like? There’s a map of Castletown already, so they’re telling, but I’m never seeing it.’
The air of benighted ignorance seemed genuine enough, but Ben wasn’t at all sure. ‘Ay well, we’re no working in Castletown. Like I say, you had our company here before, building the lights on the Calf. Lot of wrecks here before that,’ remarked Ben casually, ‘or so they say.’
‘And plenty of wrecks since too! I’m not holding with all these lights everywhere. It sets folk thinking the coast is safe, and that’s not so. Never was, never will be. There were wrecks before the lights – one or two wrecks along this coast every year, year in, year out – and wrecks just the same ever since. Listen, young fellow … but three months since there was a smack lost in Castletown Bay. Coming from Liverpool, she was. Smashed to pieces on the rocks out there in a storm, barely a mile from this harbour. Just out yonder, not a mile from where we’re standing. Them lights on the Calf aren’t stopping that sort of thing, now, are they?’
‘No, but a light at that headland I saw across the bay might help.’
‘Langness? And what would be the use of that? It’s too low. A bit of spray on a wild night – a patch of fog – no, that would do no good at all. There’s the Herring Tower there, anyway. What more would you be wanting? And how about the Atalanta was wrecked at Port St Mary last year? Now she was from Derbyhaven – John Watterson, he had knowledge of these waters – but that wasn’t helping her, was it? And you won’t never see them lights on the Calf near Port St Mary. And the Atalanta wasn’t the only one at Port St Mary last year – there was that sloop from Scotland too. They were getting the cargo off – pig-iron, that’s what it was – but the ship, she was finished. No, you can’t tell me them lights have changed nothing.’
‘I’ve kent places in Scotland where they’ve set up lights and barely had a wreck since.’
‘Ah well now, you would have done, wouldn’t you? That’s how you’ll be knowing all about what we’re needing here. Well, well, isn’t that fortunate now, that you’re coming here to the Island to be putting us all right?’
‘It’s a busy route, then, along your coast here?’ asked Ben innocently.
‘Bless your soul, it’s the busiest route in the Manx Sea. But a week or two now, and you’ll be having them all here for the fishing. They’ll be out west of the Island right now, but when the herring will be coming round the coast, the boats’ll be following. Once the Cornishmen are coming along, that’s when the season is really starting. And not just the fishing. Now it’s all them steamers, going away to Liverpool, Whitehaven, Belfast, the Lord knows where … Oh yes, we don’t do so bad, for poor ones who aren’t knowing nothing at all. Not like you educated gentlemen from Edinburgh, of course.’
‘I telt you: I’m fae Orkney. We don’t have any steamer routes there yet. But we – me and my master – we came on the steamer from Glasgow yesterday.’
‘Well, you won’t get me onto one of them things. Blow up, like as not, and what will you be doing when the engine stops working? No sails, no oars. It’s not nathural.’
‘And no wrecks either. Or no so many. A steamer can get itself off a lee shore where a sailing ship wouldna have a hope.’
‘Well, you’re wrong there, young fellow. Weren’t you hearing how the George was wrecked in Douglas Bay just last year? At least, they were getting her off in the end, but it wasn’t steam that was the saving of her.’
Ben knew all about the George. He’d been told the whole story by a fellow he’d met on the Mona’s Isle. He let the old man tell it again, but he was listening to the accent more than the words. The fellows in the tavern last night had been speaking their own language. That was really what had got Drew into a fight. Ben guessed they’d been talking pretty freely about the two strangers in their midst; certainly they had very obviously seemed to regard Drew and Ben as a source of amusement. Ben had tried to make out what they were saying – he’d listened to enough Gaelic when they were working at Cape Wrath to have a smattering – but he couldn’t make out this Manx language. It didn’t bother Ben what they might be saying, anyway, but it had bothered Drew all right.
Lot of nonsense this old fellow was talking, anyway, but it was useful to know what folk were saying. Ben was used to prejudice against the lights. There was always a reason for it, and this Island had been a lawless country in the past by all accounts. There was no telling but what this chap knew a thing or two more than he’d say about wrecks. And there’d been some pretty fierce smuggling here by all accounts, but that was years ago, not since the war probably. The old fellow would mind all of that – probably he’d learned to sweet-talk the excise officers just the same way he was talking to Ben now. Anyway, it was just typical of these old fishermen, saying the lights had brought no benefit. You couldn’t convince anyone who chose not to listen. You couldn’t ever prove how it would have been without the lights, once they were there, and how the wrecks did get less, if you took into account that the shipping was growing and growing every year that passed.
It was true about the steamships though. They hardly ever got into difficulties the way the sailing ships did, because they could get themselves off the coast whatever airt the wind was in. Look at how they’d rounded the Mull yesterday morning in the Mona’s Isle. With almost no wind at all they’d made about eight knots ever since they’d left the Clyde. They’d never have done that in a brig. It was a shame in a way. There was something about a brig, about the feel of the sea under the keel, and the sound of the wind and the tide, that you just didn’t get on the Mona’s Isle with her engines clattering away and her paddle wheels turning. Young as he was, Ben had been bred to a different world. No wonder these old fellows took it hard.
‘You ken these waters pretty well,’ he remarked, as the old man relapsed into silence and pulled at his pipe. ‘You’ll ken Ellan Bride? The island beyond the Calf?’
The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and deliberately spat into the river. ‘Oh ay. Ellan Bride … it’s surely not to Ellan Bride you’re for going, young fellow? You’re never going there? It’s a dangerous journey, dangerous awful. More’n half a league south of the Calf itself, right out at sea. You’re surely never wanting to go out there!’
‘Ay. That’s where we’ll be working.’
‘You will? There’s a light at them there already, you know that? Been a light at them these fifty years. Fifty years and over it, even, or so they say. But you’ll be knowing all about that?’
‘I ken about the private light, ay. We’re going to replace it. Build a new one.’
‘Is that right? You’ll be coming here to build us a new light on Ellan Bride? Well, well, you’re coming along to do us all a favour. And you’ll be bringing more Scotchmen over with you, and putting them on Ellan Bride, God help them? Well, well, whatever would we be doing without fellows like you coming along?’
‘You don’t think a new light’s a good idea?’
The old fellow shifted his gaze from Ben’s face, and seemed to deliberately change the subject. ‘You’re seeing that castle there?’ He jerked his pipe towards the grey bulk of Castle Rushen above the quay.
‘I could hardly miss it.’ Ben decided not to mention his acquaintance with the jail. ‘What of it?’
‘Well, maybe I’ll be telling you something about that castle. See the big it is?’
‘I certainly
