“The rock was all split and broken there; when I came too close to the edge, chunks would fall awa’ from my feet and plummet down the cliff. I didna see how I’d ever reach the water, let alone the seals’ isle. But then I was minded what Duncan said about Ellen’s tower,” Jamie said. His eyes were open, fixed not on me, but on that distant shore where the crash of falling rock was lost in the smashing of the waves.
The “tower” was there; a small spike of granite that stuck up no more than five feet from the tip of the headland. But below that spike, hidden by the rocks, was a narrow crack, a small chimney that ran from top to bottom of the eighty-foot cliff, providing a possible passage, if not an easy one, for a determined man.
From the base of Ellen’s tower to the third island was still over a quarter-mile of heaving green water. Undressing, he had crossed himself, and commending his soul to the keeping of his mother, he had dived naked into the waves.
He made his way slowly out from the cliff, floundering and choking as the waves broke over his head. No place in Scotland is that far from the sea, but Jamie had been raised inland, his experience of swimming limited to the placid depths of lochs and the pools of trout streams.
Blinded by salt and deafened by the roaring surf, he had fought the waves for what seemed hours, then thrust his head and shoulders free, gasping for breath, only to see the headland looming—not behind, as he had thought, but to his right.
“The tide was goin’ out, and I was goin’ with it,” he said wryly. “I thought, well, that’s it, then, I’m gone, for I knew I could never make my way back. I hadna eaten anything in two days, and hadn’t much strength left.”
He ceased swimming then, and simply spread himself on his back, giving himself to the embrace of the sea. Light-headed from hunger and effort, he had closed his eyes against the light and searched his mind for the words of the old Celtic prayer against drowning.
He paused for a moment then, and was quiet for so long that I wondered whether something was wrong. But at last he drew breath and said shyly, “I expect ye’ll think I’m daft, Sassenach. I havena told anyone about it—not even Jenny. But—I heard my mother call me, then, right in the middle of praying.” He shrugged, uncomfortable.
“It was maybe only that I’d been thinking of her when I left the shore,” he said. “And yet—” He fell silent, until I touched his face.
“What did she say?” I asked quietly.
“She said, ‘Come here to me, Jamie—come to me, laddie!’” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I could hear her plain as day, but I couldna see anything; there was no one there, not even a silkie. I thought perhaps she was callin’ me from Heaven—and I was so tired I really would not ha’ minded dying then, but I rolled myself over and struck out toward where I’d heard her voice. I thought I would swim ten strokes and then stop again to rest—or to sink.”
But on the eighth stroke, the current had taken him.
“It was just as though someone had picked me up,” he said, sounding still surprised at the memory of it. “I could feel it under me and all around; the water was a bit warmer than it had been, and it carried me with it. I didna have to do anything but paddle a bit, to keep my head above water.”
A strong, curling current, eddying between headland and islands, it had taken him to the edge of the third islet, where no more than a few strokes brought him within reach of its rocks.
It was a small lump of granite, fissured and creviced like all the ancient rocks of Scotland, and slimed with seaweed and seal droppings to boot, but he crawled on shore with all the thankfulness of a shipwrecked sailor for a land of palm trees and white-sand beaches. He fell down upon his face on the rocky shelf and lay there, grateful for breath, half-dozing with exhaustion.
“Then I felt something looming over me, and there was a terrible stink o’ dead fish,” he said. “I got up onto my knees at once, and there he was—a great bull seal, all sleek and wet, and his black eyes starin’ at me, no more than a yard away.”
Neither fisher nor seaman himself, Jamie had heard enough stories to know that bull seals were dangerous, particularly when threatened by intrusions upon their territory. Looking at the open mouth, with its fine display of sharp, peglike teeth, and the burly rolls of hard fat that girdled the enormous body, he was not disposed to doubt it.
“He weighed more than twenty stone, Sassenach,” he said. “If he wasna inclined to rip the flesh off my bones, still he could ha’ knocked me into the sea wi’ one swipe, or dragged me under to drown.”
“Obviously he didn’t, though,” I said dryly. “What happened?”
He laughed. “I think I was too mazed from tiredness to do anything sensible,” he said. “I just looked at him for a moment, and then I said, ‘It’s all right; it’s only me.’”
“And what did the seal do?”
