Alistair Maclean
The Lonely Sea
Collected Short Stories
HarperCollins An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1985 then in paperback by Fontana 1986
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1985, 2009
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
City of Benares, The Arandora Star, Rawalpindi, The Meknes, The Jervis Bay and Lancastriapublished by the Sunday Express 1960.
Rewards and Responsibilities of Success, The Black Storm and The Good Samaritan published by the Glasgow Herald 1982, 1995 and 1996.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780006172772
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 9780007289332
Version: 2018-11-21
Table of Contents
MacHinery and the Cauliflowers
McCrimmon and the Blue Moonstones
Postscript: Rewards and Responsibilities of Success
Three hours gone, Mr MacLean, three hours—and never a word of the lifeboat.
You can imagine just how it was. There were only the four of us there—Eachan, Torry Mor, old Grant, and myself. Talk? Never a word among the lot of us, nor even the heart of a dram—and there on the table, was a new bottle of Talisker, and Eachan not looking for a penny.
We just sat there like a lot of stookies, Seumas Grant with his expressionless face and yon wicked old pipe of his bubbling away, and the rest of us desperately busy with studying the pattern of the wallpaper. Listening to the screech of the wind, we were, and the hail like chuckies battering against the windows of the hotel. Dhia! What a night that was! And the worst of it was, we couldn’t do a thing but wait. My, but we were a right cheery crowd.
I think we all gave a wee bit jump when the telephone rang. Eachan hurried away and was back in a moment beaming all over. One look at yon great moonface of his and we felt as if the Pladda Lighthouse had been lifted off our backs.
‘Four glasses, gentlemen, and see’s over the Talisker. That was the lightkeeper at Creag Dearg. The Molly Ann got there in time—just. The puffer’s gone, but all the crew were taken off.’
He pushed the glasses over and looked straight at old Grant.
‘Well, Seumas, what have you to say now? The Molly Ann got there—and Donald Archie and Lachlan away over by Scavaig. Perhaps you would be saying it’s a miracle, eh, Seumas?’
There was no love lost between these two, I can tell you. Mind you, most of us were on Eachan’s side. He was a hard man, was old Seumas Grant. Well respected, right enough, but no one had any affection for him and, by Jove, he had none for us—none for anyone at all, except for Lachlan and Donald, his sons. For old Seumas, the sun rose to shine on them alone. His motherless sons: for them the croft, for them the boat, for them his every waking thought. But a hard man, Mr Maclean. Aloof and—what’s the word?—remote. Kept himself to himself, you might say.
‘It’s a miracle when anyone is saved on a night like this, Eachan.’ Old Grant’s voice was slow and deep.
‘But without Donald and Lachlan?’ Eachan pressed. Torry, I remember shifted in his