The Island of the Ark

Chapter 1

“That new bobby is carrying on with the teacher”. 

“Is he then? He seems a kind sort of fellow to me”.

“Elspeth told me. She took her dog out for a walk last night and she said his Land Rover was up at the schoolhouse, well after midnight”.

“Her dog never needs a walk that late at night; more likely it’s that nose of hers that is bothering her”.

“Have it your way Moira. In any case, she said the light was on upstairs in the bedroom….”

“Ha! So they weren’t having it off in the dark then!”. 
That was Moira’s husband Donnie walking over towards the two women and joining the conversation.

“What an awful thing to say Donnie!”
“Why? Nothing wrong with two young, beautiful, and single people getting to know each other a bit better. Don’t you remember all the things we used to get up to before we were married?”

“Donnie!”

“Hush woman! All I’m saying is that we haven’t had a wedding on the island for a long time now. The last was Alec and Alice and that was over ten years ago. Don’t you think it would raise everyone’s spirit a bit?”

“I know the kind of spirit you are thinking of raising!”

“Talk of the devil! There is the good man himself now”.

“Good afternoon Sergeant! We were just saying what good work you are doing up at the school; I mean making sure all the children are proficient at cycling and such things!”

Donnie pointed to a somewhat crumpled brown box at their feet. It had “Anderson NS” written in blue marker on one of the flaps: “Here are your groceries; I would have brought them round for you”. 

“That is very kind Donnie, but I fancied a walk anyway seeing the weather”.   

 The twice-weekly ferry had just brought a fresh supply of mainland groceries. Six or seven people stood on the crumbling sandstone pier to take receipt, and to linger a bit because the weather was mild and calm. There was no haste; as indeed there never was on North Scapay whatever the weather. When the gossip had been exchanged and the world had been put to right, the islanders began to disperse back up the road. Some carried  parcels and others pushed wheelbarrows. There was no shop on the island. Instead, there was “The Emporium”; a combined grocer and household store on the mainland. They would take your order by telephone and put it on the ferry in a cardboard box. The Emporium could sell you almost anything that was useful on an island; from a hairpin to a turnip; from fuse wire and torch batteries to DVD players; from a birthday cake to a shovel. But it was best not to order any eggs because they had a habit of getting smashed in bad weather. Also, heavy items like bottles and tins might occasionally fall through the soggy bottom of the box when handed between boat and pier, having to be retrieved at low tide. But on the whole the system worked very well. 

Police Sergeant Fred Anderson –also known on the island as “Fred the Bobby”- lifted the flap of his box, just to check. He found his two bottles of single malt undamaged in the centre of the box; well padded and protected by more expendable grocery items. Then he watched how the island’s ferryboat glided away from the pier towards its mooring, hauled by rope and pulley at the strong hands of skipper Ken McMurdo. 
Port Columba was the name of North Scapay’s only harbour. It got its name because the great saint was supposed to have landed here on one of his voyages. An ancient, 10 foot tall, carved stone cross between the pier and the first cottage gave credence to this. But whatever its claim to historical importance, Port Columba was unsuitable for larger, modern ships because it was too shallow. This was why Ken’s 20 foot open, clinker-built sloop had just made a rendezvous with the “proper” ferry that was already steaming away into the murky distance. By its chubby outline, Sergeant Anderson recognised it as the fine vessel named “Lochbeig” on which he had already made too many seasick voyages. The dumpy little ship would bob like a cork in the boiling-pot of Atlantic gales and furious tides on the three-hour crossing to the mainland. But even though the comfort of the journey might leave somewhat to be desired, and islanders were never short of complaints, they agreed in their hearts that the seamanship of the people of Caledonian McBrayne was beyond comparison in this world. And in truth, the company’s ferries had plied these treacherous routes for many generations without a single fatality.  
It was a very mild day; unusually calm with no wind to speak of. You would never know it was mid January, except that it was almost as dark as the night at 2:30pm under a sky that seemed to press on the world like a slab of slate. The higher ground to the north of the six mile long island was completely shrouded in a misty gloom. North Scapay had not seen any frost for a good few years now. It had seen all the more wind and monsoon-like downpours from clouds so dark that they had to run the generators for the lights all day. 
There was a lively debate on the island about global warming. Scientists on TV said that the effect on Scotland was most likely to be more rain and wind; just as if it did not get enough of that already! The politicians’ answer to climate change was that a new airport should be built somewhere north of the Forth-Clyde Valley. This was in order to cope with the expected doubling of air travel in the next 15 years. After all, who could be blamed for wanting to escape three or four times a year to somewhere with good weather like the Bahamas or the Maldives when given the opportunity of cheap air fares?  
But despite the promise of affordable holidays in far-away sunshine, many people on the island were worried about global warming. This was not without reason: In a fearful hurricane two years earlier, half of Lizzie Fairburn’s croft on the west side of the island had disappeared into the sea; 15 acres including the house, the sheds, and the tractor she had borrowed from Donnie Urquhart who was not well pleased. Lizzie herself escaped a watery grave by the skin of her teeth and moved back to the mainland where she had come from. The island’s minister John McPherson said afterwards there was no such thing as global warming. It was the wrath of the Lord that had come upon Lizzie for working her croft with that tractor on the Sabbath. And sure enough, Donnie never got money for a new tractor out of the insurance because they said the event was an act of God.   

Despite the occasional wrath of the Lord, North Scapay was not a bad place to be a policeman. At least so Fred the Bobby reckoned while he walked up the gentle gradient of the island’s only tarmac road with his box under his arm. He kept on walking past the tumble-down cottages painted in a variety of sugar-candy colours, until he reached the police house which was a dignified, governmental grey. It was also the highest building of the settlement except for the school.  

Fred’s police post was a remnant of the 1960’s and 70’s when the Ministry of Defence occupied a tall cliff at the island’s northern tip with several thousands of people. The military personnel and their civilian contractors were housed in barracks on the site itself. They were ferried in and out by helicopter. Materials and supplies were delivered by military landing craft to a small beach at the foot of the cliff and then hoisted up from there. This meant that the personnel of the base had very little contact with the island’s civilian population. Never the less, a police post was established in the island’s main settlement, so as to maintain law and order. 
At the end of the Cold War, the military installations were dismantled and the island’s population shrunk to its original size of about 25. For reasons that only civil servants can explain, the police post on North Scapay was still there more than 20 years later. It employed one full-time officer. Like on most of these small islands, the community was close-knit and self-policing, so it did not present its one-man police force with a great many challenges. 
Fred the Bobby had already given talks at the school about the dangers of drugs. He had done cycle-proficiency with the children according to national guidelines. And then he had regular “liaison” meetings with Fiona the teacher that were entirely his own initiative.  
He had also met with the Community Council about improvements to the ferry pier. But one of his most enjoyable duties, other than school liaison, was patrolling his beat. Once or twice each month, he drove his police Land Rover along the stony track that twisted over the hill and across the island.  After poor Lizzie’s demise, there were only three houses left on the exposed, west side of North Scapay. In the local culture it would have been very rude to pass by these remote dwellings without at least saying hello. And saying hello meant a lively, opinionated exchange of the latest news, making sure to cover every local and global issue. This was inevitably followed by a feast of tea and home baking that could take up most of a day.  
Fred loved the machair coastline of dunes and waving grass; the sweeping bays with their mile-wide, sandy beaches and spectacular vistas of the islands further west. Most of all he loved that special blue of the shallow sea over the white sands. It was a blue that could not be painted or photographed with justice; only drunk pure with eyes and soul as the light changed from one moment to the next.  

To fill the rest of his time, the offices on the mainland provided him with an endless supply of statistical return forms and other paper work. The latest one was a full risk assessment and the drawing-up of detailed contingency plans for the event of a multiple terrorist attack by suicide bombers.  

Only three incidents of actual crime had occurred since Fred had arrived, and he had dealt with all three successfully. Furthermore, he had taken action to prevent re-occurrence in the future. This meant the crime rate on the island had now been zero for over two months. Fred thought that this was what good policing was all about, but it also made him feel somewhat redundant. Although he would never have admitted to it, he sometimes wished for a bit of action. No, not violent action like gang wars or pub brawls. He had already seen enough of that in a past he did not want to remember. The island did not have a pub anyway. The meeting place for social drinking –as everybody knew- was in Donnie Urquhart’s caravan behind his house. You had to bring your own drink and there were no brawls; just the occasional wife extracting a spouse with a few resounding whacks of a frying pan. No, the kinds of action that had attracted Fred into joining the force were mystery crimes like thefts and murders; crimes where you could use your brain to piece together the evidence like a jigsaw puzzle. Not that Fred would want anything unpleasant to happen to any of the islanders of course.  

The three incidents that he had to deal with on North Scapay were of a domestic nature and not very mysterious. All three involved the Ferguson couple who were known locally as Alec and Alice the Post. They were a friendly couple, but they were not the cleverest of God’s creatures. Everybody on the island knew the story of how they booked a holiday to Spain on the internet to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. When the time came, they travelled to the mainland, took the train to Glasgow and then on to London. They even managed to find their way to Heathrow by themselves. But then it all went askew. Instead of boarding a three-hour flight to Malaga on the Costa Del Sol, they soon found themselves heading west across the Atlantic. The destination they had booked in error was Malaga in New Mexico. That is in the United States of America, and Albuquerque is its nearest airport. Malaga itself turned out to be a one-horse desert outpost near the Mexican border, 500 miles from the nearest beach. Its population was about 200 and there was absolutely nothing to do. Apparently the couple made the best of it and returned home richer in experience. But on North Scapay there was no shortage of jokes about the geographical ignorance of the Fergusons who wanted to go to Spain and landed in America instead. The stupidity of it still made Fred laugh whenever he thought about it.  

Since he had arrived on the island, he had got to know Alice and Alec Ferguson better then any of the other islanders because they had been responsible for the three criminal incidents already mentioned. The curious thing was that all three incidents were identical; as if the characters in it were acting out a script. The script went as follows:  
On a dark winter night at about eleven, Alice Ferguson arrived at the door of the police house; crying, her face in a mess, and accusing her husband Alec of beating her up. Fred took her in, gave her a cup of tea and phoned the island’s nurse Eileen McNab. The island having the luxury of a part-time nurse was another remnant from its M.O.D. days. Now in her late fifties with wrinkles and grey hair in a bun, Eileen was said to have been stunningly beautiful in her younger years. Despite that, she never got married. Rumour had it that she had once lost her heart to a fisherman’s lad from Mallaig, but that she had cut him off and got engaged to a much older and wealthier Glaswegian. When that did not work out, she broke off the engagement, but by that time her fisherman’s lad had moved away somewhere overseas.           
Nurse McNab answered the phone immediately, as if she had been sitting beside it waiting for it to ring. She said: “Yes, of course; I’m on my way”. Nurse McNab lived only 7 houses down the road. Two minutes later Fred cringed as he heard her ploughing-up the driveway in front of the police house with her Land Rover. She always drove the vehicle in four-wheel-drive mode with the differential-lock on, just in case the road might be slippery. 
While Fred made more tea, Eileen McNab tended to Alice’s injuries and said to her: “You should really divorce the bastard; there is no reason why you should have to put with this!”. Alice would look at her with tears in her eyes and say nothing. By about half past eleven, with Alice still in the care of the nurse, Fred donned his uniform and drove to the Ferguson’s’ house. Fortunately, doors were always left unlocked on the island. He found Alec slumped on the settee in the living room, drunk out of his mind and swearing, but fortunately incapable of posing much resistance to his arrest. When they arrived at the police house, Fred took Alec round the back, thus avoiding the living room where Alice and Eileen had helped themselves to some sherry and were having a giggling chat about how useless men are.

The police house was a one-story, sandstone cottage like most buildings on the island. It had a flat-roofed, breeze-block extension at the back that contained what Fed called his “nick”. The nick had a square entrance lobby the size of a phone box. From there, a door to the right opened into Fred’s cramped office which its oversize desk and tottering piles of paper. Straight ahead was the toilet. On the left, behind a steel-reinforced door with an inspection hatch, was a holding cell the same size as Fred’s office. The cell had a concrete floor and a hard bunk with a coarse, grey blanket courtesy of H.M. Government. Under the bunk was a cracked, antique chamber pot that was purely for decoration. Fred had been instructed by his predecessor that prisoners were always given the key of the cell so that they could use the “proper facilities” if the need might arise during sleeping hours. This, so Fred was told, was because islands themselves are places of containment by nature. Many aspects of law enforcement could be far more civilised on an island than they generally were on the mainland.  
After showing Alec into the cell and giving him the key, Fred went to his living room where the two ladies were in lively conversation. When Fred raised the matter of the domestic dispute and the subsequent assault, Alice said it was nothing really and she did not want to press charges. Eileen said she would give Alice a lift home. Fred reckoned she was well over the alcohol limit for driving, but on the other hand there were only three other vehicles on the island, i.e. his own police Land Rover, the post van, and the much-feared blue Vauxhall Astra that belonged to the minister. By Fred’s knowledge, all these vehicles were safely off the road at that time. This reduced the risk of an accident considerably. And besides, the minister was a far greater menace on the road without any alcohol than Eileen McNab was with 4 or 5 glasses of sherry. The minister, who was in his eighties and stone deaf, thought was the only person on the island who owned a car. This was because he never saw any other traffic. So Fred said to Eileen: “Drive safely now!” before fleeing into the house as he got pelted with stones from his driveway when she did a vigorous three-point turn.  

The next morning, Fred took Alec into his kitchen. This was another example of police work on an island being more civilised than on the mainland. 
Alec had sobered up and said he had slept well. He liked a hard bed; it was good for his back. Over scrambled egg on toast and a steaming mug of coffee, Alec told Fred his side of the story: 
“It’s the time of the month, you know…I mean women’s time of the month. She just becomes totally impossible to live with and I cannot do anything right. But I know I should not take so much to drink…You see, when she is like that, I take to the drink. And that’s where it all goes wrong”. 
After breakfast, Fred delivered Alec back to his house where there was no sign of Alice. It would turn out afterwards that she had gone home with Eileen McNab for another few Sherries and that she had stayed the night there. Alec thanked Fred for his hospitality and for the lift, and climbed into his red Post Office van to go to work. 
To make a living, most people on these islands (except policemen and teachers) depended on more than one job to make ends meet. So when Alec was not delivering mail, he was a painter and decorator. For most of the winter he had been painting the outside of the island’s school. This was the weather-beaten, wooden building with large windows and a rusted, corrugated metal roof that stood on a raised hump of peat bog overlooking the village. The school was attached to the school house; a one-story, white, stone cottage where the teacher lived. The colour Alec had started painting the school in was named “Terracotta” in the sample book. It looked like a nice, warm colour; just what was needed in this damp, cold place. And besides, it was a special offer from the Emporium at two tins for the price of one. When the tins of paint arrived with the ferry, the labels looked terracotta. Even the liquid paint inside the pots looked terracotta. When it came off the brush and lay shiny and wet on the wall of the school, you could still -with a bit of imagination- think of Greek earthenware pots and a nice, warm sunset. The shock came one morning when the first wall –the one facing east towards the village- had dried. In the glorious light of the rising sun – in itself a rare phenomenon on a Scottish island in the middle of winter- the school stood out like a beacon in shocking, fluorescent, psychedelic, baby-girl pink.        

During the two months following, the incident with the Ferguson couple repeated itself twice more. It followed the same script, starting with Alice arriving at the door of the police house on a dark winter night at around eleven. 
In the mean time, Alec had been scolded by the school teacher because of the pink. 
Fiona the Teacher was a thin, dark-haired Glaswegian lass in her mid-twenties. She was single, and she was easily the most attractive woman on North Scapay. All the men on the island fancied her, which she did not seem to mind. Her greatest admirer was Fred the Bobby, who had lately pursued her company just somewhat beyond the call of duty.   

On the issue of Alec’s botched paint job, he and Fiona came to an agreement that the pink paint would do fine as an extra undercoat, and that Alec would finish the job in a more suitable colour at no extra charge. A light peach colour would do nicely. So a month later, Alec started re-painting the school blood-crimson which had arrived in a tin marked “light peach”. It was another special offer from the Emporium, where Alec had procured it in person while on a visit to the mainland. The shopkeeper had said: “Och aye, she looks a wee bitty red now, but you wait till she dries; the finest peach you’ll ever see this side of Oban!”
So Alec set to work. The suspicion arose even in him (though most islanders suspected Alec of being more colour blind than a Charlie Chaplin movie) that the paint was just a little too red to be light peach. But it did not even get a chance to dry and show the result. A sudden squall of rain made the wet paint run down the walls and made the playground look like the floor of a slaughterhouse. When the mess had finally dried a week later, the whole building stood engulfed in violent flames of crimson against the shocking-pink background of Alec’s previous attempt. Alec did not dare to show himself at the school. In the end he was given no choice but to deliver a three-week backlog of mail. Instead of scolding him as he had expected, Fiona fluttered her lovely eyebrows at him and praised him in front of all five of her pupils; her sarcasm honey-sweet. She said his paintwork looked very artistic. Thanks to him, she said, she would now be able to apply for a one thousand pounds art-project grant for her school because of the Highland Year of Culture. Then she whacked him on the head with a blackboard ruler and chased him out of the building with graphic threats of what would happen to him if he ever showed himself near her school again.    
Not long after that, and well before Alec showed himself near the school again -that now stood on the hill looking like a half-skinned carcass- Alice arrived at Fred’s door on a dark winter night for the third time. This time Fred’s mind went into crime-prevention mode, and he devised a cunning plan. The morning after the event, while they were having breakfast by the warm glow of the Rayburn in Fred’s kitchen, he said: 

“Tell me, Alec, is it quite often that you take too much to drink, or is it only when Alice has her..hhhm, time of the month?”

“Och; I take a wee dram at dances. That’s when they usually take me home in a barrow. But the rest of the time I stay quite sober”. 

“And this time of the month thing.. Well, I take it you can see the signs, can’t you?..I mean I suppose you can tell when it’s going to be bad”.

“I suppose so”

“Well, why don’t you come over to my place when you feel it’s going to be a bad night with Alice? You can have your tea here and watch telly if you want, and the cell is yours to sleep in. It would give both of you a bit of space”. 

And so it happened that each month when Alice’s P.M.T. got the better of her, and Alec’s taste for a dram got the better of him, he drove up to the police house where he and Fred had a dram together. Alice in turn went visiting Eileen McNab for a sherry and to discuss the faults of men, and everyone lived happily and crime-free ever after. 
It is for this very reason, i.e. police officers getting too familiar with the local population and crime figures dwindling, that postings to remote islands tend to be for a limited time. A fresh officer catapulted into the community as a total stranger can be far more objective, and thus far more effective, when it comes to combating crime properly.    
And yet, each posting was usually for a couple of years. So it came as quite a surprise to Fred when he received a letter from staffing at HQ in Inverness, saying that he would be transferred to another post at the end of his sixth month on the island. That was in just three weeks’ time. The short notice was also strange, because these things were planned a long time ahead. Six months’ notice would have been normal. 
The location he was transferred to was another island posting. It was called “South Barra”. Fred had not been aware that there was a police post on the south side of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. But then, how many people would have been aware of a lone bobby keeping law and order, eradicating serious assaults as well as driving while under the influence, in a place like North Scapay? 
Several other papers were stapled to the one that announced his transfer. One said that he needed to have special security screening for the South Barra post. There was a list of personal questions to fill in. Apparently there was some government research facility on the island. He would also need to have a medical and to get his teeth checked-over by his dentist. Now this seemed a bit over the top to Fred. North Scapay had never had medical facilities except for nurse McNab. If you needed a doctor or a dentist, then you just made a three-day excursion by ferry to the mainland and back. In an emergency they would fly you straight to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness by helicopter.
On the other hand, perhaps it was not that strange: Rules about everything seemed to become ever stricter and ever more cautious nowadays. But as he read further, it got even stranger: Immediately before taking up his new post, he was to travel to London and report to “Offshore and Overseas Procurement Services” in a government building near Charing Cross. This was for a briefing. He had to bring his police ID and his passport. Fred assumed the briefing had probably something to do with that government research facility on the island; telling him what to do if the Russians invaded, etcetera. 
The next page was a form for him to sign with a lot of legal language in small print on it. It turned out that this posting to South Barra would be a secondment to “Offshore and Overseas Procurement Services”. No length of time was specified, but on completion he would return to Northern Constabulary with full retention of his rank, pay, and pension. Although Fred had never heard of an arrangement like this before, the conditions seemed fair enough to him. 
The letter ended with a list of details of the transfer, including instructions regarding the shipping of his belongings. 

The moment of departure was suddenly upon him, but then there was no departure. After a great rush to get everything in order in time, Fred left the island over a week late. This was because the ferry was cancelled four times in a row due to gales. 

It looked like the Tuesday sailing would be cancelled yet again. Come Tuesday, nobody even bothered phoning Calmac to find out, because the wind had been buffeting their windows with considerable violence all night. Then to everyone’s surprise the wind dropped a fair bit by noon, even though the forecast was for more gales. To everyone’s even greater surprise, the ferry showed itself on the horizon by about one, causing skipper Ken to run past the cottages down the pier with spaghetti in his beard and expletives on his tongue while donning his yellow oilskin. The goodbyes were hasty but not any less emotional. Even for the mere six months that Fred had been their “bobby”, the generous folk of North Scapay had raised money and sent for an expensive wristwatch as a goodbye present. But the watch had not arrived in time with the ferry being cancelled. Alec, who had placed the order, said the watch would be in the incoming mail bag on the ferry that Fred was about to board. A wee but of island ingenuity was called for. Alec had Ken contact Lochbeig’s master by VHF radio, asking him and his crew to commit an act that could have landed them all in jail. The packet with the precious timepiece was duly found after an unnamed sailor on board Lochbeig broke the official seal on a green pouch with registered items that sat among the letters and packets inside the North Scapay mail bag. The pouch also contained a thick wad of banknotes for the pensions. It is a testimony to the honesty of all those involved that not a penny went missing, so Alec the Post stayed out of trouble and out of jail.

Fred was the only passenger leaving the island on that sailing. Not being a good sailor at the best of times, Fred looked at the white-crested waves with a sense of dread. The sea held a dark, sinister power for him, but it also held a strange fascination.  His crossing in Ken’s open boat to the waiting “Lochbeig” about half a mile offshore was the worst he had ever experienced. For most of the time, Fred sat staring down inside the boat while gripping the wooden plank he was sitting on with both hands. The sea was very confused with large waves advancing on the small craft from all directions. Ken’s boat was well-built and rode the steep seas, dousing Fred and Ken with ice-cold, bone-freezing curtains of white spray, but never getting swamped. The scary bit came when Fred had to jump from the bolting and swaying sloop onto the lowered gangway of “Lochbeig”. 
Fred stood hesitating, until Ken suddenly pushed him from behind while a sailor on “Lochbeig” grabbed him by one arm and pulled him across at just the right moment.    
From the relative safety of the ferry’s deck, Fred watched how the winchman lowered the cargo for Scapay into the small boat: First a net bulging with squashed and sodden grocery boxes, then a fat sheep struggling and swaying in a sling. And finally the mailbag, tied shut with a very purposeful sailor’s knot of orange twine. 
Just when Fred opened the heavy, varnished-teak door that gave access to the accommodation, a figure waved at him from the wheelhouse to come over. A few minutes later, “Lochbeig” was on course to the mainland. On the horizon to the port side of the ship, the ragged peaks of the Cuillin Mountains on Skye were just visible though the storm clouds. Fred was in the wheelhouse, where the ship’s master presented him with his goodbye present from Scapay. It was a solid and well-made wristwatch from a reputable maker in Europe. It even boasted water-resistance to a depth of 50 metres. Fred looked at the cheap Woolworths watch on his wrist, and saw its dial partly obscured by condensation inside the glass. The hands were stuck at 12:13. That must have been the exact moment when Ken’s boat ploughed into that first big wave, drenching the watch in salt water together with Fred’s clothes. Fred smiled to himself that this made the islanders’ gift all the more, well, timely. He made up his mind to send them all a thank-you letter as soon as he reached solid ground. In the mean time no mention was made of him joining the other passengers in the lounge, which was a gloomy place deep below deck. It was normally locked from the outside in bad weather; so as to keep the passengers inside for their own safety. Fred was in no hurry to go there. The master was Eoghain McLeod, a wiry, grey-haired Lewisman who was known for his wry and sometimes offbeat sense of humour. “Well, sergeant, where is it they are posting you next then?” he asked.

“South Barra, so I’ve been told. Do you know it by any chance?”    

“South Barra..Never!...Well, you are certainly going to see a bit of the world! But no, I have not had the privilege myself. Mind you, immoral things are going on there if the rumours can be trusted…..A strong hand of the law like yourself may be just what is needed….” 

The ferry passed out of the relative shelter provided by North Scapay, and began to corkscrew-roll in the swell that ran ahead of the next storm depression. On starboard a watery sun peeked though the leaden clouds. It brushed some of the more distant islands with beams of gold. The beauty of this realm of a thousand islands, now called the Inner Hebrides and once part of the legendary kingdom of Dalriada, had touched something deep inside Fred, and made him promise to himself that he would be back one day.
He noticed that here in the wheelhouse he did not feel seasick at all, despite the violent motion of Lochbeig. It was being able to see what was around; that was what made the difference.   
“We are using a short window between two storms to make this trip” McLeod explained, “and the next one is not going to be a joke. Here, have a look a this”. He un-curled a piece of metallic fax paper that showed an outline map of the North Atlantic. A tight whirl of concentric isobar lines lay threatening to the west of Scotland with the number 955 printed in the centre. “But not to worry, we shall be safe and tied-up in port before she hits us!”

McLeod was right. About five hours later, Fred was having his evening meal in the lounge car of the overnight train to London. It was pitch-black outside. The rain lashed against the windows as if it came from a high-pressure hose. 
There were two other people at his table. To his left sat a heavy-built man in a red and blue chequered shirt who said he had been an engineer on board the Queen Elizabeth. Fred thought there might be some good stories to be had here, but all the man said about his life on the ocean waves was that the job had been bloody awful.
To his right sat a blonde young lady in a brown tweed business suit. She worked for an estate agent in Fort William and was on her way to visit her seriously-ill father in Germany. She got increasingly tipsy from downing miniatures of whisky one after the other, and ended up flirting with a skinny Glaswegian in similar state across the aisle.    
Fred went to his bunk around midnight, and was unable to sleep for a long time. Every once in a while, the whole carriage was rocked by an extra-violent gust of wind. Fred imagined how back on North Scapay, the Atlantic Ocean would now be devouring what was left of Lizzie Fairburn’s croft. Thinking of giant waves ripping up whole fields with hens and sheep flying around like flecks of foam, he finally dozed into a fitful sleep.