Complete New Tales of Para Handy (23 page)

“Dougie,” he now said: “I am thinking we would maybe be better chust to put her in somewhere close at hand and wait for this snow to blow over rather than risk the shup.”

“Whatever you think yoursel', Peter.” said the mate, who had been increasingly uneasy about the prospect of picking a blind course through the boneyard of the Lynn of Lorn when the only navigational aid on board for these strange waters was a school atlas Para Handy had bought secondhand from a Glasgow book barrow prior to their departure from the Broomielaw three days earlier.

And so, with the lights on the northern end of Lismore faintly visible as a guide on the starboard bow, and Sunny Jim perched reluctantly in the bows as a shivering look-out, they picked their way into the tiny harbour at Port Appin and tied up at the stone pier. There was not a breath of wind and a silence as of the grave lay on a landscape rendered all but invisible by the snow, which fell more thickly than ever. The crew prepared to make the best of a bad job by creating as much comfort as possible in the cramped fo'c'sle. Macphail carefully carried a shovelful of red-hot coals from the engine-room furnace to get the stove going: Dougie carefully trimmed and lit the two oil lamps hanging from the deck-beams: Sunny Jim filled a basin with water and began to peel potatos for their evening meal.

“I have neffer seen weather like it!” said the Captain, “The snow we get on the Clyde is chust a handful of confetti compared wi' this.”

“You call this snaw!” derisively snorted Macphail, who had ‘gone foreign' before returning to Glasgow and his berth on the puffer several years previously. “You should see the winter in the Baltic. The Rooshians get that much snaw the hooses get totally buried in it: it's only the lums sticking oot and smokin' that let folk ken whaur their hooses is at.”

“That's a bit of a whopper, surely, Dan” said Sunny Jim. “Whit wye could they get in and oot o' them?”

“The hooses is all built wi' special doors in the roofs beside the lums, of course,” said Macphail. “And I know for a fact for I've seen it that they can build railway lines ower some of the lakes in winter, the ice gets froze that deep. So if Para Handy wants tae conseeder some real winter weather then he shouldna be greetin' aboot a puckle snow in Appin, but raither remember whit things can be like for the Tsar and his weans and a' the ither folk at St Petersburg: it isnae all snowmen and sledges there, that's for sure.''

“Is that so,” said the skipper with heavy sarcasm. “Weel, that sounds like a spring mornin' compared wi' the conditions that Hurricane Jeck had to put up wi' wan year when he wass on the cluppers.

“He wass first mate on the
City of Lisbon
, wan o' they nitrate shups, and they wass on a voyage home to Liverpool from Chile wi' a cargo o' phosphates. Efferything wass smooth enough till they came to Cape Horn and here they wass hit by the most terrible storms for you should know, Jum, that this iss a place most weel-thocht-of for wund and waves the like of which you'll no' see anywhere else in aal the seven seas. Dougie himself will tell you.”

“Right enough, Peter, right enough,” affirmed the mate with alacrity, though he had never been further west than Barra nor further south than Belfast all his days at sea. “It iss a most terrible place, to be sure.”

“For six days and nights they wass forced to run under bare poles, they daurna' show a scrap o' canvas, and the men on the wheel wass lashed to it for fear they would be washed awa' wi' the seas that wass sweepin' her from stem to stern. And aal the while they was bein' blown sooth, way off their course and aye nearer and nearer to the Sooth Pole.

“Then wan night the wund stopped chust as sudden ass when it started, and there wass a deathly silence, and a night chust as black ass the Earl o' Hell's weskit. In the mornin' when the daylight came they foond to their horror they wass becalmed in the mudst of a whole fleet of icebergs, effery wan of them as big ass a land o' hooses.

“It wass so cold you would not credit it. The riggin' wass ass hard and ass brittle ass icicles, and if you made the mistake of knocking against ony pairt of it, it wud just snap in twa like a stick o' seaside rock. The men off-watch below wass aal frozen solid into their hammocks and had to be chipped oot o' them by the men on watch. If you would try to tak' a billy of tea from the galley to the fo'c'sle it wass chust a lump of ice by the time you got it there and in the officers' salong the rum froze in their glasses afore they could drink it, and they had to sook it chust ass if it wass a cinnamon ball.

“Worst of all, the compass wass froze in the binnacle and they couldnae tell north from sooth so that even if the ice let up a bit, and a wind cam' up and they had the chance to pit some sail on her, they would have had no wye of knowin' which road to tak'.”

“Ye're a haver, Para Handy,” cried Macphail. “Whether the leear iss yourself, or whether it wass MacLachlan, I dinna ken: but wan o' ye is talkin' nonsense and it's wrang tae pit sich daft notions in young Jum's heid.”

Para Handy paid no attention. “Jeck said,” he continued, “that the only thing that saved them wass a perty of Eskimos oot huntin' polar bears who happened by in their kayaks, and wass able to point oot where north wass tae them, so that when…”

“Eskimos!!!” shouted Macphail. “Eskimos at the Sooth Pole! And polar bears forbye! Ye done it noo, even Jum must know that you only get Eskimos and Polar Bears in the Arctic.”

“Whit d'ye mean ‘Even Jum'?” cried Sunny Jim angrily. “Are you makin' oot I'm some sort of eejit or somethin'? Of course I ken the whole story's rubbish — but it's gey entertaining rubbish and it wis whilin' the time awa' very nicely.

“Why not get back tae wan o' your novelles, Dan, and leave the rest of us tae enjoy a harmless baur if we want tae…” And the enraged Jim picked up the potato knife and took his feelings out on a half stone of Kerr's Pinks.

Once their supper was finished, the engineer retired to his bunk, while the rest of the crew played a good-natured game of pontoon for matches.

After about half-an-hour, with the harsh sound of Macphail's stentorian snoring echoing through the dimly-lit fo'c'sle, Para Handy climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch to have a look at the weather.

The frost was harder than ever, but the snow had stopped and a crescent yellow moon hung in an inky black sky peppered with stars. For the first time it was possible to see something of the tiny harbour in which they had taken refuge. The village, and the village Inn, lay less than a hundred yards away but were totally hidden by an intervening hillock. Indeed there was not a single house to be seen anywhere from the deck of the puffer.

Even the shallow sea-water in the harbour was covered with a layer of ice, such was the severity of the frost: and the further harbour wall was so blanketed and smothered in snow that it was unrecognisable as a man-made object but looked more like a floating mass of ice.

At the edge of the jetty against which the puffer was moored there stood — coated with snow — a wooden tripod about six feet in height, surmounted by a round ball which, when aligned with the ball on a similar construction just visible half-way up the hill behind the harbour, would form a guide-mark for incoming vessels.

The tripod had two wooden arms projecting to either side about five feet off the ground. From each there hung a life-belt.

Para Handy tiptoed back down the ladder into the fo'c'sle and beckoned to Dougie and Sunny Jim.

“I'll treat you both to a dram,” he said. “But come up quiet and dinna wake Macphail. Will you, Dougie, set the alarum clock to go off an hour from now: and Jum, bring yon shovel Dan used to bring the coals from the enchine-room. There iss a wee chob to do before we go up to the Inn…”

Ten minutes later he stood back to admire their handiwork. The lifebelts had been removed from the arms of the tripod and snow had been built up round it in a rough cone shape as far as the ball which topped it.

Snow had been carefully moulded onto the horizontal arms, and five short twigs of wood added claw-like at their tips. Around the ball at the top a muzzle-like shape had been created on the side facing the boat. Two large ear-like pieces projected from the top of it and three pieces of coal had been set into the head so created — one for a black snout at the front of the muzzle, two for eyes at its top.

“Not bad,” said the Captain. “Not bad at aal. Enough to give Dan a bit of a fleg when that alarum goes off and he decides to come up on deck to find out why he's alone on the shup. Wi' an icebound landscape like this aal roond him I've no doot he'll wonder for a moment chust where he iss…

“He'll see then that there's polar bears in ither places than the North Pole — and maybe that'll teach him no' to be sich an auld misery next time, when aal we are havin' is a harmless baur!”

And with a spring in their step the three set off across the snow towards the companionship and warmth of the Appin Inn.

F
ACTNOTE

There are two villages carrying the name of Ballachulish, the North and the South, one at either side of the narrows where Loch Leven enters Loch Linnhe.

South Ballachulish was, until the middle of this century, the unlikely venue for a major industry. It was largely to cater for that industry's needs that the isolated branch-line railway from the main Oban to Glasgow route (involving the construction of a cantilever bridge across the fierce rapids at Connel just north of Oban) was laid through the difficult Appin terrain and first opened for business in 1903. Passenger services on the line offered a faster route to link with connections from North Ballachulish onwards to Fort William and Inverness.

Freight services took Ballachulish's industrial output to markets UK wide. But eventually more efficient road haulage facilities, and the growth of car ownership, precipitated an inevitable decline in demand and led to the closure of the line. Freight services ended in 1965 and the very last passenger train pulled out of the village the following year.

The industry which had spawned it all in the first instance was a slate-quarry, the highly-esteemed materials from which were exported not just throughout this country, but worldwide. First opened in 1761, it remained in full-scale production for two centuries. The scars which its operations inflicted on the West Highland landscape are only now beginning to mellow.

The Ballachulish narrows were one of the great natural divides between the North and the South. For generations there was a ferry between the two villages which saved travellers the inconvenience of a 15-mile detour round the roller-coaster road which followed the shore of Loch Leven. In the post-war years, the tiny vehicle-ferries with a capacity.of just half-a-dozen cars were wholly unable to cope with the growth in traffic and delays of two hours or more became commonplace in the summer months. At long last a road bridge was built across the narrows, and opened for business in 1976.

Puffers did indeed carry slate from the quarries, and could be quite regular visitors to Loch Linnhe for other reasons. They operated on and through the Caledonian Canal, usually with cargos of timber. Sometimes it was newly-felled from forestry plantations in and around the Great Glen and ferried south: on other occasions after it was processed and manufactured, it returned north as telegraph poles or fencing stobs.

But these Highland waterways would be unfamiliar territory to skippers who were more at home on the Clyde, where they could boast that they knew every one of its rocks, shallows and shoals (if not by name) at least by reputation!

20

The Launch of the Vital Spark

T
he hard work of the day was done, and a peaceful stillness lay across the
Vital Spark
like a balm. The only sound was the faint hiss of escaping steam from the derrick engine, abandoned and cooling itself down now after several strenuous hours spent loading timber from the nearby Forestry estate.