“He can’t go alone, Mam,” I shout. “I’m going with him.”
Father steps into the boat beside me. “She is like this storm, Thomasin. She won’t be silenced ’til she’s said her piece. I’ll take care of her.”
I urge Mam not to worry. “Prepare dry clothes and blankets. And have hot drinks ready.”
She nods her understanding and begins to untie the ropes that secure us to the landing wall, her fingers fumbling in the wet and the cold. She says something as we push away, but I can’t hear her above the wind. The storm and the sea are the only ones left to converse with now.
Once beyond the immediate shelter afforded by the base of Longstone Island, it becomes immediately apparent that the sea conditions are far worse than we’d imagined. The swell carries us high one moment before plunging us down into a deep trough the next, a wall of water surrounding us on either side. We are entirely at the mercy of the elements.
Father calls out to me, shouting above the wind, to explain that we will take a route through Craford’s Gut, the channel which separates Longstone Island from Blue Caps. I nod my understanding, locking eyes with him as we both pull hard against the oars. I draw courage from the light cast upon the water by Longstone’s lamps as Father instructs me to pull to the left or the right, keeping us on course around the lee side of the little knot of islands that offer a brief respite from the worst of the wind. As we round the spur of the last island and head out again into the open seas, Father looks at me with real fear in his eyes. Our little coble, just twenty-one foot by six inches, is all we have to protect us. In such wild seas, we know it isn’t nearly protection enough.
Harker’s Rock, Outer Farnes. 7th September, 1838
LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT. Dark.
In the thick black that surrounds her, the beam of light in the distance is especially bright to Sarah Dawson. Every thirty seconds it turns its pale eye on the figures huddled on the rock. Sarah fixes her gaze on its source: a lighthouse. A warning light to stay away. Her only hope of rescue.
Her body convulses violently, as if she is no longer part of it. Only her arms, which grasp James and Matilda tight against her chest, seem to belong to her. She doesn’t know how long it is since the ship went down—moments? hours?—too exhausted and numb to notice anything apart from the shape of her children’s stiff little bodies against hers and the relentless screech of the wind. Behind her, the wrecked bow of the Forfarshire cracks and groans as it smashes against the rocks, breaking up like tinder beneath the force of the waves, the masthead looming from the swell like a sea monster from an old mariner’s tale. The other half of the steamer is gone, taking everyone and everything down with it. She thinks of George waiting for her in Dundee. She thinks of his letter in her pocket, his sketches of lighthouses. She stares at the flashing light in the distance. Why does nobody come?
A man beside Sarah moans. It is a sound like nothing she has ever heard. His leg is badly injured and she knows she should help him, but she can’t leave her children. The desperate groans of other survivors clinging to the slippery rock beside her mingle with the rip and roar of the wind and waves. She wishes they would all be quiet. If only they would be quiet.
The storm rages on.
The rain beats relentlessly against Sarah’s head, like small painful stones. Rocking James and Matilda in her arms, she shelters them from the worst of it, singing to them of lavenders blue and lavenders green. “They’ll be here soon, my loves. Look, the sky is brightening and the herring fleet will be coming in. You remember how the scales look like diamonds among the cobbles. We’ll look for jewels together, when the sun is up.”
Their silence is unbearable.
Unable to suppress her anguish any longer, Sarah tips her head back and screams for help, but all that emerges is a pathetic rasping whisper that melts away into gut-wrenching sobs as another angry wave slams hard against the rock, sweeping the injured man away with it.
Sarah turns her head and wraps her arms tighter around her children, gripping them with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, determined that the sea will not take them from her.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Why does nobody come?
MINUTES COME AND go until time and the sea become inseparable. The light turns tauntingly in the distance. Still nobody comes.
James’s little hand is too stiff and cold in Sarah’s. Matilda’s sweet little face is too still and pale, her hands empty, her beloved rag doll snatched away by the water. Sarah strokes Matilda’s cheek and tells her how sorry she is that she couldn’t tell her how the lighthouse worked. She smooths James’s hair and tells him how desperately sorry she is that she couldn’t keep them safe.
As a hesitant dawn illuminates the true horror of what has unfolded, Sarah slips in and out of consciousness. Perhaps she sees a small boat making its way toward them, tossed around in the foaming sea like a child’s toy, but it doesn’t get any closer. Perhaps she is dreaming, or seeing the fata morgana John used to tell her of: a mirage of lost cities and ships suspended above the horizon. As the black waves wash relentlessly over the desperate huddle of survivors on the rock, Sarah closes her eyes, folding in on herself to shelter her sleeping children, the three of them nothing but a pile of sodden washday rags, waiting for collection.
Longstone Lighthouse. 7th September, 1838
OUR PROGRESS IS frustratingly slow, the distance of three quarters of a mile stretched much farther by the wind and the dangerous rocks that will see us stranded or capsized if we don’t steer around them. We must hurry, and yet we must take care; plot our course.
After what feels like hours straining on the oars, we finally reach the base of Harker’s Rock where the sea thrashes wildly, threatening to capsize the coble with every wave. The danger is far from over.
Lifting his oars into the boat, Father turns to me. “You’ll have to keep her steady, Grace.”
I give a firm nod in reply, refusing to dwell on the look of fear in his eyes, or on the way he hesitates as he jumps onto the jagged rocks, reluctant to leave me.
“Go,” I call. “And hurry.”
Alone in the coble, I begin my battle with the sea, pulling first on the left oar
