When Eight Bells Toll

at the seven or eight bearded, scarved and duffel-coated characters behind him who had not, as I'd thought, been working but were struggling to prevent their tents from being blown away by the wind, was almost superfluous proof. That lot couldn't have hi-jacked a rowing boat. The M.F.V., I could see now, was down by the stern and listing heavily to starboard.

'Hallo, hallo, hallo,' said the character with the wispy beard. 'Good afternoon, good afternoon. By Jove, are we glad to see you!'

I looked at him, shook the outstretched hand, glanced at the listing boat and said mildly: 'You may be shipwrecked, but those are hardly what I'd call desperate straits. You're not on a deserted island. You're on the mainland. Help is at hand!'

'Oh, we know where we are all right.' He waved a deprecating hand. 'We put in here three days ago but I'm afraid our boat was holed in a storm during .the night Most unfortunate, most inconvenient.'

'Holed as she lay there?   Just as she's moored now?'

'Yes, indeed.'

'Bad luck.  Oxford or Cambridge?'

'Oxford, of course.' He seemed a bit huffed at my ignorance. 'Combined geological and marine biological party.'

'No shortage of rocks and sea-water hereabouts,' I agreed. 'How bad is the damage?'

'A holed plank.   Sprung.   Too much for us, I'm afraid.'

'All right for food?'

'Of course.'

'No transmitter?'

'Receiver only.'

'The helicopter pilot will radio for a shipwright and engineer to be sent out as soon as the weather moderates. Good-bye,'

His jaw fell about a couple of inches. 'You're off? Just like that?'

'Air-Sea Rescue.  Vessel reported sinking last night.'

'Ah, that.   We heard.'

'Thought you might be it. Glad for your sakes you're not We've a lot of ground to cover yet.'

We continued eastwards towards the head of Loch Houron. Half-way there I said; 'Far enough. Let's have a look at those four islands out in the loch. We'31 start with the most easterly one first of all - what's it called, yes, Eilean Oran -then make our way back towards the mouth of Loch Houron again.'

'You said you wanted to go all the way to the top.'

'I've changed my mind.'

'You're the man who pays the piper,' he said equably. He was a singularly incurious character, was young Lieutenant Williams. 'Northward ho for Eilean Oran.'

We were over Eilean Oran in three minutes. Compared to Eilean Oran, Alcatraz was a green and lovely holiday resort. Half a square mile of solid rock and never a blade of grass in sight. But there was a house. A house with smoke coming from its chimney. And beside it a boatshed, but no boat. The smoke meant an inhabitant, at least one inhabitant, and however he earned his living he certainly didn't do it from tilling the good earth. So he would have a boat, a boat for fishing for his livelihood, a boat for transportation to the mainland, for one certain thing among the manifold uncertainties of this world was that no passenger vessel had called at Eilean Oran since Robert Fulton had invented the steamboat. Williams set me down not twenty yards from the shed.

I rounded the comer of the boat-house and stopped abruptly. I always stop abruptly when I'm struck in the stomach by a battering-ram. After a few minutes I managed to whoop enough air into my lungs to let me straighten up again.

He was tall, gaunt, grey, in his middle sixties. He hadn't shaved for a week or changed his collarless shirt in a month. It wasn't a battering-ram he'd used after all, it was a gun, none of your fancy pistols, just a good old-fashioned double-barrelied twelve-bore shotgun, the kind of gun that at close range — six inches in this case - can give points even to the Peacemaker Colt when it comes to blowing your head off. He had it aimed at my right eye. It was lite staring down the Mersey tunnel. When he spoke I could see he'd missed out on all those books that laud the unfailing courtesy of the Highlander.

'And who the hell are you?' he snarled.

'My name's Johnson.   Put that gun away.   I------'

'And what the hell do you want here?'

'How about trying the ' Ceud Mile Failte' approach?' I said. 'You see it everywhere in those parts. A hundred thousand welcomes------'

'I won't ask again, mister.'

'Air-Sea Rescue. There's a missing boat-----'

'I haven't seen any boat. You can just get to hell off my island.' He lowered his gun till it pointed at my stomach, maybe because he thought it would be more effective there or make for a less messy job when it came to burying me. 'Now!'

I nodded to the gun. 'You could get prison for this,'

'Maybe I could and maybe I couldn't. All I know is that I don't like strangers on my island and that Donald Mac-Eachern protects his own.'