This young fellow Buchanan wasn’t yet realising how lucky he was, Finn Watterson was thinking. Usually there was hardly a single day in the month that you were getting out to Ellan Bride and back again. The tide was right just now to be going out there on the ebb and back on the flood in full daylight, and although there hadn’t been a breath of wind for days, with this drought-like weather, just last night this easterly breeze had sprung up. They could hardly have wished for better. It was the best time of year, of course, but this Master Buchanan would soon be finding out what sort of undertaking it was to get a new lighthouse built on Ellan Bride. They’d need Finn Watterson, that was for sure. No one else landed regularly on the island, and Finn was aiming to be there once a month or so all through the summer. But these young fellows from Scotland – they’d not seen what it could be like getting the barrels of oil ashore on a difficult day. The sacks of coal could be heaved over the side and fetched by the keepers at low tide, but you couldn’t be doing that with the precious oil. No, when they were building this new light they’d be needing him for sure. It would be just a question of naming his price. No doubt but his family could be using the money, with half a dozen places at least to put every penny.
It was no loss to him to tell these lighthouse surveyors as much as he could. They certainly couldn’t be using the knowledge without him. Master Buchanan had been asking him about a bigger boat, but they’d never be working with anything as big as a smack going into Ellan Bride. No, they’d be coming back to him, and his yawl, that would be able to make a landing if anything could at all. In any case a smack, he’d explained to Archie patiently, would be stuck fast ashore in Port St Mary until the tide was covering the rocks at Gansey. They’d be losing too many hours that way, even with the long summer days ahead, for a smack to do the journey in a day. Finn had shown them the shore marks that gave them the only safe route out of Port St Mary harbour. And there was the Carrick – another treacherous outcrop right in the middle of the bay. When the Carrick is covered, he’d explained to them, that’s when the bay goes slack. But once you could see white water over the top of the Carrick you’d have water enough to get into harbour again, but none to spare. And if there was too big a sea breaking over the Carrick, you’d not be putting to put to sea for Ellan Bride, because you wouldn’t be able to land when you got there.
‘What sort of rock is it on Ellan Bride?’ asked Archie suddenly.
‘The same thing as the Calf. Same as Spanish Head that you were looking on to starboard just now, that’s the truth. The cliffs you’re looking on now – Ellan Bride is made out of the very same stuff.’
Hard slate, thought Archie. On the Calf they’d built the lighthouses with stone quarried from the future lighthouse cellars. Ellan Bride was only sixteen acres to the Calf’s six hundred and fifty, but if it had the same high quality slate as the Calf they’d be able to do the same thing. Unlike a rock lighthouse, the tower on Ellan Bride only had to stand up to the weather, not to the sea itself.
Yet on the drive from Castletown Archie and Ben had passed great pavements of limestone, exposed by the sea. Where did the limestone give way to slate, deep under the seabed? And what had caused the change? Mr Lyell said in his book that some rocks had been formed by the endless drift of matter down to the sea bed, others by great convulsions in the earth’s crust aeons ago. What had set the whole process in motion? How had it happened? And to what end? Ah, if one knew that, perhaps one would know all.
‘If the wind was fair,’ said Archie aloud, ‘you could sail from the Calf to Ellan Bride in an hour or so, couldn’t you?’
‘It’s all of half a league, I’m thinking. That’s far enough in bad weather. Many a day you wouldn’t be sailing from one to the other at all. In fact most days, I’d say, if you wanted to be landing anything. Now, to starboard: that’s the Calf Sound opening up.’
A piece of the Island detached itself and formed a separate entity. In between a thin strip of water gleamed. ‘We are putting the name Baie ny Breechyn on that bay there – breechyn is breeches, indeed – if you’ll look on it from the Ligghers – that cliff up there – the water will be looking the same shape as a pair of breeks.’
Finn smiled at Ben, sitting up there in the bows, and getting a bit wet too, by the look of it. Ben grinned back. Finn’s boy Juan stared resolutely out to sea.
‘There’s a landing place at the Island there. We are putting the name Cabbyl Giau on it – that means Horse Inlet – the giau is what you’d be calling an inlet, I’m thinking.’
‘Ay. We have the same word too, where I come from,’ said Ben.
A pleasant fellow, this Benjamin Groat, Finn was thinking, and a good man in a boat too. The other one didn’t do much to help us get off – maybe he was thinking himself too much the gentleman – but this fellow Groat wasn’t above giving a hand when it was needed. Maybe I’ll be working with Groat again, thought Finn – we’ll see. He’s a big strong fellow too, and I’d be trusting him in a hard place – more than the other. The other’s a bit uncertain, I’d say. Tough enough, but you couldn’t be sure what he’d be doing. I’d be taking the one without the nerves, Finn decided. The piglets were kicking against the side of their crate. ‘There, there, boy,’ Ben was saying through the slats in the crate. ‘It’ll no be long now. And ye’ll no be dinner for a long time yet. And in the meantime, ye’ll be living in clover!’
‘What’s Cow Harbour like?’ Archie asked abruptly, still staring into the Calf Sound. ‘On the north side of the Calf? How easy is it to land there?’
‘Ah, there’s a place or two you can be landing in fair weather. But the Sound’s no place for what you’re wanting. No place at all. Why, at full flood or ebb you’ll be getting the water coming through there at seven – eight – nine knots even. And when wind meets tide – ah, you’d not want to be anywhere near the place. Now – look – just where we’re at now – this is where the ebb is splitting – see how we’re coming into the choppy water, even on a day as fair as this. A bit further to starboard, and we’d be swept into the Sound. And if the sea gets up at all – where we are now – well, it’ll be getting a lot rougher than you’ll be wanting to see.’
Sure enough there was a surge of darker water just a few feet from them, with spiralling whirlpools along its edge. The yawl seemed to hesitate, then was swept forward with the tide.
‘I see. You’d not want to be working against that.’
‘You would not, sir. This is bad water. Even on a day like this – you’ll be keeping an eye on things. You’ll never be at ease – or you oughtn’t to be – not in these waters. These seas are powerful awful any day in the year. You know what they say: “Those who live by the sea sometimes die by it.” You’re not seeing what it can be today, sir. Not at all.’
They watched the currents swirl, and the water breaking on the distant rocks that guarded the Sound. They all knew what the sea could do. Danger was less than a hand’s breadth away, even on a day like this: just one small change and everything could alter, all in a moment. There was no space for mistakes. The bright sun, the sparkling waters, the helpful breeze – these were precious gifts, but all the more chancy because of that. You never forgot the other face of the sea. You dared not. It wasn’t fear you felt exactly: it was a fine tension that you’d let go of at your peril. You just didn’t forget that all time out here was borrowed. A good day was a glorious gift, but you never trusted the giver, not for a moment. You took what you could get, and you always kept your eyes open.
They were leaving the Sound behind, and the wild east coast of the Calf was sweeping by them. ‘I can see why you’d not want to work against the tide,