Mr. Standfast
anything to be gained I’d undertake to bluff my way to the Orkney
Islands. But it’s a wearing job and I’ve better things to think about.”
“So? Well, enjoy yourself your own way. I’ll be sorry when you leave
us, for I owe you something for that rough-house, and beside there’s
darned little company in the old moss-back captain.”
That evening Gresson and I swopped yarns after supper to the
accompaniment of the “Ma Goad!” and “Is’t possible?” of captain and
mate. I went to bed after a glass or two of weak grog, and made up for
the last night’s vigil by falling sound asleep. I had very little kit
with me, beyond what I stood up in and could carry in my waterproof
pockets, but on Amos’s advice I had brought my little nickel-plated
revolver. This lived by day in my hip pocket, but at night I put it
behind my pillow. But when I woke next morning to find us casting
anchor in the bay below rough low hills, which I knew to be the island
of Colonsay, I could find no trace of the revolver. I searched every
inch of the bunk and only shook out feathers from the mouldy ticking. I
remembered perfectly putting the thing behind my head before I went to
sleep, and now it had vanished utterly. Of course I could not advertise
my loss, and I didn’t greatly mind it, for this was not a job where I
could do much shooting. But it made me think a good deal about Mr
Gresson. He simply could not suspect me; if he had bagged my gun, as I
was pretty certain he had, it must be because he wanted it for himself
and not that he might disarm me. Every way I argued it I reached the
same conclusion. In Gresson’s eyes I must seem as harmless as a child.
We spent the better part of a day at Colonsay, and Gresson, so far as
his duties allowed, stuck to me like a limpet. Before I went ashore I
wrote out a telegram for Amos. I devoted a hectic hour to the
_Pilgrim’s Progress_, but I could not compose any kind of intelligible
message with reference to its text. We had all the same edition—the one
in the _Golden Treasury_ series—so I could have made up a sort of
cipher by referring to lines and pages, but that would have taken up a
dozen telegraph forms and seemed to me too elaborate for the purpose.
So I sent this message:
_Ochterlony, Post Office, Kyle,
I hope to spend part of holiday near you and to see you if boat’s
programme permits. Are any good cargoes waiting in your neighbourhood?
Reply Post Office, Oban._
It was highly important that Gresson should not see this, but it was
the deuce of a business to shake him off. I went for a walk in the
afternoon along the shore and passed the telegraph office, but the
confounded fellow was with me all the time. My only chance was just
before we sailed, when he had to go on board to check some cargo. As
the telegraph office stood full in view of the ship’s deck I did not go
near it. But in the back end of the clachan I found the schoolmaster,
and got him to promise to send the wire. I also bought off him a couple
of well-worn sevenpenny novels.
The result was that I delayed our departure for ten minutes and when I
came on board faced a wrathful Gresson. “Where the hell have you been?”
he asked. “The weather’s blowing up dirty and the old man’s mad to get
off. Didn’t you get your legs stretched enough this afternoon?”
I explained humbly that I had been to the schoolmaster to get something
to read, and produced my dingy red volumes. At that his brow cleared. I
could see that his suspicions were set at rest.
We left Colonsay about six in the evening with the sky behind us
banking for a storm, and the hills of Jura to starboard an angry
purple. Colonsay was too low an island to be any kind of breakwater
against a western gale, so the weather was bad from the start. Our
course was north by east, and when we had passed the butt-end of the
island we nosed about in the trough of big seas, shipping tons of water
and rolling like a buffalo. I know as much about boats as about
Egyptian hieroglyphics, but even my landsman’s eyes could tell that we
were in for a rough night. I was determined not to get queasy again,
but when I went below the smell of tripe and onions promised to be my
undoing; so I dined off a slab of chocolate and a cabin biscuit, put on
my waterproof, and resolved to stick it out on deck.
I took up position near the bows, where I was out of reach of the oily
steamer smells. It was as fresh as the top of a mountain, but mighty
cold and wet, for a gusty drizzle had set in, and I got the spindrift
of the big waves. There I balanced myself, as we lurched into the
twilight, hanging on with one hand to a rope which descended from the
stumpy mast. I noticed that there was only an indifferent rail between
me and the edge, but that interested me and helped to keep off
sickness. I swung to the movement of the vessel, and though I was
mortally cold it was rather pleasant than otherwise. My notion was to
get the nausea whipped out of me by the weather, and, when I was
properly tired, to go down and turn in.
I stood there till the dark had fallen. By that time I was an
automaton, the way a man gets on sentry-go, and I could have easily
hung on till morning. My thoughts ranged about the earth, beginning
with the business I had set out on, and presently—by way of
recollections of Blenkiron and Peter—reaching the German forest where,
in the Christmas of 1915, I had been nearly done in by fever and old
Stumm. I remembered the bitter cold of that wild race, and the way the
snow seemed to burn like fire when I stumbled and got my face into it.
I reflected that sea-sickness was kitten’s play to a good bout of
malaria.
The weather was growing worse, and I was getting more than spindrift
from the seas. I hooked my arm round the rope, for my fingers were
numbing. Then I fell to dreaming again, principally about Fosse Manor
and Mary Lamington. This so ravished me that I was as good as asleep. I
was trying to reconstruct the picture as I had last seen her at
Biggleswick station....
A heavy body collided with me and shook my arm from the rope. I
slithered across the yard of deck, engulfed in a whirl of water. One
foot caught a stanchion of the rail, and it gave with me, so that for
an instant I was more than half overboard. But my fingers clawed wildly
and caught in the links of what must have been the anchor chain. They
held, though a ton’s weight seemed to be tugging at my feet.... Then
the old tub rolled back, the waters slipped off, and I was sprawling on
a wet deck with no breath in me and a gallon of brine in my windpipe.
I heard a voice cry out sharply, and a hand helped me to my feet. It
was Gresson, and he seemed excited.
“God, Mr Brand, that was a close call! I was coming up to find you,
when this damned ship took to lying on her side. I guess I must have
cannoned into you, and I was calling myself bad names when I saw you
rolling into the Atlantic. If I hadn’t got a grip on the rope I would
have been down beside you. Say, you’re not hurt? I reckon you’d better
come below and get a glass of rum under your belt. You’re about as wet
as mother’s dish-clouts.”
There’s one advantage about campaigning. You take your luck when it
comes and don’t worry about what might have been. I didn’t think any
more of the business, except that it had cured me of wanting to be
sea-sick. I went down to the reeking cabin without one qualm in my
stomach, and ate a good meal of welsh-rabbit and bottled Bass, with a
tot of rum to follow up with. Then I shed my wet garments, and slept in
my bunk till we anchored off a village in Mull in a clear blue morning.
It took us four days to crawl up that coast and make Oban, for we
seemed to be a floating general store for every hamlet in those parts.
Gresson made himself very pleasant, as if he wanted to atone for nearly
doing me in. We played some poker, and I read the little books I had
got in Colonsay, and then rigged up a fishing-line, and caught saithe
and lythe and an occasional big haddock. But I found the time pass
slowly, and I was glad that about noon one day we came into a bay
blocked with islands and saw a clean little town sitting on the hills
and the smoke of a railway engine.
I went ashore and purchased a better brand of hat in a tweed store.
Then I made a bee-line for the post office, and asked for telegrams.
One was given to me, and as I opened it I saw Gresson at my elbow.
It ran thus:
_Brand, Post office, Oban. Page_ 117, _paragraph_ 3. _Ochterlony._
I passed it to Gresson with a rueful face.
“There’s a piece of foolishness,” I said. “I’ve got a cousin who’s a
Presbyterian minister up in Ross-shire, and before I knew about this
passport humbug I wrote to him and offered to pay him a visit. I told
him to wire me here if it was convenient, and the old idiot has sent me
the wrong telegram. This was likely as not meant for some other brother
parson, who’s got my message instead.”
“What’s the guy’s name?” Gresson asked curiously, peering at the
signature.
“Ochterlony. David Ochterlony. He’s a great swell at writing books, but
he’s no earthly use at handling the telegraph. However, it don’t
signify, seeing I’m not going near him.” I crumpled up the pink form
and tossed it on the floor. Gresson and I walked to the _Tobermory_
together.
That afternoon, when I got a chance, I had out my _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
Page 117, paragraph 3, read:
“_Then I saw in my dream, that a little off the road, over against the
Silver-mine, stood Demas (gentlemanlike) to call to passengers to come
and see: who said to Christian and his fellow, Ho, turn aside hither
and I will show you a thing._
At tea I led the talk to my own past life. I yarned about my
experiences as a mining engineer, and said I could never get out of the
trick of looking at country with the eye of the prospector. “For
instance,” I said, “if this had been Rhodesia, I would have said there
was a good chance of copper in these little kopjes above the town.
They’re not unlike the hills round the Messina mine.” I told the
captain that after the war I was thinking of turning my attention to
the West Highlands and looking out for minerals.
“Ye’ll make nothing of it,” said the captain. “The costs are ower big,
even if ye found the minerals, for ye’d have to import a’ your labour.
The West Hielandman is no fond o’ hard work. Ye ken the psalm o’ the
crofter?
O that the peats would cut themselves,
The fish chump on the shore,
And that I in my bed might lie
Henceforth for ever more!
“Has it ever been tried?” I asked.
“Often. There’s marble and slate quarries, and there was word o’ coal
in Benbecula. And there’s the iron mines at Ranna.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“Up forenent Skye. We call in there, and generally bide a bit. There’s
a heap of cargo for Ranna, and we usually get a good load back. But as
I tell ye, there’s few Hielanders working there. Mostly Irish and lads
frae Fife and Falkirk way.”
I didn’t pursue the subject, for I had found Demas’s silver-mine. If
the _Tobermory_ lay at Ranna for a week, Gresson would have time to do
his own private business. Ranna would not be the spot, for the island
was bare to the world in the middle of a much-frequented channel. But
Skye was just across the way, and when I looked in my map at its big,
wandering peninsulas I concluded that my guess had been right, and that
Skye was the place to make for.
That night I sat on deck with Gresson, and in a wonderful starry
silence we watched the lights die out of the houses in the town, and
talked of a thousand things. I noticed—what I had had a hint of
before—that my companion was no common man. There were moments when he
forgot himself and talked like an educated gentleman: then he would
remember, and relapse into the lingo of Leadville, Colorado. In my