocks in a moment. He had to motor in as the swell receded, using his forward momentum against its retreat, to prevent a collision. Easy! He almost laughed at his ludicrous attempts to intellectualize his way through this. The truth was, if God existed, then Fin’s life was well and truly in His hands now. He took deep breaths, waiting for the sea to break again on the rocks, and then accelerated hard into the retreating rush of white water. Again the mouth of the cave closed around him, and it seemed as if he were making no progress at all, just holding his own in the mist of froth and spume, before suddenly he was propelled forward at a speed he could not control. He tried to pull the rudder around, but the propeller was out of the water, blades screaming through air that offered no resistance. The whole of An Sgeir seemed to be throwing itself at him. He shouted his defiance, as the sea held him in its palm and lifted him clear out of the dinghy and up on to the rocks with a force that knocked all the breath from his body. He could taste blood in his mouth, and felt the jagged edges of the gneiss tearing at his flesh. The boat was gone, and he was pinned to the rock by the force of the water. And then almost immediately the pressure that held him there dissipated, and the sea started sucking him back. He felt himself sliding down the glistening black surface of rock worn smooth by millions of years. He scrabbled for a handhold, but the green collar of algae all around An Sgeir squeezed through his fingers like slime, and he was aware of the power of the sea drawing him down into a cold, dark place where he knew that sleep was for ever.
And then he felt it. The cold bite of iron, the movement of the ring as his fingers closed desperately around it, and held. And held. Almost dislocating his shoulder as the sea pulled and jerked, before finally, reluctantly letting go. For a moment he lay still, clutching the mooring ring, washed up on the rock like a beached sea creature. And then he scrambled for a foothold, and then a handhold, and the strength to propel himself upwards before the sea returned to reclaim him. He could sense it snapping at his heels as he found the ledge of rock on which Angel had built a fire of peats and made them tea on the day they landed there eighteen years before. He’d made it. He was on the rock, safe from the sea. And all that it could do now was spit its anger in his face.
He became aware for the first time that the rain had stopped, and huge tears in a black sky overhead released sudden and unexpected shards of moonlight to strike down across the island. He saw the Purple Isle in a pool of dazzling silver light motoring back out into the safety of the bay, still dipping and yawing on a sea furious at her complicity in Fin’s escape.
Fin fumbled for the torch clipped to his belt, hoping that it would still work. Its light flashed into his face, and he waved it in the dark to let the crew know that he was safe. Then he pulled his knees up to his chest, his back to the cliff, and huddled there for a full five minutes, trying to regain his breath and his composure, and his will to tackle the climb to the top. He flashed the torch at his watch. It was after 4 a.m. In under two hours, dawn would break in the east. He was almost afraid to contemplate what daylight might bring.
The rain stayed off, fragments of moon flitting in and out between scraps of breaking sky. Fin wondered if he was imagining that the wind had dropped just a little. He got unsteadily to his feet and shone his torch up the incline. There, caught in its beam, smooth and glistening in the light, was the chute the guga hunters used to haul their supplies up to the top of he rock. Still in use after all these years. Fin raised his torch and followed its angled progress up the steepest sections of the slope, and he saw the rope that they used snaking down across the jumble of rock and boulders. He climbed up until he was able to grab the end of it, and he pulled hard. It held fast. He tied it around his waist, and began the long climb to the top, using the rope to guide him in the dark, to pull himself up the steepest gradients, stopping frequently to wind it around his waist, a safety measure against the possibility of a fall.
It took him a full twenty minutes to haul himself up to the roof of the island and unravel himself from the rope. He looked back, gasping for breath, battered and buffeted by the wind that swept unimpeded across the chaos of rock and stone, and saw the lights of the Purple Isle winking out in the bay. As he turned, an almost full moon emerged from the ragged remnants of the storm cloud overhead, and spilled its light all over An Sgeir. He saw the squat silhouette of the lighthouse, bracing itself in darkness at the highest point of the island, and a hundred yards away across the shambles of boulders and nests, the dark, huddled shape of the old blackhouse. There was no light, no sign of life. But the smell of peat smoke carried to him on the edge of the wind, and he knew that there must be someone inside.