The Silver Darlings by Neil M. Gunn

Author:Neil M. Gunn [Neil M. Gunn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571282678
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

STORM AND PRECIPICE

All through the night they fought the sea, manning the pump in turns, though they shipped little more than lashings of wave-tops, for Roddie’s hand felt for side and crest with a skill that was most part pure divination. It was some time in the first of the night that the seas attained proportions beyond anything they had ever encountered before. Whole hills of water seemed to come at them with great valleys between. For hours Roddie was cut off from his crew in a darkness as of winter. Once when she staggered as she climbed and they felt for a terrible moment that the wave had got them, was holding them, and was going to throw them clean over, she choked shudderingly within herself, but held, reached the crest, balanced, then quivered as she caught the wind and plunged on, eased by Roddie’s hand. Clear and heartening came Roddie’s voice: “That was a bad one, boys!”

There were a few elemental jokes of the kind, with words plucked out of the mouth and blown in tatters into the darkness, before the grey of the morning came upon their half-stupified bodies; came to reveal nothing far as the eye could reach but countless herds of tumbling seas. That they had lived through the night seemed now more of a miracle than before.

“Henry,” cried Roddie, “some water all round, but go canny with it. I’m dry.”

“If you take only a mouthful,” called Henry to each, “you can have a mouthful after your piece.”

As they munched their bere bannocks, they could not keep their eyes off the waves. But Roddie could now see what was coming at him, and as the light grew it seemed to them that the wind eased.

“Keep your eye lifting for Rona, Rob,” called Callum.

“Where do you think we are?” Henry asked Roddie.

“I don’t know,” answered Roddie, “but I should say we are in the Western Ocean, for I have never seen waves the length of these. Only one thing I know—one while during the night if it had blown any harder we couldn’t have done it. And it wouldn’t have helped much to try to run under bare poles for the Arctic Ocean! She’s a good sea boat, boys. We’ll give her that due.”

Roddie’s simple words of praise for the gallant boat touched Finn closely, and more so as his body was battered into a heavy lassitude, so heavy indeed that when it relaxed completely, it felt light and incorporeal, and there came upon his spirit a fine clarity. He looked at the stem—reaching up the wave, searching the horizon, plunging down—to rise again. On, on, on—that was the song at her heart. So long as the human spirit was equal to the need, she would not fail. With that strange wooden dream of her own besides! Finn felt a softness in him and turned his eyes away to the seas.

For the first time he knew the strange companionship of running seas—strange because lifted beyond the normal into this thin region of the spirit.

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