lack of a light. Hard to imagine a wreck on a day like this: the noise, the terror, the chaos, the sheer power of the sea when it was roused. On rocks like these, no man or ship could withstand a big sea for more than a moment once they were caught.
The first time Archie had seen the Dulsic skerries was from the Cape Wrath headland. He’d stood with Mr Ritson – Archie had only been the under-surveyor then – looking down on a furious sea. Huge plumes of spray broke over them, nearly three hundred feet up. When he’d come back to Cape Wrath by sea a week later, Mr Ritson had gone ashore at Sandwood Bay, and sent Archie ahead in the ship to take sightings from the sea.
Archie had found the Cape transformed. They’d sailed out of Loch Laxford and edged their way north. When dawn came the sea was calm and milky. The sun slowly rose and tinged everything pink. All day he’d stood in the bows, watching that wild coastline unfold. At the Cape there was only an easy swell. The skipper said he’d never seen it as calm as this. A little crown of breaking waves, barely tinged with white, marked the fearful skerries. On a sudden impulse he’d strolled aft and told the skipper what he wanted to do. Perhaps the man was too surprised to say no; in any case he’d had the boat lowered, and sent three of the crew along with Archie.
Down in the boat the swell seemed a lot bigger. They’d come close in to the skerry. McGill was at the tiller. He couldn’t time it right; a wave caught them, threw them forward, then pulled them back, a yard short of the rock. Then Angus took over. If Angus couldn’t do it, no one could.
‘Now!’ They came in on the top of the wave. Water churned in the two-inch gap between boat and rock. ‘Now, sir, now!’ Archie scrambled over the gunwale. He was standing on the biggest Dulsic skerry. It was just a rock, flat and wet, ringed with seaweed. Only a sailor, or a lighthouse surveyor, could have any idea what it meant to stand here. He’d stood for fully two minutes, half-scared that Angus wouldn’t be able to get him off. When the boat came in with the next wave, he’d launched himself clumsily headfirst over the gunwale, and had had to scramble up through the legs of the oarsmen. But he’d done it. He’d stood on the notorious Dulsic. He’d been a young fellow then. The skipper had not reported him to Mr Stevenson. It was all of five years ago.
Finn Watterson altered course, so that the Ellan Bride lighthouse was directly on the bow, leaving the Chickens half a mile to starboard. He watched this Master Buchanan thoughtfully. There was something he was needing to say, but he hadn’t quite got the man’s measure yet. Master Buchanan looked pleasant enough, dark-haired and dark-eyed – the girls would be wild after a well set-up young fellow like that – but Finn was guessing at an austerity in Archie that might be stopping him taking full advantage. So much the better for him, if that were so! But the lad had an absentmindedness about him. He’d be asking the right questions, showing a fair bit of sense, in fact, and then he’d be going off in a dream again, like he was doing now. Something on his mind, seemingly. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing for the question Finn had in mind, he wasn’t sure. Master Buchanan was a bit stand-offish, not easy in his ways, but maybe it was just shyness. Finn’s own father had once met Robert Stevenson, when that gentleman had been coming to look at the Calf thirty years ago. Nothing stand-offish about him – a very easy gentleman to work with. Finn was wishing it were Mr Stevenson here himself, so he could be speaking to him about the matter that was troubling him. Mr Stevenson would be able to do something about it too; Finn wasn’t sure this young fellow Buchanan had the power. Finn had been hearing yesterday how Master Buchanan had been seeing Master Quirk at Castletown yesterday, and seemingly Master Quirk had been saying afterwards this Master Buchanan was just a sprat, and it was the bigger fish he was after – waste of time talking to him in fact. But that was surely not fair. The lad was just the surveyor, doing his job: he’d not be coming here to be dealing in the politics.
Slowly Ellan Bride took on a third dimension. There was very little of it. It lay low and green, the lighthouse standing in the centre like an unlit candle. The sun winked on the lighthouse lantern. The island was hardly more than a rock with a strip of green, surrounded by the silvery sea. Archie and Ben had seen hundreds of islands like it, but there was still something about a new island, a sense of possible discovery. Archie felt his impatience draining away. The east wind that had brought them here might not take them back so easily, but after all, what did it matter? He had no urgent appointment until September. If he were forced to spend the halcyon days of May becalmed on Ellan Bride, wasn’t that simply a foretaste of all the unknown islands yet to come?
He’d spent too many years trying to hurry along and achieve things. There had been so much work to be done, and what greater work could there be – so it had seemed, at least until last year – than the immense task of lighting up the seas? What could be more humane, more advantageous, more audacious, and more conducive to the greater good of all, than illuminating the coasts of Scotland for all the shipping that had to pass, now and in the future?
He’d only worked with Robert Stevenson a week when the old man had taken him out to the Isle of May. That was ten years ago. Archie had never been to sea before in his life. They’d had a wild crossing, the little boat ploughing doggedly through turbulent seas before a rising wind. They weren’t even sure that they were going to be able to land when they got there. Somehow the boat had managed to slip through the rocks into the east landing, and then they’d struggled up to the lighthouse, which stood right at the summit of the island, against gusts of icy rain. Indoors the lighthouse was quiet and spacious, the workrooms and keepers’ quarters a model of naval orderliness. Archie had been deeply impressed. The sheer elegance of the new lighthouse, the opulent restraint of the Council Chamber where the Commissioners had their annual meeting, the clean lines of the tower itself, the scale and precision of the new lighting system … all that had been such a contrast, not only to the wild weather, but also to the squat little tower that stood in the lee of Robert Stevenson’s light. This was the ruin of the old coal-burning light, out of date and unregretted, preserved merely because of a passing poet’s whimsical desire for the picturesque. For it was Walter Scott himself who’d asked for it to be kept, back in 1814 when he’d been on the May with Mr Stevenson.
Ten years ago Archie had stood on the flat roof of the new Isle of May lighthouse, leaning into the wind, while the sea crashed on the rocks below. Though he hadn’t said a word, he’d been drunk with sheer happiness. Mr Stevenson’s new lighthouse was not only functionally perfect, but also an outpost of civilisation, a little piece of Edinburgh illuminating the chaos and the wilderness. It seemed like the embodiment of an ideal; this, it had seemed, was what his new job was all to be about.
Even now, Ellan Bride might hold its atom of discovery. It was always like this: as soon as he got away from Edinburgh Archie began to wake up. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the world he lived in; it was just that he preferred to be on the very edges of it, and yet somehow bring with him everything that was good about the civilised world. In his experience that was how new ideas were most likely to happen.
‘No one bides on the island but the lighthouse people?’ Ben was asking. Archie brought his attention back with a start. He should be making the most of every minute with Mr Watterson, finding out as much as he could. Where had his wits gone a-begging?
‘Not now.’
‘So there were others?’
‘There were one time. But that was a long time ago.’
‘And the lightkeepers? They telt us in Edinburgh that the keeper was a woman.’
‘That’s right. The sister to the last keeper, him that was getting drowned. And a little family with her.’
‘Have they got a boat?’
‘A fourteen-foot yawl. Nothing much. But they’re not going offshore but for a bit of fishing usually. I’m bringing in the oil for the light, and the coals for winter, and anything else they’re
