She risked a look back. Donna was running behind, head down, one foot after the other, blood streaming down her cheek.
The waves in front of Surtsey were churning with the shaking earth, slapping against the corner of the cove, splashing on the sand in random torrents. The boat was being thrown about on the shore.
Another shower of pebbles landed all about her like bullet holes in the sand, some of them striking her head and back, making her wince and throw her hands up for protection. But she didn’t stop, kept running straight to the boat, heaving it into the water and kicking up spray, salty mouthfuls of it, the cold shock to her body as she waded in behind, then suddenly no ground underfoot and she was swimming, gripping the rope that ran around the side of the boat, pulling herself against the hull, flopping over the side like a landed fish.
She lay exhausted for a second trying to get her breath back, then sat up and looked back.
Donna was sitting on the edge of the beach, water slopping at her feet, ash and dust cascading all around her, huge pillars of cloud pouring from the vents at the peak of the island. The lava was fifty yards behind her and moving fast in her direction, spreading tendrils out along every path, some into the new gaping cleft to the right, some onto the sand, throwing up sparks as the sand sizzled in the heat.
‘Come on,’ Surtsey said, beckoning her into the water.
Donna looked at Surtsey and shook her head.
Surtsey stared. ‘Get in the boat.’
Donna glanced behind her. The lava was thirty yards. Twenty. Surtsey could feel the heat from here. She reached for the starter. Another quake sent a huge rock fall tumbling away from the vent down the eastern side, and Surtsey saw a chunk of the cliffs slide into the sea. Away to her left the rocky edge of the cove crumpled like paper and fell into the water. The chasm to the right of Donna was wider, spreading to the shore then underwater. A surge of water almost tipped the boat over as Surtsey pulled on the chord and got the motor running.
She watched as Donna just sat there. The lava was fifteen yards, ten, chasing little flames of burning sand towards her. She lay down on her back just as the lava reached her and swept over her body, spreading over her like treacle, swallowing her in a few seconds before it reached the water’s edge and threw plumes of white steam hissing into the air. The heat from it scalded Surtsey’s face and she fell back into the boat. The stench of ammonia burned at her eyes and throat. She pulled her T-shirt over her nose and mouth and sat up. She looked at the place where Donna had been but all she could see were vivid red rivers spilling into the sea, creating billowing steam clouds that sizzled over the surface of the water then upwards.
An explosion from the highest vent threw rocks skywards, ash and black smoke everywhere, boulders and pebbles raining down all around her, thudding into the water as another quake spread the cracks in the island deeper and wider, the surging water rocking the boat.
Surtsey gunned the engine and angled the rudder in a turning circle away from the island, the noise of it thrashing behind her, the rumble of rockslides, the crash of volcanic explosions, the hiss and sizzle of lava sucked under the ocean, the steam and smoke and ash filling the sky and her senses.
She was fifty yards away now, seventy, a hundred, heading east, the most direct route away from the chaos behind her, Musselburgh and East Lothian in her sight, Portobello to the right.
She slumped back against the stern of the boat, the throbbing engine eventually drowning out the noise from the Inch. She coughed and coughed, spat black phlegm into the boat, her eyes painful, her skin raw.
She was away now, several hundred yards, halfway to the coastline and safety.
She turned back to look. The ash cloud stretched into the atmosphere, lava pumping out of the vents. The edges of the island were crumbling and slipping into the sea, new lava flows crawling over them and crashing into the boiling water.
She sat looking at it for a long time as the boat got further away. Eventually she turned and looked at the prom. Hundreds of people were on the shoreline watching the Inch tear itself apart. She steered the boat towards them.
46
Traces of high cloud in a thick blue sky. Surtsey wriggled her toes in the sand as she sat on the beach soaking up the sun. The tide was halfway out leaving stretches of wet sand, strewn with lines of seaweed, gulls and terns slapping through the wash looking for sandworms. Dog walkers were coming and going, a golden retriever lolloping towards them then away. She sat with Iona on one side and Hal on the other, the three of them silent. Fifty yards to their left an old woman stood on her own, staring out to sea. And beyond her a thin ribbon of steam rose from the water.
The Inch was gone.
It was ten days since the eruption started. It had gone on for four days, not quite as dramatic as those first few hours, less spewing lava and fewer rockslides. But the ash cloud continued, closing northern European airspace for a week. As the clouds streamed into the sky and dissipated into the upper atmosphere, the Inch was sinking. Great fissures had opened up along the fault line under the firth, and a chain of earthquakes saw the cliffs, beaches and slopes of the island gradually disappear.
