‘Okay. Well, there’s only one way to get a line across.’
Field nodded absently.
‘We’ll have to take it ourselves. Swim it across the gut, and then climb with it.’
Easy to say; not so easy to do. The drop from the Butt of Keava was possible, the 350-ft. cliff went down in a series of ledges. It was the gut between and the sheer cliff beyond. The gut was 50 yards at its narrowest and the seas were breaking there in a welter of foam; the cliffs of Sgeir Mhor were black volcanic gabbro, hard as granite, smooth and unbroken for long stretches.
‘Well?’ Braddock stared at Field. ‘I swim it, you climb it, eh?’ And his face cracked in a grin. It was a dare. This was the sort of thing he loved — physical action spiced with danger. And if the other man cracked.… Poor Field’s face was ashen, his eyes staring at the smooth black panels of wet rock beyond the maelstrom of the chasm.
I think my brother had watched quite a few men crack. I don’t say it gave him pleasure, but it may well have been something he needed, a bolster to his own morale. His world had always been a physical one. Mentally and emotionally he was something of a child; or that was how he had often seemed to me; which was why, I suppose, our relationship, so inimical at times, had been at others so strangely close; we had each supplied what the other lacked.
Now, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even watch for Field’s reaction. He caught the man’s fear at a glance and overlaid it with his own determination, the quick positiveness of his orders. He led us pell-mell back down the slope, back to the beach and the dinghies laden with rope and all the things he’d feared they might need. And then, in his frogman’s kit again, up the sloping shoulders of the rocks to the wet thunder of the surf breaking through the gut.
The sergeant and I, with two men, were ordered to the top of the cliff with one end of the nylon climbing rope. Down at the bottom he and Field, together with Lieutenant Phipps and the two other men, manoeuvred one of the rubber dinghies.
Flat on my stomach at the cliff’s edge I watched Iain working his way along the ledges westward through the gut. He was alone and his thick, powerful body in its black rubber suit looked like a seal’s as it flattened itself against the rocks to meet each wave as it broke foaming across the ledges — a baby seal from that height, the rope around his waist and trailing white behind him like an umbilical cord. And then from the farthest point west that he could fight his way, he suddenly stood on a sheer-edged shelf of rock and dived.
He dived into the back-surge of a big wave and went deep, his fins beating furiously, drumming at the surf. It looked so easy. One moment he was diving and the next he had bobbed up on the back of a breaker on the far side, a black head with black arms paddling. A quick look round, then down again as the next comber broke, and as it spent its energy, he rode its back on to a long, sloped ledge, and pulled himself up.
Now, with the dawn light stronger, I could see two figures prone among the rocks on the far side, peering down. I thought I recognised Wentworth, but I couldn’t be sure. The face was a dim blur in the rain and the flying spray.
Iain was clear of the water now, clear of the surge of even the biggest waves, curled up at the farthest end of that sloped ledge and pulling on the rope. Below me I saw Field hesitate. The rope came taut on the rush of a wave. The rubber dinghy shifted on the rocks. And then it was in the water, and he was in it, head down, hands gripping the gunnels as it was pulled across. Once I thought he was lost. The dinghy reared on a curling crest, turned half over as it broke. But then it righted itself, lifted on the backwash from the far side, and in one buoyant rush came to rest on the ledge where Iain crouched.
I saw arms wave on the cliff opposite. There were three bodies there now, all waving in the excitement of imminent rescue. But there was still that sheer cliff and the men on the top could do nothing to help. It was up to Field now. Field alone could lift the end of that rope the 300 feet, that would transform it from just the tail-end of a line into a connecting link, a bridge between the two masses of rock — a bridge that could act as a means of escape.
Field had crossed the gut barefooted, but in his battledress. How, soaked to the skin, he leaned against the vertical rock and put on his climbing boots. That done, he fastened a belt round his waist that was stuffed with rock pitons like steel dog’s teeth. An ice hammer looped by its thong to his wrist, the rope fastened around his waist, and he was ready. But then he stood for a long time with his head thrown back, gazing up at the cliff above him.
He stood like that for so long that I thought he was held fast by the sheer impossibility of it. Perhaps by fear, too. And I for one wouldn’t have blamed him. Those shining panels of rock, trickling water — a spider would have its work cut out to find a footing. There were ledges and crevices, it was true. There are in almost any rock. But they were so minute and spaced so far apart. And all the time the sea swirled about his legs. The din of it was incessant, the gut streaming with wind-blown spray, gusts of spume, spongy masses of it flying through the air.
At last he moved; a flick of the hand holding the rope. Iain squatted tighter into his niche, waiting, both hands on the rope. The three men on the cliff-top opposite me leaned out and waved. Field saw them, for he lifted his hand. And then at last he began to climb, traversing out along a toe-hold crack that was a fractured continuation of the ledge on which he had stood.
It was fascinating to watch him. He must have been over fifty and out of practice, yet he balanced himself like an acrobat, hanging in space and moving steadily upwards, his feet doing the work, the rest of his body still and quiet. To the left at first, a long traverse, and then a quick gain of perhaps fifty or sixty feet up toe and finger holds I couldn’t see; a short traverse right and then a pause. The pause lengthened out, his hands reaching occasionally and drawing back. Then for a long time he hung there quite motionless.
Had his nerve gone? I don’t know. I asked him once, but he only smiled and said, ‘It was an ugly place. I thought it better to start again.’
I didn’t see him jump. One moment he was there, and the next he was in the sea, and Iain was hauling him back to the ledge where he lay for a while getting his breath. Then he started up again.
The same route, but a left traverse at the top and then he was hammering a piton into a crevice, snapping on a hook for the rope, and up again using pitons from the clanking string of them around his waist, one after another. He must have hammered in about two dozen of them before he reached the overhang, and there he stuck with less than fifty feet to go — a fly on wet slate with the spume curling up like smoke from the cauldron below him.
He got round it eventually by going down about half the distance he’d climbed and working another crevice line to the right. This brought him almost opposite me, and right below him then was a deadly mass of rocks awash. He looked down once and I could imagine how he felt with only the rope running now through three pitons to hold him. The last 50 ft. seemed to take him almost as many minutes. The crevices were too shallow for the pitons and he was white with cold, his clothes heavy with water. But he did it.
His head came level with the clip-top. Hands reached down and he went over the top on his belly. Then he suddenly passed out, lying there, limp. But the rope was there and that was life to those who’d survived. The tail-end, passed back down the cliff to Iain, was made fast to a heavier line, and so, with many goings back and forth to the camp, we rigged up a makeshift breeches-buoy.