The sun hadn’t reached into the hollow of the Castle Rushen moat. Out on the harbour quay the day was already bright. Ben shuddered, and walked round the castle, past a stone-breakers’ yard, and on to the harbour quay at the front of the castle. Who’d have thought such an imposing building could house such stinking misery inside? Just like people really, thought Ben, and grinned to himself. He’d done his best, but it was good to be out of that place. Being a peaceable fellow himself, he’d had little enough to do with jails, thank the Lord.
The castle faced straight onto the harbour. The tide was coming in fast over flat slabs of rock and seaweed. A couple of herring smacks were moored at the Castle Quay, with the sea running in around their exposed keels. A schooner was unloading coal, and townsfolk with baskets and barrows were queuing up to buy, their boisterous banter drowning out the screams of the gulls. Further upriver a gaggle of farmyard ducks foraged in the exposed seaweed. Compared with Douglas harbour, where they’d berthed yesterday, with its fine new pier and good lighthouse, this place was a backwater – literally, one might say.
Ben wandered along the quay, and crossed a stone bridge over the river that flowed into the harbour. An old fellow was leaning on the bridge smoking a long clay pipe, watching the tide flooding in over the exposed mudflats.
‘Morning,’ said Ben cheerfully, stopping beside him.
‘And a good morning to you.’ The old man removed his pipe, and looked Ben over sideways. ‘You’ll be a stranger in these parts, then?’
‘Ay.’
‘English?’
‘Not I!’
‘Scotch?’
‘No that either!’
‘You’re not sounding like an Irishman. Welsh?’
‘No. Orkney,’ said Ben, leaning on the rail beside his questioner. ‘But I’ve been away fae home a long time. You’ll ken this place pretty well, then?’
‘I’m living here all my days.’
‘Tell me, then – when we came last night, it was just gone high tide. It falls a good way, then?’
The old man looked at him sideways. ‘More’n twenty feet just now. At low tide you’ll not hardly be seeing a pint of water in the harbour, barring the river. Three-and-a-half hours after high tide the whole harbour’ll be dry again.’
‘That must make the fishing difficult.’
The old man sucked on his pipe deliberately; he seemed to be staring out to sea, but he was watching Ben out of the corner of his eye. Evidently he decided it was worth being communicative. ‘Aye well, it’s dangerous awful in the bay outside. But once your boat’s in she’s as snug as can be, as you’re seeing indeed, here in the duck pond – that’s the name we’re putting on it here. When the herring are coming in, you see, the smacks are mooring off Derbyhaven mostly, and that’s where they’re beaching them in the winter.’
‘Derbyhaven?’
‘You are a stranger and no mistake!’ The old man looked him over, but didn’t ask any direct questions. Instead he jerked his pipe in an easterly direction. ‘Over that way, a mile or two. That’s Derbyhaven.’
‘And there’s a better harbour there?’
‘Harbour?’ the fellow repeated scornfully. ‘Bless your heart, there’s no harbour there at all. But you’d never be mooring in Castletown Bay, not when there’s a westerly in. So it’ll be the fishing that brings you here, no doubt?’
‘No.’ Ben leaned his elbows on the rail, and deliberately grew confidential. It was worth getting alongside the locals, though he was wary of the old fellow’s sidelong glances. So far everything he’d said seemed true enough. ‘I’m in the surveying business,’ said Ben. ‘Chainman. I work for the company that built the lighthouses on the Calf here. That’d be what? … ten, twelve year ago now?’
‘So that’s it, is it? Surveying? Is that making a map, like? There’s a map of Castletown already, so they’re telling, but I’m never seeing it.’
The air of benighted ignorance seemed genuine enough, but Ben wasn’t at all sure. ‘Ay well, we’re no working in Castletown. Like I say, you had our company here before, building the lights on the Calf. Lot of wrecks here before that,’ remarked Ben casually, ‘or so they say.’
‘And plenty of wrecks since too! I’m not holding with all these lights everywhere. It sets folk thinking the coast is safe, and that’s not so. Never was, never will be. There were wrecks before the lights – one or two wrecks along this coast every year, year in, year out – and wrecks just the same ever since. Listen, young fellow … but three months since there was a smack lost in Castletown Bay. Coming from Liverpool, she was. Smashed to pieces on the rocks out there in a storm, barely a mile from this harbour. Just out yonder, not a mile from where we’re standing. Them lights on the Calf aren’t stopping that sort of thing, now, are they?’
‘No, but a light at that headland I saw across the bay might help.’
‘Langness? And what would be the use of that? It’s too low. A bit of spray on a wild night – a patch of fog – no, that would do no good at all. There’s the Herring Tower there, anyway. What more would you be wanting? And how about the Atalanta was wrecked at Port St Mary last year? Now she was from Derbyhaven – John Watterson, he had knowledge of these waters – but that wasn’t helping her, was it? And you won’t never see them lights on the Calf near Port St Mary. And the Atalanta wasn’t the only one at Port St Mary last year – there was that sloop from Scotland too. They were getting the cargo off – pig-iron, that’s what it was – but the ship, she was finished. No, you can’t tell me them lights have changed nothing.’
‘I’ve kent places in Scotland where they’ve set up lights and barely had a wreck since.’
‘Ah well now, you would have done, wouldn’t you? That’s how you’ll be knowing all about what we’re needing here. Well, well, isn’t that fortunate now, that you’re coming here to the Island to be putting us all right?’
‘It’s a busy route, then, along your coast here?’ asked Ben innocently.
‘Bless your soul, it’s the busiest route in the Manx Sea. But a week or two now, and you’ll be having them all here for the fishing. They’ll be out west of the Island right now, but when the herring will be coming round the coast, the boats’ll be following. Once the Cornishmen are coming along, that’s when the season is really starting. And not just the fishing. Now it’s all them steamers, going away to Liverpool, Whitehaven, Belfast, the Lord knows where … Oh yes, we don’t do so bad, for poor ones who aren’t knowing nothing at all. Not like you educated gentlemen from Edinburgh, of course.’
‘I telt you: I’m fae Orkney. We don’t have any steamer routes there yet. But we – me and my master – we came on the steamer from Glasgow yesterday.’
‘Well, you won’t get me onto one of them things. Blow up, like as not, and what will you be doing when the engine stops working? No sails, no oars. It’s not nathural.’
‘And no wrecks either. Or no so many. A steamer can get itself off a lee shore where a sailing ship wouldna have a hope.’
‘Well, you’re wrong there, young fellow. Weren’t you hearing how the George was wrecked in Douglas Bay just last year? At least, they were getting her off in the end, but it wasn’t