– ah, you’d not want to be anywhere near the place. Now – look – just where we’re at now – this is where the ebb is splitting – see how we’re coming into the choppy water, even on a day as fair as this. A bit further to starboard, and we’d be swept into the Sound. And if the sea gets up at all – where we are now – well, it’ll be getting a lot rougher than you’ll be wanting to see.’
Sure enough there was a surge of darker water just a few feet from them, with spiralling whirlpools along its edge. The yawl seemed to hesitate, then was swept forward with the tide.
‘I see. You’d not want to be working against that.’
‘You would not, sir. This is bad water. Even on a day like this – you’ll be keeping an eye on things. You’ll never be at ease – or you oughtn’t to be – not in these waters. These seas are powerful awful any day in the year. You know what they say: “Those who live by the sea sometimes die by it.” You’re not seeing what it can be today, sir. Not at all.’
They watched the currents swirl, and the water breaking on the distant rocks that guarded the Sound. They all knew what the sea could do. Danger was less than a hand’s breadth away, even on a day like this: just one small change and everything could alter, all in a moment. There was no space for mistakes. The bright sun, the sparkling waters, the helpful breeze – these were precious gifts, but all the more chancy because of that. You never forgot the other face of the sea. You dared not. It wasn’t fear you felt exactly: it was a fine tension that you’d let go of at your peril. You just didn’t forget that all time out here was borrowed. A good day was a glorious gift, but you never trusted the giver, not for a moment. You took what you could get, and you always kept your eyes open.
They were leaving the Sound behind, and the wild east coast of the Calf was sweeping by them. ‘I can see why you’d not want to work against the tide, whatever airt the wind was in,’ remarked Archie.
‘You would not. So where the tide is splitting, you see now how we’re needing it to be taking us south of the Calf. So when you’re coming down on the ebb, like we’re doing, you want to be standing well out to sea once Spanish Head is lying astern.’
‘And at the flood it’ll be running through the other way?’
‘That’ll be right. The ebb is taking you out and the flood is taking you back. The ebb starts about an hour and a half before high water in the Sound. That’s how you need to be planning it. But sometimes that’s hard to get right with the daylight – no one would be doing the trip in winter anyhow, I’m thinking.’
‘So the lightkeepers have to be supplied for a whole winter?’
‘Yes indeed, sir. And there’s many a day at any time of year you’d not be wanting to be out here.’
‘Well, at least it’ll be better than the Bell Rock,’ called Ben cheerfully from the bows.
‘At least at the Bell Rock they had a decent port to go back to.’
‘I wouldna ken, sir. I only drink ale myself.’
Mr Watterson grinned, and the boy Juan stifled a snort which might have been the beginnings of a laugh.
‘Now you have to be watching the cletts off the Burroo. See ahead there?’ – Finn pointed out a great stone stack at the southern tip of the Calf – ‘We’re steering well clear of her just now. You see that arch opening up just now? That’s the Eye. You can see that from just by Castletown. The Burroo’s a dangerous place, dangerous awful. If you’re ever bringing a ship into these waters, you’ll be wanting to keep full clear of the Burroo, if you’re valuing your lives, especially at the spring tides. And if there’s any southerly wind you get the waves coming very steep. There’s seven or eight cletts – you’ll know what cletts are, Master Benjamin, seeing you’re an Orkney man – so you’ll be keeping well clear. With a flood tide taking you the other way, you could be finding yourselves on the rocks before you’re knowing it, and that’s the end of you. Oh, it’s a fiendish place. Some of the trickiest waters in the world, off the Calf here, indeed.’
In his leather case with his notebooks, Archie had a tracing of the 1815 map of the Calf made by his predecessors when they’d surveyed that island in preparation for the new lights. The Burroo and the cletts around it had been named and marked with great emphasis. Archie would have liked to look at the map again now, but he could see choppy water ahead: this wasn’t the place to unfold a plan. He knew the map of the Calf by heart now anyway. No one had ever surveyed Ellan Bride before. He’d be the first.
‘Ay well. Some say that about Orkney too,’ said Ben.
‘Ah, but this is a trickier sea. Waves thirty feet high, and the current going about ten knots, when the sea gets up, in no time at all. And no distance at all between the crests: they’ll be coming in so close together a ship will be having no time to make a recover. And once you’re driven close to these islands, and you’re finding yourselves on a lee shore … well, Master Benjamin, you just don’t want to be there.’
‘Ay well, they say the Irish Sea is a tricky spot. We were working at the Mull of Galloway. I saw some big seas there.’
‘Ay. It’s the whole of the Atlantic you’re getting, pouring into the Manx Sea twice every day, and nowhere to be putting itself. So it’s tricky water. The keepers on the Calf, now – Scotch, like yourselves – they’re saying they’ve never seen such desperate seas as they’re seeing here, in these waters.’
‘And for better for worse, we’ve got to work in them,’ said Ben cheerfully.
It was choppy off the Burroo. Ben pulled his boat cloak tightly round him as gouts of water came flying over the bows. The boy beside him turned his back to the bows and hunched his shoulders. With the wind on the port beam they were making good time. They steered well clear of the stacks, and the wicked cletts, which showed long trails of white where the tide parted around them. Ben had seen what the Irish Sea could do from the Mull of Galloway. Finn was right, he thought: this was indeed a fearsome place.
They rounded the Burroo at a respectful distance. A new stretch of water opened up ahead.
‘I can see the lighthouse on Ellan Bride, sir,’ called Ben.
About ten points to starboard, Archie saw an obstinately vertical mark in the distance, as if someone had jabbed a lead pencil against the horizon.
‘Those rocks yonder,’ Finn was saying, ‘we’re putting the name Chickens on them. That’s because you’ll be seeing the stormy petrels flying about here – what they call Mother Carey’s chickens. Now the Chickens’ll be the most desperate rocks in the Island. The ships are thinking they’re well clear of the Calf, and they’re running straight onto the Chickens. There’s no mercy for them then. It was because of the Chickens they were building the Calf lights. You’ll see, if you’ll line up the two towers yonder, on the Calf: from the Chickens the one light is straight above the other – you keep them well apart and you’ll not be in any danger. Before them lights this was a terrible place for wrecks, dangerous awful. I was going out there with my father after the Sally was lost – twenty years that’ll be now – smashed to bits she was. And she was a Whitehaven ship that was knowing these waters as well as anyone. She was headed for Ireland, but the Chickens out there was as far as ever she was getting. Now if anyone could be building a lighthouse there …’
White water was breaking over the Chickens rocks. Archie thought of Dulsic, off Cape Wrath, which had the same configuration: a wicked skerry, right in
