But now that I had disembarked my gear and contacted Cliff, I was no longer tied to Rodil and could shorten the voyage by crossing the Sound of Harris. The west coast of North Uist was too exposed, but remembering what Field had said, my eyes were drawn to the North Ford and to a straggle of islands shaped like the wings of a butterfly that lay barely a dozen miles to the west. These were marked on the chart — ‘Heisker (The Monach Islands).’
I lit a cigarette, got out chart No. 3168 and began to examine the North Ford in detail. It would be low water before I got there and I saw at a glance that the narrow channels through the sand would make it possible for me to go through whatever the tide. And at the western end, beyond the causeway that joined North Uist to Benbecula, the island of Baleshare stretched a great dune tongue down from the north, a bare waste devoid of any croft. I pencilled a circle round it, let the pressure out of the lamp and lay down with a sense of satisfaction. From Baleshare to the Monachs was about nine miles. From the Monachs to Laerg seventy-six miles. This way I should reduce the open sea passage by at least thirteen miles.
I left the following morning immediately after phoning Cliff. A cold, clear day with the wind fallen light and the clouds lifted to a thin-grey film of cirrostratus high in the sky. And late that afternoon I pitched my tent against a background so utterly different that I might have been in another country. Gone were the lofty hills of Harris, the sense of being shut in, pressed against the sea’s edge by sodden heights. Gone, too, was the brown of the seaweed, the sombre dark of rocks. Here all was sand, great vistas of it, golden bright and stretching flat to the distant hump of a solitary, purpling peak. My camp faced east and the tide was out. The peak was Eaval. Behind me were the dunes of Baleshare. All the rest was sky, thin mackerel scales of cloud, silver-grey and full of light. And not another soul to be seen, only the distant outline of solitary crofts, remote on islands in the Ford.
From the top of the dunes I could see the channelled entrance to the Ford, marked out for me by the white of waves breaking on the sand bars. A mile or more of broken water, and beyond that, low on the western horizon, the outline of the Monachs, the pointed finger of the disused lighthouse just visible.
The sun set and the heavens flared, a fantastic, fiery red. From horizon to horizon the sky blazed, a lurid canopy shot through with flaming wisps of cloud. It was a bloodbath of colour, and as I watched it, the red gradually darkening to purple, the whole vast expanse of sky was like a wound slowly clotting. Darkness fell and the tide rose; the dinghy floated closer until it rested just below my tent.
Cliff came through prompt at ten o’clock. The weather pattern was unchanged. I had some food then and went. to bed and lay in the dark, thinking of Laerg — out there to the westward, beyond the break of the sand bar surf, beyond the dim-seen shape of the Monachs, hidden below the horizon.
If, when I had left Rodil that morning, the engine had failed to start, or I had found an air leak in the dinghy, or anything had gone wrong, then I think I should have regarded it as an omen. But across the Sound of Harris, and all the way down the coast of North Uist, the engine had run without faltering. The speed, measured between identified islands, had been just over 31/2 knots. Even in the North Ford, where it was wind against tide and quite a lop on the water, I hadn’t experienced a moment’s uneasiness. The craft was buoyant, despite her heavy load. She had shot the rapids under the Causeway bridge without taking any water, and though the tide was falling then and the channel tortuous, she had only twice grounded, and each time I had been able to float her off.
I was sure, lying in my tent that night, that I could make Laerg. But confidence is not easily maintained against such an elemental force as the sea. The break of the waves on the bar had been no more than a murmur in my ears when I had gone to sleep. When I woke it was a pounding roar that shook the dunes and the air was thick with the slaver of the gale; great gobs of spume, like froth, blown on the wind. Rain drove in grey sheets up the Ford and to stand on the dunes and look seaward was to face layer upon layer of rollers piling in, their creaming tops whipped landward by the wind.
It lasted a few hours, that was all, but the speed with which it had arrived and the suddenness of those big seas was disturbing.
The synopsis at the beginning of the one-forty forecast confirmed the pattern transmitted to me by Cliff the previous night; the depression centred over Scotland moving away north-eastward, and a high pressure system building up behind it and covering the Eastern Atlantic from the Azores to approximately latitude 60° North. Outlook for sea area Hebrides was wind force 6, veering north-westerly and decreasing to light variable; sea moderating, becoming calm; visibility moderate to good, but chance of fog patches locally.
I moved fast after that. The gale had lost me half the day and now the tide was falling. Where I was camped on the southern tip of Baleshare the deep water channel swung close in to the dunes, but on the other side, towards Gramisdale, the sands were already beginning to dry. My most urgent need was petrol. I had used over eight gallons coming down. I filled up the tank of the outboard, slid my ungainly craft into the water and pushed off with the two empty jerricans, following the channel north-east past the tufted grass island of Stromay towards the village of Carinish.
Beyond Stromay the deep water channel forked. I took the right fork. It was still blowing quite hard and by keeping to the roughest water I avoided the shallows. I beached just south of the village, tied the painter to a stone and hurried up the track, carrying the jerricans. There was no petrol pump at Carninish, but the chart had marked a Post Office and as I had expected it was the centre of village information. There were about half a dozen women gossiping in the little room and when I explained what I’d come for, one of them immediately said, ‘There’s Roddie McNeil now. He runs a car. D’ye ken the hoose?’ And when I shook my head, she said, ‘Och weel, I’ll get it for you myself.’ And she went off with my jerricans.
I asked if I could telephone then and the post mistress pushed the phone across the counter to me. ‘You’ll be the pairson that’s camped in the dunes across the water to Eachkamish,’ she said. Eachkamish was the name of the southern part of Baleshare. ‘Would you be expecting somebody now?’
‘No,’ I said, thinking immediately of the Army.
‘A lassie, maybe?’ Her eyes stared at me, roguish and full of curiosity. ‘Weel noo, it’ll be a pleasant surprise for ye. She came in by the bus from Newton Ferry and now she’s away to the Morrisons to inquire aboot a boat.’
‘Was it a Miss Field?’
She shook her head, smiling at me. ‘I dinna ken the name. But she was in a tumble hurry to get to ye.’ And she turned to a young woman standing there and told her to go down to the Morrisons and bring the lassie back.
I picked up the phone and gave the exchange the number of the Met. Office at Northton. It couldn’t be anyone else but Marjorie and I wondered why she’d come, for it wasn’t an easy journey from Rodil. There was a click and a voice said, ‘Sykes, Met. Office Northton, here.’ Apparently Cliff had been called down to the camp. ‘Will you give him a message for me,’ I said. ‘Tell him I’ll be leaving first light tomorrow. If there’s any change in the weather pattern he must let me know tonight.’ He asked my name then and I said, ‘He’ll know who it is,’ and hung up.
Five minutes later Marjorie arrived, flushed and out of breath. ‘We’d almost got the boat down to the water when I saw the dinghy there. If I hadn’t gone in for a cup of tea with the Morrisons I’d have seen you coming across.’