I lay there beside him till the rain squall passed. But even then I couldn’t see what he still swore he’d seen. Cloud, forced low by the down-draughts, obscured all the upper half of Sgeir Mhor. There was only one thing to do. I told him to go to the hut, and then I started out along the beach road alone. But it was impossible. The weight of the wind was too great. It caught me as I was crossing the Bailey bridge that spanned the burn and it threw me against the girders as though I were a piece of paper. The sheer weight of it was fantastic. If it hadn’t been for the girders I think I should have been whirled into the air and flung into the bay. I turned back then, and when I reached the hut I collapsed on Pinney’s bed and immediately lost consciousness.
How long I was out I don’t know. My whole body ached and there was a pain in my side. The cut in my head had opened again and the pillow was dark with blood. Lying there with my eyes open, slowly struggling back to life, I found myself staring at Pinney’s locker. Either my eyes didn’t focus immediately or else it took a long time for me to realise that a pair of binoculars might save me the long walk out to Keava and up its steep grass slopes. There they were, lying on a shelf, tucked in between some books and an old khaki jersey. It was much lighter in the hut; quite bright, in fact. And the noise of the wind was less.
I picked up the binoculars and staggered stiffly to the door. And when I opened it I was looking out on to a changed world. The clouds, torn to shreds by the wind, were ragged now. And they had lifted so that all the great spine of Keava was visible and I could see the sheer gap that separated it from Sgeir Mhor, could see all the rocks and caves and patches of grass on Sgeir Mhor itself. The air was clear, washed clean by the rain. Only Tarsaval and the very top of Creag Dubh remained shrouded in gloom, the clouds clinging to their drenched slopes, billowing and swirling among the crags. Seaward, shafts of brighter light showed white water tossed in frightful confusion. I slipped into the lee of the hut and with my back braced against its sodden wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.
Seen suddenly at close vision, isolated like that from the rest of the island, it looked like some massive medieval fortress. All it lacked was a drawbridge spanning the narrow gut that separated it from the Butt of Keava. With the change of wind, the seas no longer exploded against it in plumes of white, but the foam of the waves that had wrecked us lay in banks like snow over all the piled-up battlements of rock. In that clean air I could see every detail and nothing moved. The place was dead; just a great heap of rock and not a living thing. How could there be? Like the cliffs of Keava, it had taken the full brunt of the storm.
I lowered the glasses. Just the two of us. All the rest dead; gone, buried, drowned under masses of water, battered to pulp, their bodies for the fish, for the lobsters and crabs that scuttled in the holes and crevices of submarine rock terraces. Stratton, Wentworth, Pinney — all the faces I had known so briefly on board the ship.
Can you will people alive? Was I God-given that I could stand there and pray so desperately, and then on the instant conjure movement? It seemed like that, for I looked again, hoping against hope, and there in the twin circles of magnification something stirred, a man stood for a moment etched against the luminosity of clouds thinning. Or was it my imagination? Flesh and blood amongst that waste of rock. It seemed impossible, and yet one knows the extraordinary indestructibility of the human body.
•Countless instances leapt to my mind — things I had read about, things I had been told, things I had actually seen during the war; all things that had really happened, and not so much the indestructibility of the human body as the unwillingness, almost the inability of the human spirit to accept defeat. And here, now, I was gazing at the impossible, and it was no figment of the imagination. This, too, was real; there was a man, off the sky-line now and crawling down the rocks, trying to reach sea level, and another following close behind him.
How many were still alive I didn’t know. I didn’t care. It was enough that there were survivors on Sgeir Mhor, and I rushed back into the hut and switched on the radio. Base answered my call immediately. ‘Hold on.’ And then a voice, not my brother’s this time, asking urgently for news.
It was Colonel Standing, and when I told him I’d seen two figures moving on Sgeir Mhor, he said ‘Thank God!’ in a voice that was like a beaten man grasping at the faint hope of recovery. ‘If there are two, there may be more.’ He wanted me to find out. But two or twenty — what difference did it make? The problem of rescuing them remained the same. Could I launch a boat? That was his first suggestion and I found myself laughing inanely. I was tired. God! I was tired. And he didn’t understand. He’d no idea of the weight of wind that had hit the island. ‘There are no boats,’ I told him. ‘And if there were, there’s only myself and a chap with a broken arm.’ It was like talking to a child. I found I had to explain in simple terms what the storm had been like — all the trailers gone and a heavy thing like the bulldozer sucked into the sea, the camp a wreck and everything movable shattered or”whirled away, the slopes of Tarsaval littered with the Army’s debris. I described it all to him — the fight seaward, the engines packing up, the way she’d struck Sgeir Mhor and how the bows had stayed afloat and been driven ashore in Shelter Bay. I talked until my voice was hoarse, my mind too tired to think. Finally, I said, ‘What we need is men and equipment — a boat with an outboard motor or rocket rescue apparatus to bridge the gut between Keava and Sgeir Mhor. Where’s the other LCT? She could come into the bay now the wind is northerly again.’
But L4400 was twenty miles south-west of Laerg, running before a huge sea, her bridge deck stove in and her plates strained, a wreck of a boat that might or might not get back to port. Weather Ship India had left her station and was steaming to intercept her. The nearest ship was the Naval tug, but still twenty-four hours away in these conditions. Something my grandfather had told us came sluggishly to the surface of my mind, something about landing on Sgeir Mhor, the sheerness of the rocks. ‘I don’t think a boat would help,’ I said. ‘The only landing place on Sgeir Mhor is on the seaward side. And that’s not possible except in flat calm weather.’
It took time for that to sink in. He didn’t want to believe it. How did I know? Was I absolutely certain? Surely there must be rock ledges up which a skilful climber … ‘Check with my … with Major Braddock,’ I said. ‘Check with him.’ This man arguing, questioning. I wished to God he’d get off the line and give me Iain again. Iain would understand. ‘I’d like to have a word with Major Braddock.’
‘I’m handling this.’ The voice was curt. ‘Major Braddock’s caused enough trouble already.’ ‘I’d still like to speak to him.’
‘Well, you can’t.’ ‘Why not?’
A pause. And then: ‘Major Braddock is under arrest.’ God knows what I said then. I think I cursed — but whether I cursed Standing or the circumstances, I don’t know. The futility of it! The one man who could help, who had a grasp of the problem, and this stupid fool had had him arrested. ‘For God’s sake,’ I pleaded. ‘Give me Braddock. He’ll know what to do.’ And sharp and high-pitched over the air came his reply — unbelievable in the circumstances. ‘You seem to forget, Mr Ross, that ‘I’m the commanding officer here, and ‘I’m perfectly capable of handling the situation.’ ‘Then handle it,’ I shouted at him, ‘and get those men off Sgeir Mhor.’ And I switched off, realising that I was too tired now to control my temper. I just sat there then, thinking of Iain. Poor devil! It was bad enough — the loss of life, the shipwreck, but to be under arrest, sitting inactive with no part in the rescue, with nothing to do but mull over in his mind what had happened. Didn’t Standing realise? Or was he a sadist? Whichever it was, the effect on Iain would be the same. The bloody, sodding swine, I thought. The cruel, stupid bastard.